terça-feira, 24 de abril de 2007

The four of the apocalypse.



“The four of the apocalypse” (I Quattro dell'apocalisse, 1975) is not your typical western, not even for an spaghetti, a genre that is different for itself. Made by gore specialist Lucio Fulci, its also an unusual film for this director of horror, zombie and often surreal films.

The plot: gambler Stubby Preston (played by Mario Testi, a veteran of the classic “Once upon a time in the west”) arrives in a small western town, with his deck of marked cards ready to play. He is immediately arrested and put in jail with a prostitute (the delicately beautiful Lynne Frederick) an alcoholic drunk (Michael J. Pollard) and the weirdest of the three outcasts, a young black man with a kind heart but a tenuous grip on reality and the “ability” to speak with the dead (Harry Baird). Soon enough, Fulci goes to his gore, and the whole city is annihilated in a bloody massacre, fully explored in human red with all its gut wrenching violence, a sequence made, no doubt, in order not to disappoint the die hard fans of Fulci violence. The four outcasts are then released in the western desert by the corrupt sheriff, and, with a station wagon, wander through the desolated planes, looking for shelter. Initially they hate each other. What could a dodgy (albeit charming) gambler, a young pregnant prostitute, a drunken slob and a crazy man have got not only in common, but to hold them together as a team? The plot is very tight and well developed (loosely based in novels by western writer Bret Harte, it was written by the prolific Italian screenwriter Ennio de Concini, who went to work with Tinto Brass of “Caligula” fame, as also for several made for TV works). The most developed character might be Bud, the crazy black man, a figure that evokes madness through his strange and often incoherent dialog and actions, but proves to be captivating with his delicate voice full of mystery, sensibility and magic. Problems arise when the group crosses paths with the sadistic murderer “Chaco”, a strange, mystical half Indian, hunter, shamanic character, brilliantly played by Tomas Milan. Chaco submits the protagonists to consumption of psychedelic drugs (a seventies reference and trademark, no doubt), rape and violence, and leaves them to die in the desert. But they don’t. They survive, gather strength in a ghost town and look for shelter, finding it in a small city. Immediately before going to the town, they meet a preacher which decides to follow them, and who advises: “God knows what we will find, they are strange people”, which sets the tone for what the writer had in mind when he decided to put that scene in. The fact is he knew his main female character was pregnant and she would, eventually, have the baby. It’s not clear if he designed the lost city to have such a strong meaning in the story, or if he just came up with it so he would have a background for the childbirth scene. In any case, this became the strongest emotional sequence in the entire film.

They arrive in a snow-ridden village, populated solely by men. The sequence starts dark and without hope: after the protagonists were subjected to days of relentless persecution and violence, Bunny, the prostitute, goes through the ordeal of having a child. Almost a ghost town, the city is a decaying corpse of the mining days, where lonely, bitter, men dive into anger, despair and alcohol. The beautiful young girl enters labor and there is not a woman in sight. She needs the help of men who lost hope and joy in life. In fact, their lives are so empty that the arrival of a new case of whiskey is a welcomed change in their cold routine.

The infant is brought into a metaphorical, and literal, desert of ice and hopelessness: the son of a prostitute, probably being the fruit of violence and neglect himself. Unwanted, born in a city of men that don’t care for life anymore. The expectation created by the scene, and the whole film, is that we are going to be presented to even more brutality and harshness.

But then comes the only glimpse of light in the whole film: as the baby is being born, the men in the city become involved. They cheer and care about it. They want this new life to triumph. The child is adopted by the men. He brings them a sense of new life, hope and most of all: re-beginning.

When Bunny finally gives birth, she is completely drenched. Dying, she asks Stubby “I’m I a mother Stubby?” with the innocence of a teenager. Knowing that Bunny will die, Stubby assures her that it’s a boy. As Bunny dies, the music mellows, and we are supposed to do too. The film then borderlines on over sentimentalism, but it manages to save itself from a cliché in the nick of time: as Bunny dies and reveals her love for Stubby, she tries to touch his face. Hardened by the desert and being a gambler, used to hide his feelings, Stubby is unable to reply, and only cries after she’s dead. This beautiful scene explores very well the character’s psyche and feelings, fully exploiting its potential, background and characteristics. The photographer, Sergio Salvati, who worked with Fulci in his most well known classics “Zombie” and “The Beyond” makes effective use of typical diffusive lenses, making all lights very soft and ethereal. This sort of illumination was very common in 70’s films, and British photographer David Hamilton is famous for making photographs and films with this kind of illumination. The atmosphere created by them certainly helps the dreamlike and poetic tone of the film, and, of course, of the childbirth sequence. The end, as it couldn’t be different, is bitter and heavy, with an excellent depiction of the uselessness of violence and the anxiety and misery provoked by loss. Beautifully and eerily painful. The last shot, with a typical western blood red sunset is as beautiful as it is silently melancholic. A strange, small European film, about a dark, gritty American west. It’s certainly amongst Fulci’s best, and it’s definitely worth checking. Out on crisp new edition by Anchor Bay video, restored with before censured scenes and a good documentary, “Fulci of the apocalypse”, featuring interesting interviews with the surviving main members of the cast, Milan and Testi (the beautiful Frederick, formerly wed to Peter Sellers, died at 39 of alcohol abuse and Baird passed away in 2005 due to cancer).

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