Les colts au soleil

reviewers on this page complain that this is just another ordinary western - that's the same as saying that the Taj Mahal is just another house - which it is - but what a house!

OK, this is not the Taj Mahal of anything but it is a western in which somebody took the time to find the right angles to shoot from and the right beautiful music to accompany everything with. This time and care put in, changes this film from being a trivial western into being a nicely mysterious experience with imagery that stick to the mind.

The mystery - it is true - is not so much in the dialogue as in the silence between the spoken words. The action is not as important as the scenery in which it takes place.

In the end you are left with a feeling of surprising satisfaction for something that on the surface seems trivial indeed.

I have seen a fair few spaghetti westerns and while the ones in the upper bracket are great, a lot are mediocre and indistinguishable from one another. So, it was kind of nice to find that this one was a little more original. Okay, it has another stranger with supreme weapon skills at its centre but in this case he is mysterious mainly because he has forgotten who he is after falling out a high window during an assassination attempt, so the story is partly about him discovering his identity - is he a cold blooded killer? It's a very different idea for a western and it works pretty well. Aside from this, it is photographed to an above average standard and there are a few interesting characters. It does maybe dovetail into less interesting and typical material in the last third but on the whole, this was a pleasingly distinctive Italian western.

There's a thin line between good style and bad style, and this film lands squarely on the wrong side of that line. The director knows a few camera tricks, such as filming scenes from severely low angles with a cowboy boot or wagon wheel dominating the frame (copied from countless other spaghetti westerns) but he has no feel or flow.

Oddball cast. Richard Crenna, not exactly the most physical of actors, is hilariously unbelievable as a tough man of action. Your guess is as good as mine as to how he wins all those fist fights. And he's either bionic or a cousin of Bruce Willis' character in "Unbreakable", because he survives a couple nasty falls and countless flurries of gunfire with nary a scratch. In fact, the villains in this movie have to be the worst shots in the history of film. The more I think about it, I'm not sure who or what they were aiming at but it couldn't have been Crenna.

There's Stephen Boyd, about a decade past his prime, drawling and mumbling his way through a turn as some sort of a slippery opportunist, the Han Solo role. Actually not a bad performance. And also Farley Granger, 20 years or so removed from his fling with matinee idol stardom. He's a more interesting looking actor at this point with graying hair and richer voice, but he comes off as all kinds of ridiculous in the big dumb, senseless finale. Hard to tell if his acting is much improved with such a poor script.

It's also got an inappropriately exuberant music score, bad stunt doubling, a confusing plot with too many names you never can attach to faces, and some gratuitous violence that might have been offensive if it hadn't been so nonsensical. Despite all that, at least it DOES make an attempt to stylize the material and give it a little pizazz. That's more than some films do.

Despite the fact that Stephen Boyd starred in a couple of the most famous films ever made, he really was a singularly mediocre actor and that is pretty clearly illustrated in this hotch-potch of a western. Here he ("Rimes") finds himself assisting the forgetful "Noon" (Richard Crenna) to track down who he is, where he is from and just how, exactly, he found himself in this amnesiac state. During moments of lucidity, "Noon" recalls a cache of gold - so the two, along with the feisty "Fan" (Rosanna Schiaffino) set off to find it before nasty "Judge Niland" (Farley Granger) and his slightly do-lally pal "Peg" (Patty Shepard) do them all in. Peter Collinson has done an OK job with this. These multi-national efforts were never as good on screen as they might have looked on paper. Crenna is efficient, though not spectacular and there is some nice cinematography to accompany a jaunty score from Luis Bacalov. Nothing new here and not a film I could say I shall ever watch again.

Have you ever awakened from a vivid dream that quickly fades? That is exactly how I would describe my viewing experience with " The Man Called Noon." The story of a gunslinger with amnesia is extremely vague. You know it all is leading somewhere, but you have too little information to care about the characters. What you do get is a showcase for stunt falls, some truly excellent photography and memorable locations. What you don't get is enough character development to comprehend the motive behind all the gunslinging chaos. Rosanna Schaffino's magnificent brown eyes are more interesting than most of the characters. Richard Crenna is no Clint Eastwood, and since the "Dollar Westerns" preceeded Noon, it is easy to see why "The Man Called Noon" is so obscure. I would describe this as difficult to sit through, difficult to understand, but worth seeing once for the unbelievably stunning photography. MERK.