Requiescant

Offbeat Spaghetti Western with a good cast with the first two in spades , Lou Castel and Mark Damon , as well as a particular role for Pier Paolo Pasolini as Mexican guerrillero . The son of a Mexican rebel (Lou Castel) is adopted by a family headed by a preacher who travels in a wagon captioning ¨In God we trust¨ along with his wife , son and daughter but when his step-sister runs away , Requiescant sets out in rescue . Requiescant is very close to his stepsister Princy (Barbara Frey) who has fled to work as a saloon girl . One time grown-up Requiescant , searching for his adopted sister , comes upon a little town that is under the thumb of a powerful owner . Requiescant soon finders her in the employment of George Bellow Ferguson (Mark Damon) , an evil landowner who manipulates the young man for his own amusement . When his history is heritage is discovered it is revealed Ferguson was the man who ordered the death of the man's family all for the control over the land that belonged to them . Meanwhile , Requiescant aids the unappreciated although terrorized town in the process and suddenly finds his sister . Requiescant executes a single-handedly revenge , as he shoots , ravages and murders each person involved in his father's killing . He is relentless in his vendetta , deadly in his violence . Requiescant is submitted a tempestuous trap by Fergurson and is caught and he faces the vicious bandits .

It's an exciting but slow-moving western with breathtaking showdown between the protagonist Lou Castel against the heartless Mark Damon and his hoodlums , including a fine set on the Aztec temple . This ¨Requiescant¨ playing out the Spaghetti Western formula like clockwork , yet retains a moral compass often lacking in its more famous brethren . The film packs violence , gun-play, explosion , high body-count and rare happenings . This picture is defined by its heightened visual style , its brutality , and its amorality well represented on the Ferguson/Mark Damon character . Requiescant may not be the strongest story for a Western and it does tend to fluff over a few scenes . Lou Castel takes the lead role in Requiescant , Castel as merciless hero is mediocre , he plays a young man raised to be a pacifist by a travelling preacher who discovered him as a baby after a massacre of his family . Lou shoots , hits , runs and kills but also receives violent knocks , punches, kicks and wounds . In the film premiere attained little success , nowadays is best valued and I think it turns out to be a very strange Spaghetti Western . Mark Damon is terrific as a cruelly baddie role , he plays a deranged former Confederate officer who is stealing land from the Mexican people with phony land grants , he bears a hysterical and mocking aspect , an offbeat role who dresses , garments and make-up in ¨Dracula-alike¨ . Screenplay is written in leftist feeling , that's why it is included peculiar actors as Pier Paolo Pasolini and two players of his factory : Franco Citti and Ninetto Davoli .

Poor production design but including an impressive Aztec temple creating an excellent scenario in which takes a place a massacre at the beginning and the ending . The musician Riz Ortalani , composes a passable soundtrack in Morricone style ; it's full of guttural sounds, and a haunting musical leitmotif. Striking , vibrant and crisp cinematography by Sandro Mancori . Interior filmed at Elios Studios Rome and outdoor sequences filmed at Italian landscapes , from El Lacio , Rome .

Carlo Lizzani's direction is regularly crafted , here he's more thought-provoking and broody and more inclined toward violence , because he's a expert on serious cinema . Although he filmed another S.W. titled -under a pseudonym named Beaver- . Lizzani was member of the P.C.I. (Communist Party) whose leftist wing tending is well shown in his flicks . He directed good films as ¨Last days of Mussolini¨, ¨Bandits in Milan¨, co-directed ¨Dirty game¨, ¨The Verona trial¨, ¨chronicle of poor lovers¨ and today he goes on directing movies until his recent death at 91 . Rating : 6 , acceptable and passable . The picture will appeal to Spaghetti Western fans.

Carlo Lizzani is more of a realistic director as he didn't intend to be spectacular and impressive in any of the details. Real-life facts like killing and humiliation make the work done.

The BSO is not its forte so that's why I didn't give it 10 stars but it was more centered around the story. There's too many scenes that are silent with the only sound of footsteps, horses, guns and crying -except when there's a peaceful scene where some little melody appears and in the opening and closing scenes.

The main antagonist (a lot of western-fans know him) is well developed as a character and he can be quite contradictory with morals as any politician would. There are many philosophic stuff so it's quite agreeable when giving sense to life and death and the script in general was well done. I think the script is what was best done in the whole story and I don't agree with people who think that they were silly games because I'm aware those games existed and still exist nowadays.

The photography can be quite catching to the eye but in this film is very realistic and the quality is quite ordinary. There's no "paysage scenes" (if you know what I mean in Western films) as is always centered in the people and surroundings.

'Requiescant' stands out from the Euro-western crowd for the appearance of Pier Paolo Pasolini himself, in a rare acting cameo as the Mexican priest Don Juan, who, despite his name, is less a man of the flesh than an ascetic liberation theology advocate who drifts in and out of the narrative at key points. The titular hero, played by Lou Castel, is the sole survivor of a local landowner's massacre of the peasants in the ruined chapel which serves as the film's opening and climactic acts of violence: the massacre and the act of liberation which avenges it. That structure, of a suppressed violence which the hero (and audience) slowly come to understand, in an inevitable journey of violence begetting violence, is familiar from Leone, from 'Django', from numerous other Euro-westerns of the periods. Here, though, as usual, it's framed through the figure of the lone gunfighter, it's given a greater collective dimension. Requiescant, adopted by a religious family (hence his habit of saying a prayer over those he's killed), seeks to rescue his adopted sister from the clutches of the landowner who runs the town as a connected network of vice, of semi-legitimated criminality based on exploitation and dispossession. His act of violence against the landowner and his henchmen simultaneously serves his own personal quest for revenge and the interests of the peasants led by Pasolini (which the flashback structure reveals to be connected). As in Glauber Rocha's later 'Antonio das Mortes', Lizzani suggests that the individualist gunslinger, whose skill and firepower are need in the struggle--and who remains a figure of cinematic lore and popular fantasy more than a historical figure--is also ultimately subsidiary to the force of the collective.

This one has to take the prize for the reviews completely failing to set expectations. I really could not believe the difference. I can see why people would say the things they have...but it doesn't change the fact that they have watched this movie and not seen most of what was happening.

On pure production values and in terms of story, yes, the story is absurd, on the face of it, but so are most the stories in musicals and so are the production values of B horror movies. If anyone said that, though, you'd give them a look because everyone knows that is the case. That's not what you're watching it for. So, I can see disappointment if you're watching this as a Hollywood Western.

But Spaghetti Westerns were made by left wing radicals, this one actually has one of the leading lights of the PCI (Italian Communist Party) in it, and that is very much the focus for director Carlo Lizzani. Whereas most all of the sub-genre were Westerns with an Italian artistic slant and some radical sub-text, this one is a straight-ahead, let's give the young communistas some proper learning, Western movie style. The story is thin because it's totally unimportant. There aren't plot holes; there's a bit of hand waving to acknowledge it, much like you might add a box to a flow diagram to represent an input you're not fully diagramming. Those bits are deemed unimportant. "How does he learn to shoot?" It's not important. It's not telling a story, it's acting out critical moments in life to provoke thoughts about class struggle.

I couldn't believe how dense the political/social message was. EVERY little scene, EVERYTHING is there for symbolic value. And the story isn't that bad as I never felt it dragging. So preachy, such a thin story, it should have become tedious. It never did. I usually watch the classics in installments to get every detail, but I watched this one start to end because I couldn't stop watching it. I couldn't believe he had made such a pure vehicle for talking about class struggle, the role of violence, when should violence be used, how does doing so change the person, etc., etc., etc.

You can certainly argue that that's not a valid way to make any kind of Western. But if you like Spaghetti Westerns for that reason, this is not to be missed because you will never find another that is so straight-ahead about what it's doing. Lizzani basically said, "Damn it, I'm tired of pussy footing around with a few abstract comparisons. Let's lay it all right out there". Most the other reviews on this are like reading Alice in Wonderland and saying, "That doesn't seem very realistic. How can that be about logic?" But I'm not complaining. It was very nice to be so pleasantly surprised after having very low expectations.

I just had to write a little something to combat the folks on here calling this mediocre or worse... This is one incredible epic that will satisfy your lust for revenge & adventure! Pasolini makes an infamous cameo so if you're a fan of his for outrageous work like "Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom" then this is a must watch on that merit alone. I would put it in the top 10 westerns ever, for it's almost biblical storytelling, that pays off in the best ways as if God's judgement is handed down right in front of the camera. I really cannot fathom such a low rating. I found this movie to be full of soul, like the people who made it cared a lot about their precious baby. I think this should be mentioned in the same breath as Leone even if it's not as groundbreaking as some of his films.