Sergio Leone hat den Italo Western zwar nicht im Alleingang erfunden, jedoch wäre er ohne seine opernhaften Stilübungen wohl kaum denkbar! Leone entwarf ein Bild des Westens, dass dreckig, brutal und grausam war. Mit jedem seiner Western verdüsterte sich seine Vision sogar noch. Daneben aber entwickelte sich eine komödiantische Form des Italo Westerns und mit My Name Is Nobody gehen nun Original und Parodie eine Symbiose ein. Leone fungierte als ungenannter Produzent und Regisseur einiger Szenen. Darüber hinaus entwarf er die Geschichte. Terence Hill, der wohl grösste Star des Sub-Genres spielt die Titelrolle neben Henry Fonda - und das wollte wohl was heissen zu der Zeit! Mexiko 1899. Drei Männer überfallen einen Barbierladen, töten den Inhaber, um Jack Beauregard (Henry Fonda) aufzulauern. Den Mann, denn sie erschiessen wollen. Wenig später sind alle drei tot, Opfer von Beauregard. Beauregard ist ein alternder Revolver-Held, dessen Zeit langsam abläuft. Er hat bereits eine Rückfahrkarte in die Heimat Frankreich gebucht - nur gibt es vor der Abreise noch eine Kleinigkeit, die er erledigen muss... Derweilen fängt ein junger Mann (Terence Hill) unten am Fluss Fische mit blossen Händen. Er wird Beauregard später helfen, sich gegen Banditen zur Wehr zur setzen und ihm danach nicht mehr von der Seite weichen. Während Beauregard mit einem dunklen Fleck in seiner Vergangenheit kämpft, ist ihm Nobody immer einen Schritt voraus und verfolgt dabei nur ein Ziel: Er will so berühmt werden wie Beauregard! Es kann also nicht sein, dass seine Legende erschossen wird! My Name Is Nobody kann mit der Kraft von Leones besten Western nicht mithalten. Hill und Fonda (dessen letzter Western Nobody sein sollte) halten das Ganze aber wunderbar zusammen. Ennio Morricone steuert einen seiner besten Scores überhaupt dazu, denn über allem liegt ein wehmütiger Abschied. Die grosse Zeit des Italo Westerns neigt sich dem Ende zu, Morricone spürt das und so klingt seine Filmmusik. Folgerichtig bewegt sich das Geschehen in Nobody auch ostwärts - zurück nach Europa. Leone übrigens wurde von seinem Genre nicht überlebt - er sollte den letzten Akkzent setzen. -
Sergio Leone did not invent the Italo Western on his own, but without his operatic style exercises it would hardly be conceivable! Leone designed a picture of the West that was dirty, brutal and cruel. With each of his westerns, his vision even darkened. Besides, however, a comedic form of the Italo Western developed and with My Name Is Nobody, original and parody enter into a symbiosis. Leone acted as unnamed producer and director of some scenes. He also designed the story. Terence Hill, probably the biggest star of the sub-genre, plays the title role next to Henry Fonda - and that must have meant something at the time! Mexico 1899: Three men attack a barber shop, kill the owner to ambush Jack Beauregard (Henry Fonda). The man they want to shoot. A little later all three are dead, victims of Beauregard. Beauregard is an aging revolver hero whose time is running out. He has already booked a return ticket to his home country France - only there is a little something he has to do before he leaves... Meanwhile a young man (Terence Hill) catches fish with his bare hands down by the river. He will later help Beauregard to defend himself against bandits and not leave his side afterwards. While Beauregard struggles with a dark spot in his past, Nobody is always one step ahead and pursues only one goal: He wants to become as famous as Beauregard! It can't be that his legend will be shot! My Name Is Nobody can't keep up with the power of Leone's best Western. Hill and Fonda (whose last Western Nobody should be) hold the whole thing together wonderfully. Ennio Morricone steers one of his best scores ever to it, because above everything lies a wistful farewell. The big time of Italo Western is coming to an end, Morricone feels it and so his film music sounds. Consequently, the events in Nobody also move eastward - back to Europe. Leone by the way was not survived by his genre - he should set the last accent.
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see this movie. now. its on netflix. go. do it. and then memorize it. because its fantastic all the way thru
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Antagony & Ecstasy: Having by
Antagony & Ecstasy: Having by this point completely bought into his own legend as the Father of the Italian Western - and I can't say he didn't deserve it - Leone was less than pleased at the bastardisation of the genre that he'd popularised, and dedicated himself to the creation of his own version of a comic Western, one that was more serious and refined than the clowning about prevalent in the copycats. But he was really for serious this time not interested in directing any more Westerns, and officially contributed only the "idea" of My Name Is Nobody, handing off directing duties to his protégé Tonino Valerii and having his former collaborator Fulvio Morsella and Western specialist Ernesto Gastaldi whip up the screenplay. Unofficially, Leone produced the film as well, and directed a handful of scenes, and we can presume from the evidence of the movie that he wasn't above instructing Valerii as to the best way to direct the rest of it.
My Name Is Nobody is a confounding movie, largely successful with some gaping flaws, and deeply experimental in a way that verges on upsetting: even Duck, You Sucker feels more classical in every inch of its being. It's not hard to see the movie as Leone's attempt to kill off the Western once and for all: it collides the classical Hollywood Western, in the form of Henry Fonda, with the Italian comic Western, in the form of Terence Hill (who was to the form as Steve Reeves was to the peplum, having played Trinity in the film that got it all started), and colliding the both of these with the exaggerated style and operatic violence of the spaghetti Westerns of Leone's career. Add in the few glances at the neo-Westerns of America at the time - there's a particular crude swipe at Sam Peckinpah, possibly as payback for that man's disinterest in directing Duck, You Sucker - and My Name Is Nobody reveals itself as, effectively, Leone's attempt to make a Definitive Statement on All Things Western.
Why he then elected not to direct is something I can't say, unless it's simply that he was so tired of working in the same idiom over and over again that he simply couldn't be bothered. It is the case, however, that the scenes he is widely believed to have helmed himself are characteristic, if not tremendously imaginative. Just about everybody agrees he's responsible, primarily or solely, for the opening sequence, a send-up of the opening of Once Upon a Time in the West so bone-dry it hardly qualifies as parody, and a climactic face-off between Fonda's Jack Beauregard and a screaming wall of 150 bandits - the Wild Bunch, which isn't even the bitch swipe at Peckinpah I had in mind - that uses the widescreen frame with the magisterial grace of the very best of Leone - for me, it's easily the best part of the film, followed by a haunting graveyard scene that is also frequently assumed to be the work of Leone. On the other hand, Leone is sometimes credited with the so-called "urinal scene", which I'd prefer not to describe: it is put together with undeniable skill, but it's skill in service of a criminally unfunny piss joke.
That, right there, is what stops My Name Is Nobody from working right: the humor. I understand it was generic convention, and parts of it even work: Ennio Morricone's score, parodying his own soaring motifs and screeching melodies, is at times completely hilarious (his warped introduction of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" is the funniest gag in the movie), and Terence Hill's wide, boyish face is well-suited to comic exaggeration, though I suspect, not having seen either of the Trinity films nor indeed any other comic spaghetti Western prior to this, that I'd get sick of his mugging sooner rather than later.
Mainly, though, the film is caught up in far too much idiot slapstick that calls to mind bad kung fu movies of the same era (though bad kung fu, I have found, is very often more enjoyable even than good kung fu, and perhaps it's not fair of me to disparage its name), and the most tepid sort of scatological humor. A scene with Hill playing a shooting game in a bar features some of the most aggravating "funny drunk" business I have seen in ages (Leone at one point claimed to have directed this scene, and if so, between this and the urinal bit, we might have to conclude that he didn't know jack shit about comedy, not that this is a surprise). And so on, et cetera. It jars horribly with the "serious" parts of the movie, regardless of who directed them - Valerii's attempts to ape Leone don't work very well, but when he's following his own muse the result is a loose, comfortable character-driven film about an unnamed young buck gunslinger hero-worshipping a tired old warrior who just wants the fading West to hurry up and die so he can get some rest. The more laid-back Valerii moments contrast fascinatingly with the self-consciously "big" Leone moments, and if My Name Is Nobody feels at times to be at war with itself, the mess that results is captivating - hardly a definitive statement on the Western or anything else, though as a commentary and deconstruction of the Sergio Leone brand name, it certainly deserves to be better-known than has been the case. (Quelle: http://antagonie.blogspot.de/2011/09/sergio-leone-scenes-from-my-name-i…)
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