1:19:03
You often get in Leone's films someone
peering through a letterbox-shaped space.
1:19:09
The image is letterboxed,
the Techniscope frame,
1:19:12
but you get someone peering,
like Eastwood.
1:19:15
So his view is framed,
1:19:17
like the Techniscope frame
this movie is gonna be projected in.
1:19:21
Rather like Rod Steiger
in Giù La Testa, in Duck You Sucker,
1:19:25
tearing a poster and seeing
a slat between the wood
1:19:28
and looking through at a firing squad.
1:19:33
It's a reminder of the artificiality of the
frame, but he loves the letterbox frame,
1:19:38
and the way in which that frame
can be filled to push on the action.
1:20:12
Again, the hero is impassive.
1:20:14
You'd expect Randolph Scott,
or John Wayne, or Gary Cooper
1:20:18
to react to this massacre.
It's pointless.
1:20:21
And here comes Consuelo,
the matriarch of the clan coming out.
1:20:25
Surely they won't shoot her.
Even in the worst Western,
1:20:28
no one shot the heroine
or one of the lead female characters.
1:20:32
But this is an Italian Western.
1:20:50
A very elaborate Spanish
curse being cast at them.
1:20:54
And it's not in fact Ramón
that shoots her, it's his brother.