Ehi amico...
c’è Sabata, hai chiuso!
The style is all fun-filled
gags, with nothing to spare. Parolini is a demon behind the camera. His
specialty is the zoom in or out, and the whip pan is a favorite, also cutting
away from these to a lateral tracking shot at another angle. The ferocious stile
nuovo is a conscious liberation of the cinema in accord with his theories
of dramaturgy, the cinema as flickers.
Useless to
describe or even itemize the gags of even one composite sequence, but
here’s one little scene built around a main gag. In the vestry, Sabata
meets a faux priest (he resembles Peter Lorre) who coughs nervously and turns
to face the camera away from him; the priest pulls out a blue handkerchief, and
sure enough there’s a derringer wrapped inside it. He’s weighing
his move when Sabata counterplays by placing his satchel on the table.
“This is for you,” he says, and when the impostor goes to grab it,
Sabata pulls a chain which fires a bullet from inside the satchel, killing the
fellow. Sabata opens the satchel to check his own derringer, then
starts to leave. At the door, he turns around to look at the faux priest on the
floor with the handkerchief and derringer beside his hand. After a moment,
Sabata fishes up a coin and flings it to him.
A subtle variant
of the man in black on the witty side is what Lee Van Cleef has, who that year
also played a tower of strength in Barquero and a slack-jawed prospector
in El Condor.
The title, which
is sung over the credits (over a varied POV of Sabata coming to town), means as
one may suppose, “Hey pardner... it’s Sabata, you’re
through!”
Adiós, Sabata
The Juaristas
hire Sabata to lead a small team of revolutionaries after a wagon full of gold
dust shipped by Emperor Maximilian’s Col. Skimmel
in command of a fort. Austrians disguised as Mexicans attack the shipment first,
which turns out to be sand.
The object of the
revolutionaries is at first to buy guns in Texas, but as the Austrian forces
wane, the benefits of peace loom larger. Skimmel and
his intelligence operatives in Texas have a scheme to transport the gold there
in a great barrel, themselves disguised as
“honest beer merchants”.
Parolini is hell
on wheels (as Frank Kramer), he has the nature and instinct of a photographer,
the zoom adopts another view of the landscape, near or far, it’s a
selection. Furthermore, he never misses the chance of a picture to create the
substantial force of a scene. The revolving weathercock painted and squeaking
at the opening gunfight (after the monastery prologue), the flashing spurs of
Gitano’s “flamenco of death”, the broken, soiled mirror of
the music box that enchants Septiembre, and so on.
The instantaneous gag is a forte.
Col. Skimmel’s target practice on captives allowed to
escape for this purpose is concurrent with Russell’s French king in The Devils.
Sabata’s
dubious partner is a young American portrait painter to Skimmel, his work is seen at
various stages in the film.
The theme of divine justice is evidently developed by Parolini in God’s Gun and makes its way to Eastwood’s Pale Rider.
Return of Sabata (È
tornato Sabata... hai chiuso un’altra volta)
The screenplay
pays homage to a Western comedy masterpiece in the name of the villainous
overlord of Hobsonville. Signs everywhere proclaim the massive building projects McIntock has upped the taxes for, but Sabata learns
it’s all a sham, there’s counterfeit money in the bank, and real
gold on its way elsewhere.
Parolini has the
liveliest sense of cinema going. The camera is behind the preacher as he
delivers the sermon, and stays on him as the congregation departs and he ducks
down into the pulpit for a slug of whiskey, with a quick look of grateful
relief past the camera toward the unseen altar.
On the left of
the screen, McIntock is lingering, until a messenger brings him some very bad
news. They take the camera to a side altar on the right, facing the middle of
the church in a two-shot with a golden crucifix between it and the men.
McIntock, a man of piety, reaches out and ruefully turns the crucifix around
with one hand, so that the hanging figure of Jesus is seen on the arms of the
cross adorned with rubies. Now he viciously strikes the messenger, converses
with him further, and the shot ends swiftly once he has turned the crucifix
back around.
The essence of
Parolini is the entire flexibility of his technique, the instantaneity of his
images. You can sum it all up in a single shot, the camera following a pistol
snappily thrust into its holster, yet how many shots are peculiarly
distinctive, the man who falls from a water tower à la F Troop and then
bounces into the air, an acrobat... the deaths of Sabata and his ally, feigned
in anticipation of The Sting two years later... the town of Hobsonville,
where an old acquaintance recognizes Sabata in the crowd and flees him
helplessly, whithersoever he goes, Sabata is there.
“A film by
Frank Kramer”.