"Frank Black" & The Other Sergio
Morricone writes the soundtrack of my life...

I described finding spaghetti westerns as catch-as-catch can. When you find you really want to see, you gotta snap it up no matter how bad the quality. Even in this day of rampant digital media, that doesn't mean that the digital transfer was from a film source. Trust me: a DVD from a third generation bootleg tape does not look any better than that tape did.

In some cases, you can argue that it merely enhances the terrible quality.

Probably the one line I draw with the spaghettis is that if I really wanna see it, it's at least gotta be widescreen.

Only one problem with that...well, one problem, but two actual difficulties.

Both have to do with the aspect ratio of the film. I'll explain, but quickly:

Your average TV has an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. Most early movies were also shot in this ratio. That's 1.33 feet wide for every foot tall.

Movies got a little more widescreen early on with 1.66:1 aspect ratio. These suffered the least when cropped for TV and video release.

The average aspect ratio for most movies from about 1960 to the present day is 1.85:1. If you multiply the width and height by 9, you roughly get 16:9, the size of most widescreen TV's.

The final size is the panoramic 2.35:1. When cropped for TV, you lose nearly half the picture. It lookes butchered in pan&scan (the old video transfer process that changed movie ratio to TV ratio). Frequently cuts were added to divide up a shot to follow dialogue, and often times important details were cropped out in the background in order to follow action or dialogue. There are tons of old movies that after I finally saw them in their orginal widescreen format, I could never watch them on TV again.

(There were also a few variations wider than this, but they were only occasionally used primarily in the huge epics of the 60's)

So back to my two problems in dealing with bootlegged video. The first is that often times the video is what dealers call "slightly widescreen." That means it was shot 1.85 or 2.35, but still cropped to 1.66. So you still get the black bars and a little more of the original screen, but not all of it. The other is taking the transfer from an anamorphic print. D@mmit...here we go again...The Dumb and Simple Version:

You got round lenses and anamorphic lenses. A frame of round lensed film would appear normal if you picked it up and looked at it. An anamorphic shot would appear stretched from top to bottom (people's heads are long an thin in the picture). Using an anamorphic lens allows you to capture a wider shot on the average size frame of film. When you project it later, the projector's lens stretches the image back out to normal. So the problem again...

Well, sometimes when they do the transfer they don't do the scan with anamorphic lenses. You still get the whole picture, but it's at the wrong aspect ratio and everyone looks stretched. It's not impossible to watch, but combined with being a crappy second or third generation dub...well, your missing something of the film's full glory.

I haven't had it happen often, but when it does, it's a wholly mixed blessing. You're seeing the whole picture only warped. And the general bad contrast washout isn't helping either. But when your choices are to either not see it, watch the horrible non-letterbox version whose video quality is just as bad, or watch the horrible quality off ratio but still letterbox version.

I opted for the last, and I finally saw:

Il Mercenario (aka. The Mercenary, The Professional Gun, 1968) d. Sergio Corbucci

I know, I know. I've raved about my three favorite Sergio's in Spaghetti cinema: Leone, Sollima, and Corbucci. I've also argued that Leone transcended the genre that made him famous. Sollima was on a whole other philosophical and political kick than most spaghettis (and he only made three, though Faccia à Faccia is one of my favorites). Then there's Corbucci, who to my mind, is the poster child for THE spaghetti western. Bawdy, fun, grim, action-packed, and you can usually bet money that someone is getting mowed down with a machine gun at some point.

Also this film features Franco Nero who's a sure bet for entertainment value in any spaghetti he appears in. The rest of the movie may stink around him, but just try to keep focused on Franco. Also, in this film, as well as Companeros, Franco plays a foreigner so that he could dub in his own voice. Though I don't recall any horrible Franco dubs...let's face it, it's just better that he do himself.

Let's get down to brass tacks shall we?

The Story: While mercenary Sergei Kowalski (Nero) is being hired to protect a silver shipment on its way from Mexico to the U.S., that same silver mine's workers are revolting against their masters led by Paco Roman (Tony Musante). Sergei arrives at the mine to find he's lost his job at about the same time the federales arrive to arrest Paco and his men. Paco hires Sergei to save him which leads them on a path to riches and revolution until a woman shows Paco the rift between between his naive idealism and Segei's greed. (There's also this weird subplot with 'Curly' (Jack Palance) who's after Sergei in a similar serious fashion as General Garcia (Eduardo Fajardo) wants to hunt Paco.)

The Review: If the 'servant of two masters' plot was the formula for one type of spaghetti (namely A Fistful of Dollars) then the other was the Mexican revolution story. Usually our hero is either a peasant becomes a bandit, or when we meet him, he's a bandit already. He's going to come across a gringo foreigner who's going to have some special knowledge or skill that will help him to get ahead. In Leone's Fistful of Dynamite (aka. Duck, You Sucker), it was IRA member Sean's (James Coburn) knowledge of explosives that helped Mexican bandit Juan. Well, The Mercenary follows this formula, and it's Sergei's general bad@ssness (I don't know how else to explain it) that aids Paco.

So this movie ended up somewhere between Damiani's Bullet for the General and Corbucci's own Companeros, both of which are films I enjoy. Still, it ends up coming off as more of the same old, but just different enough storywise not to bore me. The primary difference is in casting. In Companeros, it was Nero's wry smugness up agains Tomas Milian's simple cantankerousness. In this film, again Nero has the wry smugness, but this time it's a war of beaming charisma with Musante. Both characters are likeable and have some amount of mutual respect for each other. All the while, each man's sense of ethics is enough to keep a firm friction between them.

The oddest thing about this movie is that story wise, despite its similarities to Companeros even though it was two years and two movies earlier. Corbucci loves to keep things moving in these lighter hearted films. He keeps his characters on the go. He keeps his shootouts coming on a regular basis. There's always a joke to pop things along. Furthermore, there's always Morricone's score to sweep an audience along....

Each of these movies have weaknesses. Most of the time that has to do with the story, or the lack of it. Many of these films are not even so much character driven as personality driven. Their operas with only pistols singing. Let's face it, you're not going to do any better at that than with Ennio Morricone. He's sweeping without schmaltz, but at the same time often unique and quirky. This man can be musical glue for even the most disjointed movies. This score is one of my favorites. I own the remastered CD. The somber drum starts, then a lonely whistle, a charming horn begins, and finally a very warm and western guitar. Beautiful stuff.

This movie was very much enjoyable fun, but it wasn't all silly strung together either. There's a lot to be said for the development of Paco's character. At first he's drawn to Sergei's power as a vehicle for his dream: money. Slowly though, he sees that his people and the revolution are more important. He's tempted to reconcile his partnership with Sergei, but the truth is that they belong in different worlds. Of course the relationship between Milian and Nero in Companeros was similar, but here it felt more genuine, more heartfelt.

Finally, I mentioned Jack Palance above, and the fact that his part seems like a strange tangent. Now, few actors can leave such a deep impression with such minor screentime, but Palance is nearly always unforgettable. (I know too many people who still do that "Jack, you...are..my..number..one...guy...." thing from the first Batman movie.) In both the Corbucci films he appears in he manages to craft the weirdest charactersin the shortest amount of time. In Companeros he was the one-handed pot-smoking falconer, and in this one he's a fay psychopath with these thick curled locks. It's crazy.

I now only have three major Corbucci's (The Hellbenders, Navajo Joe, and The Specialists) to go, and I'll have seen all the Corbucci's that I want to. I've said a couple of times that I want a clean letterbox version of The Mercenary. Now that I've actually seen it...I guess I want one more than ever.

Cheers.