BY FRED BLOSSER
As
a new Arrow Films Blu-ray edition of his 1972 Italian Western “The Grand Duelâ€
reminds us, Lee Van Cleef was once a familiar screen presence. In the 1950s you could hardly watch TV or go
to the movies without seeing his hawkish face, usually peering out venomously
from under a stetson as a Western heavy. Following personal setbacks and changes in industry trends, Van Cleef’s
roles became fewer, slighter, and harder to land in the early 1960s. And then Sergio Leone came calling. Leone wanted to pair Clint Eastwood’s Man
with No Name with a second American actor in “For a Few Dollars More†as a
rival bounty hunter named Colonel Mortimer. Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, and Lee Marvin all turned down the role. By default, Leone approached Van Cleef. It
was a providential choice for both men. “For a Few Dollars More†was a smash hit in Europe on its December 1965
release, and Italian producers quickly queued up to offer Van Cleef starring
roles in other Spaghetti Westerns while Leone brought him back for another
high-profile part as Angel Eyes, the “Bad†one in “The Good, the Bad, and the
Ugly.â€
After
the Leone films opened with stunning success in the U.S. in 1967 and the other
Spaghettis followed on the lucrative drive-in circuit a few months later, Van
Cleef was a highly bankable star and American producers made their own
overtures. For a time, Van Cleef pursued
a transatlantic career in Westerns, starring in further Italian pictures like
“Sabata†(1969) and “Return of Sabata†(1971) and international co-productions
like “Bad Man’s River†(1971) and “The Stranger and the Gunfighter†(1974),
while filming three American movies: “Barquero†(1970), “El Condor†(1971), and
“The Magnificent Seven Ride!†(1972). The American pictures were dull and talky, and even though they gave Van
Cleef star billing, shared with Jim Brown in “El Condor,†the roles were
lackluster. In “The Magnificent Seven
Ride!â€, he’s stuck with a bad toupee and looks so disinterested that you expect
him to fall off his horse from boredom any minute.
Ironically,
through big studio backing, the dismal American productions received healthy
advertising play, while “The Grand Duel†from the same period barely registered
in the U.S., although it was greatly superior. Directed by Giancarlo Santi and scripted by the prolific Ernesto
Gastaldi, it passed quickly through drive-ins and second-run theaters in 1974. Theoretically “The Grand Duel†wasn’t a bad
handle as a literal translation from the Italian title, “Il grande
duello.†The phrase suggests both the
battle of wills between the good guys and the bad guys that drives the plot.
and in a literal sense the shootout that decides the contest in the end. Still, the picture might have had more
attention here under a catchier, more clearly Western title. With the advent of VCRs a decade later, its
home-video visibility was a little more robust if comparably
underwhelming. The movie appeared on the
collectors‘ market and budget VHS shelves under several titles: “The Grand
Duel,†“The Big Showdown,†and “Storm Rider.â€
Santi
had worked as Leone’s assistant director on two films, and like most of Leone’s
other Italian successors and emulators, he had absorbed a lesson from “For a
Few Dollars More†that the American filmmakers apparently failed to
recognize. The ideal starring role for
Van Cleef was the “man in black†template embodied in Colonel Mortimer, that of
an aging, almost superhumanly proficient gunman, usually dressed in formal,
funereal attire. The character is
defined by steely authority, a mysterious history, an elusive sense of sadness,
and an air of menace. Circumstances
throw the character into partnership or rivalry with a younger, more impetuous
man who may become either his protege or his prey -- the outcome hangs in the
balance until the final reel. The
contrast with the headstrong, less seasoned younger partner underscores the
wisdom, experience, and patient cunning of the Van Cleef character.
In
“The Grand Duel,†as a veteran lawman named Clayton, Van Cleef looks a good
fifteen years older than his actual age of 47 at the time, heightening the
contrast with thirty one year old Alberto Dentice (under the name “Peter O’Brienâ€
in the credits) as Philip Vermeer. Vermeer is on the run for the murder of
Ebenezer Saxon, “the Patriarch,†a powerful and ruthless town boss. In a visually bravura opening sequence,
Vermeer hides in a barn at Gila Bend’s ramshackle stagecoach stop after
escaping jail. Holed up with a naked,
curvaceous blonde (by 1972, nudity had begun to appear in Italian and American
Westerns alike), he’s aware that bounty hunters have staked out the place, but
he doesn’t know exactly where they’re at. As he watches, Clayton arrives by stage, ambles around the barnyard, and
foils the intended ambush by casually pointing out the concealed gunmen. Once the bounty hunters are out of the way,
Clayton takes Vermeer into custody. But
Philip slips out of his grasp and rides on to nearby Saxon City to force a
reckoning with the late Patriarch’s three sons. Vermeer claims he was framed by
the sons as a convenient scapegoat for the Patriarch’s murder, since it was
widely known that he had a grudge against the elder Saxon. He had accused the Patriarch of killing
Philip’s own father as the Saxons’ opening gambit to seize the Vermeers’ land
and its valuable lode of silver.
Several
interlocking questions emerge from a series of confrontations between Clayton,
Vermeer, and the Saxon brothers: Was Philip framed as he claims, and if so, who
was the real murderer? What’s Clayton’s
stake in the matter, and if he was run out of office as sheriff of Saxon City
some months earlier by the Saxons, as the other characters assert, what legal
authority if any does he now have? Meanwhile, a young woman named Elizabeth arrives in town for a
politically arranged marriage to the youngest Saxon brother, Adam, a syphilitic
degenerate. Elizabeth falls in love with
the hunted, desperate Philip in an unusual development for a Spaghetti Western,
a romance between two attractive, sympathetic young people. In most Spaghettis, women appear as idealized
maternal figures like Claudia Cardinale’s Jill in “Once Upon a Time in the
West,†as shrewish villains, on the periphery as saloon girls or victims of
endemic frontier violence, or not at all.
Elizabeth
was played by the French model and actress Dominique Darel, who went on to
appear as one of the sisters stalked by Udo Kier’s Dracula in Paul Morrissey’s
“Blood for Dracula,†also known as “Andy Warhol’s Dracula†(1975). Darel died in a car wreck in 1978 at 27,
giving her scenes in “The Grand Duel†an added poignancy in retrospect. “The Grand Duel†was Alberto Dentice’s first
major screen role, after which he left acting for other pursuits. Adam was played by Klaus Grunberg from Barbet
Schroeder’s “More,†one of the seminal European youth films of the late
‘60s. Darel, Dentice, and Grunberg were
fresh to the Spaghetti genre, balancing the familiar Euro-Western faces
elsewhere in the cast, like Horst Frank as David, the oldest and most dangerous
Saxon brother, Marc Mazza from “My Name Is Nobody†(1973) as Eli, the tightly
wound middle brother, and Antonio Casale as Holk, a scruffy bounty hunter.
The
movie’s star-crossed lovers, family feuds, and power grabs were familiar
elements from 1950s American Westerns. In “The Grand Duel†they’re staged by Santi in classic Spaghetti
fashion, where all the details are just a little bit odd, out of kilter, and
larger than life. The exaggeration
extends to the climactic reckoning -- scored to a foreboding, harmonica-driven
composition by Luis Bacalov, later sampled by Quentin Tarantino in “Kill Billâ€
(2003) -- that gives the film its title. Leone and most of his imitators placed their ritualized showdowns in
circular arenas more like Rome’s Coliseum or Mexico City’s Plaza de Toros than
the main drag of Dodge City. Santi’s
staging is equally stylized but different in execution. His shootout occurs in a sprawling linear
complex of cattle pens that the antagonists enter one pen after another through
swinging gates, facing each other warily, until the final fence is reached and
the opponents take their stand. It’s
like the stockyard where John Wayne and Montgomery Clift squared off at the
climax of “Red River†(1948), only at a larger, almost hallucinatory scale.
Arrow
Video’s new Blu-ray edition presents “The Grand Duel†in two versions in a 2K
restoration from the 35mm negative: the original Italian release with English
subtitles, and the dubbed U.S. print with captions for the deaf and hard of
hearing. The package includes a generous
serving of supplementary features:
• New
audio commentary by film critic, historian and theorist Stephen Prince
• “An
Unconventional Western,†a newly filmed interview with Giancarlo Santi
• “The
Last of the Great Westerns,†a newly filmed interview with Ernesto Gastaldi
• “Cowboy
by Chance,†an interview with Alberto Dentice AKA Peter O'Brien
• “Out
of the Box,†a newly filmed interview with producer Ettore Rosboch
• “The
Day of the Big Showdown,†a newly filmed interview with assistant director
Harald Buggenig
• “Saxon
City Showdown,†a newly filmed video appreciation by the academic Austin Fisher
• Original
Italian and international theatrical trailers
• Extensive
image gallery featuring stills, posters, lobby cards and home video sleeves,
drawn from the Mike Siegel Archive and other collections
• Reversible
sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matt Griffin
There’s
so much material that even seasoned Italian Western fans are likely to learn
something new and interesting about the movie. How about that title for the German theatrical version, “Drei Vaterunser
fur vier Halunkenâ€: “Three Lord’s Prayers for Four Scoundrels.†So much for quibbling about the U.S.
title.
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