WAY-OUT IN THE
ITALIAN WEST
By Howard Hughes
I’ve never known quite what to make of Carlo Lizzani’s
‘Requiescant’ (1967), the director’s second and last foray into spaghetti
westerns. I saw it before I had the chance to view his first western, ‘The
Hills Run Red’ (1966) and had high hopes for the film – based on the fact that
it was screened in September 1993 on BBC2 in the season of ‘Moviedrome’ cult
films and it came highly recommended by Alex Cox. I’m a big fan of Lizzani’s ‘The
Hills Run Red’. I don’t know why, but from the moment I saw it, I loved it. Ennio
Morricone’s music helps, as does the great cast, including grandstanding Henry
Silva, beautiful Nicoletta Machiavelli, leathery old Dan Duryea and massively
underrated Thomas Hunter. I know I am largely alone in my assessment and
enthusiasm, but for those who make lists, I deem it Top-20 spaghetti western material.
Following on from ‘Day of Anger’ and ‘Cemetery Without
Crosses’, Lizzani’s ‘Requiescant’ is Arrow Films’ third spaghetti western release
on Blu-ray and DVD. It’s also known by the titles ‘Kill and Pray’ and ‘Let Them
Rest’. First off, it feels much more like an ‘Italian’ film than most spaghetti
westerns, mainly due to an absence of Spanish supporting players and exclusively
Italian location filming in Lazio (rather than Spain’s Madrid or Andalusia
provinces). And the presence of legendary director Pier Paolo Pasolini, one of
the most recognised and recognisable faces in Italian, indeed world cinema, is simply
distracting when he pops up as Don Juan, a pistol packing priest with a social
conscience. Like the ‘Jesus Christ, it’s Henry Fonda!’ casting coup moment from
Sergio Leone’s ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’, this is ‘OMG, it’s PPP!’
An Italian-West German co-production, ‘Requiescant’
stars Lou Castel (who played the young assassin in ‘A Bullet for the General’)
as a Mexican boy who is the only survivor of a massacre of Mexican peons at
Fort Hernandez. The perpetrator was San Antonio landowner George Bellow
Ferguson (a demonic Mark Damon, cast against type), who with his cadre of
gunmen has stolen their borderlands with bogus treaties. The boy is found
wandering in the desert and is adopted by travelling priest Father Jeremy and
his family, but when he grows to adulthood, he abandons the ways of the Lord.
He discovers his true vocation when he inadvertently foils a stagecoach hold-up
and finds he is naturally gifted with a six-gun. His proficiency leads to him
becoming something of a hero to the local Mexican population, who call him
Requiescant, as in ‘rest in peace’ in Latin, due to his ritual of reading a
prayer over his victims’ corpses. Requiescant’s step-sister Princy (Barbara
Frey) runs away to become a showgirl, but ends up in forced prostitution in a
seedy San Antonio saloon/bordello run by Ferguson’s henchman Dean Light (Carlo
Palmucci), which in classic spaghetti western tradition sets Requiescant
against the murderer of his real parents.
The film’s tone veers from tragedy to comedy, and
Castel makes an offbeat hero, even for spaghetti westerns. At some moments he plays
the film as a spoof, as when he encourages his horse to speed up by using a
frying pan to hit its rump and in his tactic of mounting a horse, first by climbing
onto a hitching rail then into the saddle. In complete contrast to Clint
Eastwood’s Man With No Name, Requiescant is something of a bumbler, with his
holster slung on a piece of rope, but no one can argue with his accuracy with a
pistol. There are some totally strange moments in the film also, as when
Requiescant hides out at Fort Hernandez and discovers the bleached-out
skeletons of the Mexican victims of Ferguson’s massacre scattered behind the
palisade – it is these corpses from the past that must also ‘Rest in Peace’,
but only when their murders have been avenged. In another noteworthy scene, Requiescant
faces Dean Light in a pistol duel, with both participants standing on stools
with their heads in nooses (as Tuco the Ugly tried to execute Blondie the Good)
which is timed by the midnight strike of a clock. At one point Princy is forced
to swallow a drug that makes her hallucinate and much is made of the simple
rural characters’ naivety against the savvy, capitalist businessmen.
For its lack of authentic spaghetti western atmosphere,
‘Requiescant’ is a definite curio for a number or reasons. It’s more realistic
than many spaghetti westerns. Here the poor Mexican revolutionaries collect
Requiescant’s victims valuable weapons, rather than leaving them lying around
with the corpses, as Clint’s Man With No Name does in the ‘Dollars’ films. What
makes the film of real interest is its unusual cast. Mark Damon is a cloaked
villain from the cobwebs of Italian gothic horror, a relic of the Old South,
like Joseph Cotton’s delusional patriarchs in ‘The Tramplers’ (1965) and ‘The
Hellbenders’ (1966). All-powerful and sadistic, he keeps his wife Edith
(Mirella Maravidi) in a padded cell and later, after she has helped Requiescant
escape, he garrottes her. He also uses his Mexican servant (Luisa Baratto) as a
live target – she holds a candelabra aloft – in his wine cellar shooting
gallery. Ferguson’s views are typical Reconstruction Era rants: slaves were
‘looked after’ by their Southern masters, while the north exploited them with a
minimum wage, and the Mexican farmers ‘don’t deserve’ to own land.
‘Requiescant’ ends with a tableau (of the revolutionaries riding away to their
next battle, while others till the land) that could have appeared in any socio-political
agrarian Italian film and resembles rural neorealism. Here the western setting is
simply a vehicle for the discussion of wider issues. This is a far cry from
‘The Hill’s Run Red’, a Dino De Laurentiis production released internationally
by United Artists and a much more straightforward (and commercially successful)
revenge film. Lizzani directed ‘Hills’ as a favour to De Laurentiis, but used
the pseudonym ‘Lee W. Beaver’. ‘Requiescant’ is obviously a much more personal
project for Lizzani, who made a series of highly political films. Along with
the appearance of director Pasolini in ‘Requiescant’, Pasolini’s regular actors
Franco Citti and Ninetto Davoli appeared: the former as two-fingered badman
Burt (who is particularly fond of his blond toy doll) and the latter as Niño, a
Mexican trumpeter. Their presence – a distinctly Italian presence – creates a
rather strange atmosphere which might be termed ‘Prairie Pasolini’.
Arrow Films’ visual presentation of the film is flawless, with very good image quality and sound. The film is presented for widescreen TV’s in the ratio 1.85:1. Extras include a rare Italian trailer for the film, an interview with Carlo Lizzani in Italian with English subtitles where he talks about his film career and an interview with Lou Castel in French subtitled in English; both interviews are very enlightening. The big draw for me is Arrow’s inclusion of the Italian language soundtrack for the film, in addition to the English language version. The English dubbing is unremarkable, but ‘Requiescant’ plays very well in its original Italian – like ‘Face to Face’ and ‘Django’ the Italian dialogue track and script is probably the best way to enjoy this distinctly Italian western.
Special Features
· Brand new 2K restoration of the film from the original camera negative
· High definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
· Optional English and Italian soundtracks in uncompressed PCM presentations
· Newly-translated English subtitles for the Italian soundtrack
· All-new interview with Lou Castel, recorded exclusively for this release
· Archive interview with Carlo Lizzani
· Theatrical trailer
· Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx
· Illustrated collector’s booklet containing new writing on Lizzani, Pasolini and Requiescant by Pasquale Iannone
1.85:1
All text © Howard Hughes/Cinema Retro 2015
Howard Hughes in the author of ‘The Kamera Guide to Spaghetti Westerns’ and ‘Once Upon a Time in the Italian West: The Filmgoers’ Guide to Spaghetti Westerns’, both available in paperback and e-book.
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