Leave Your Accent At The Door

Monte Hellman is deserving of a reappraisal. Using the TapeHead forum, I will now get on my soapbox and trumpet his name into cyberspace in the hopes of winning a few converts to my religion. A former Roger Corman protege, this guy has been kicking around for four decades directing, ghost directing when other directors croaked mid-way through shooting (The Greatest and Avalanche Express), and producing low budget fare. Sure, some of his stuff is purely of the I-have-to-pay-the-rent variety. No one ever saw The Iguana, and he actually did a "Silent Night, Deadly Night" sequel. He's best known for the cult favorite Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), but he's a real mystery man, a gifted director who never managed to move over to mainstream film making despite his obvious abilities. Between 1965 and 1978, he made four extraordinary westerns: Ride in the Whirlwind (1965), The Shooting (1967), The Cockfighter, a/k/a Born to Kill (1974), and China 9, Liberty 37 (1978). (OK, I bend the genre a little to call a film about cockfighting a western, but it did star Warren Oates, and thematically it fits in with the other films.) Whether you fall into the camp that believes his westerns are slow and pretentious, or like me, you think that he's a lost talent who made one western masterpiece, The Shooting, and three near-masterpieces, there's no getting over that Monte Hellman's films should be seen. You won't forget them--no matter what you think--and you can argue about them for months, if not a lifetime, afterward. How many current directors fit that bill?

The last of the Hellman westerns is a true spaghetti western-- China 9, Liberty 37, a film widely hated by critics and audiences alike. Fabio Testi, a legendary gunslinger, is saved from the noose by agreeing to assassinate Warren Oates, another gunslinger, so that the railroad robber barons can steal Oates' land. Complicating matters is Jenny Agutter as Oates' wife who falls for Testi. When Agutter stabs Oates after he gives her a brutal beating, she and Testi ride off with a recovered Oates and his band in hot pursuit.

Let's get this straight up front: Testi is awful in the lead. His thick Italian accent and mumbled phonetic English actually had me wishing that he had been dubbed by someone else, anyone else, including Nathan Lane. However, despite this disastrous casting, just about everything else about the film is excellent, especially Guiseppe Rotunno's stunning cinematography. (He also filmed The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Wolf, and The Stendhal Syndrome.) And savvy film fans will instantly recognize composer Pino Donaggio's signature lush strings on the soundtrack, parts of which would not sound out of place in his scores for Brian DePalma films of that era. Oates is perfect as always--this guy never gave a bad performance--as an introspective man tortured by his wife's unfaithfulness. He has a remarkably good reaction shot when, after recaptioning Agutter, he stumbles upon his brother about to ravish her. That was the hallmark of a Warren Oates performance--a tough and laconic man beset by circumstances outside his control. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention that director Sam Peckinpagh makes his acting debut in a colorful cameo.

But above all, despite a wavering accent--sounding variously like Patsy Kensit, Peta Wilson, or an Irish charwoman--Jenny Agutter nearly steals the picture. Agutter, so memorable as the young girl in Nic Roeg's classic Walkabout, but later underutilized in hack-work such as Logan's Run and The Riddle of the Sands, is positively radiant here. With lightened hair, a beautiful face, and numerous nude scenes, (even some full frontal nudity, but you'll need a telescope to check it out) Agutter plays out her part with no inhibitions. Younger cineastes, so used to collagen-pumped, silicon-enhanced, phony starlets of today such as Demi Moore and Pamela Anderson will be startled by the exposure of Agutter's real woman body--small, natural breasts and a somewhat disproportionate ass. Nonetheless, she is extremely alluring and endearing, and you will never see a more ethereal expression than the one she has when she's making love to Testi in a river. And with mumbling rod-puppet Testi fondling her, that takes some excellent acting!

China 9, Liberty 37 is an unusual western because one might persuasively argue that it's really a retro chick flick disguised as a spaghetti western. Jenny Agutter is such a strong, well-realized character that many female viewers will undoubtedly have Harlequin-romance fantasies about her predicament with testosterone boy Testi. Meanwhile, male viewers will simply fantasize about Jenny--Jenny bathing, Jenny in a transparent nightgown silhouetted in the moonlight, Jenny in the river... But I digress... This is a super-offbeat film that true Tapehead-ers will recognize as something more than a typical Man-with-No-Name shoot 'em up. Try it, you might like it. And you might never go back to silicon again!