slazenger_7

Next to the The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966), They Call Me Trinity (1970) was my favorite childhood Spaghetti Western. I always wondered why TCMT 1970 had such a different feel to it when compared to its 1971 sequel, Trinity Is Still My Name. Both films were directed by the same director: Enzo Barboni. When seeing other Terence Hill-Bud Spencer-Enzo Barboni collaborations, it became even more apparent. It wasn't until I read Christopher Frayling's 1981 published "Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone" book did I finally received my answer. TCMT 1970 was 'ghost-directed' by none other than Spaghetti Western maestro Sergio Leone. Why Leone did not credit himself as this film's actual director only he could have answered. Enzo Barboni was really Assistant Director on TCMT 1970 just as Tonino Valerii was in For A Few Dollars More (1965). Later, Leone produced My Name Is Nobody (1973) with Tonino Valerii as director. Even when Terence Hill discussed TCMT 1970 in subsequent interviews, he never mentioned anything of Leone's involvement. One would suspect that Leone had a private, gentleman's agreement with the Cast and Crew of TCMT 1970 to never divulge this. All anyone has to do is very carefully watch Leone's Dollars Trilogy and compare it to TCMT 1970. Then compare TCMT 1970 to its 1971 sequel TISMN. There is one shot which clinches this revelation. It is when Trinity's horse & travois ride into town early on in the film and a close up of this opens the sequence. This is IDENTICAL to when Eastwood's Man With No Name rides into town early on in the film in A Fistful Of Dollars (1964). Also, the whistling that accompanies the music in Leone's Dollars Trilogy is present in the title song of TCMT 1970. It is not present in its 1971 sequel TISMN directed by Enzo Barboni. Nor is it present in the Tonino Valerii directed My Name Is Nobody (1973).

This film had a near-perfect lead cast...This was a terrific concept and storyline that begged to be executed to its fullest potential. The two weakest factors here are the screenplay (Richard Brooks notwithstanding) and the direction; the Fuchs/Brooks treatment should have been credited as Story, while a definite re-write was in order. Stuart Heisler, as good as he was, fell flat here. This film needed either King Vidor, Howard Hawks, or William Wellman at the directorial helm. Dalton Trumbo should have done the screenplay ... Or if he could have been persuaded, the one and only John Steinbeck (who scripted 'Viva Zapata' 1952)... Ginger Rogers was perfectly cast, as was the girl next door, Doris Day. Reagan was good but Fred MacMurray would have been better and edgier (a la 'Double Indemnity'). This film could have been a cinema masterpiece. There was at least one scene in which Reagan actually says "well..." Of all the superstar actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Ginger Rogers had to be the most luscious and delectable...Simply because she didn't try to be. She just was...

The ONLY reason why a 10-star rating eluded UNFORGIVEN (1992) was the casting of Morgan Freeman. Certainly NOT because of his acting but because of the credibility of a Black man in 1880 Wyoming whose best friend is a former Missouri gunman... Anyone who knows anything about history and cowboys, gunslingers, outlaws, and lawmen from 1880s Missouri (and Wyoming), knows that no 'redneck peckerwood' (as Peckinpah Westerns described them) would have befriended a Black man...Let alone one who is his best friend. Historically, that would have been a one-in-a-million chance of occurring. That right there killed much of the neo-realism of this revisionist Hollywood Western. Had the Ned Logan character been realistically (not idealistically) cast with a white man, it would have hit a home run with all bases full. No way would a Black man in the 1880s Old West be allowed as a patron in any Wyoming cowtown saloon...And least likely of all, one who is allowed to be a john to white frontier strumpets. Eastwood's casting was spot on with everyone else ... Especially Hackman. The Ned Logan character could have been played by either James Coburn, Robert Duvall, Bruce Dern, or Jon Voight (see Return To Lonesome Dove). Dern being a year older than Freeman while Voight a year younger. Coburn and Duvall were closer to Eastwood's age. Dern would have been an interesting choice mainly because he played a few nasty cowboy characters and a sympathetic one would have been an unexpected change of persona. Coburn or Duvall would have probably been the best choices to play Ned Logan. So many reviews of UNFORGIVEN have covered so much. There isn't too much more to elucidate. The only other critique of UNFORGIVEN would be that the profanity in this film was anachronistic. Too modern-day. It is no secret that Eastwood as a filmmaker has been obsessed with George Stevens' SHANE (1952/3) throughout his film career. It was Clint's input to Leone when he remade Kurosawa's YOJIMBO as FISTFUL OF DOLLARS to make the main villains the Rojo Brothers (after the Ryker Brothers in SHANE). As with Morgan Ryker in SHANE, Esteban Rojo frequently laughs like a hyena and gets killed the same way (trying to ambush the hero at the end). And Eastwood's main antagonist in ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN was named 'Jack Wilson' and played by a somewhat Jack Palance look-alike, William Smith. Finally, he himself loosely remade SHANE in 1985 as PALE RIDER. For UNFORGIVEN, he had it set in Wyoming as was SHANE. In spite of the neo-realistic revisionism of Eastwood's vision, Clint approached UNFORGIVEN with modern, late 20th Century sensibilities, standards, and social values. In 1880 Wild West America, when the Little Bill Daggett character publicly brutalizes English Bob or bullwhips Ned Logan, the town onlookers and his deputies are shown flinching from the savagery of his actions. This would have been the reaction of modern, late 20th Century Americans. Eastwood forgot that the America where his fictional story is set was a very, very different place. An America where public lynchings of outlaws and criminals were commonplace. In 1893 at Paris, Texas, just 13 years later from when this fictional story is set, a black man named Henry Smith was charged with the brutal murder of a 4-year old little white girl (without any trial). His subsequent public lynching (on 1st February 1893) was attended by over 10,000 people which included women and CHILDREN. Henry Smith was tied to an elevated scaffold and tortured for 50 minutes with red hot irons and then doused with kerosene and burned alive (!!!). Dozens of photographs were taken of this event and some were made into postcards (!!). Clint Eastwood should have further researched or remembered factual events like this when making UNFORGIVEN.