:54:03
and there's Shane the redeemer
coming in and saving the Holy Family.
:54:07
But the profusion of iconography,
:54:10
and the setting in the southwest,
and the Italianising of the Western
:54:14
creates a Roman Catholic atmosphere,
rather than the Protestant Western.
:54:19
Just as the locale shifts from
the middle West, or Wyoming,
:54:23
or the setting of the Johnson County War,
which was where Shane was set,
:54:28
further southwest into
a Latin, Italian, Hispanic setting.
:54:33
Lots of things flow from that,
including Roman-Catholic iconography,
:54:37
which is part of Leone's project.
:54:40
It's not a religious Western.
He's mocking much of the iconography.
:54:44
He's saying, "We can recognise this
as something we can identify with. "
:54:56
So we're not judging Ramón,
we're saying he's smart. Smart wins.
:55:01
Somebody once said about the character
that Eastwood epitomised in this film
:55:06
that in the old films,
the hero was the best shot.
:55:10
In a film like this, the best shot is the hero.
:55:13
In other words,
the guy who's good with a gun,
:55:16
whose technique is superior
to everyone's else's,
:55:19
who is a trickster who can outwit
everyone, that is the hero,
:55:22
rather than the hero being
able to mobilise those forces.
:55:25
So here we have
the Last Supper sequence,
:55:28
with the suit of armour that apparently
did duty in countless Zorro films,
:55:32
in the governor's residence
in old California,
:55:35
now standing in as a prop to be shot at
as Ramón and his disciples sit at the table
:55:41
in a deliberate reference
to Leonardo's painting of The Last Supper,
:55:45
which is in Milan.