“El Chuncho”, the game of fools against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution

Chanshu It represents an important date in the history of Italian cinema. The 1967 film Damiano Damiani opened a series of Western films depicting the Mexican Revolution as an allegory of the struggles against imperialism in the Third World. Beyond that, it exemplifies a unique way, typical of today’s best cross-Alpine production, of willingly mixing show and reflection, rather frivolous lyricism, and an abstract dialectical vision.

Originally there is a small production company from Emilia Romagna, MCM directed by Bianco Mannini, screenplay by Salvatore Lurani and directed by Damiano Damiani, to date author mostly of “literary adaptations for cinema” (Taboo Island According to Elsa Morante, Boredom and transformative eroticism After Alberto Moravia). Damiani entrusts the script to Franco Solinas, who, with the help of the director, will give it his final version, imposing on the story a political dimension that is not excluded from the echo of contemporary history.

A Mexican thief (Gian Maria Volonte) who supplies a legendary revolutionary leader with stolen weapons accepts a young American (Le Castel) of mysterious origins into his gang. The Stranger, without understanding the Stranger’s true purpose, befriends a hired killer in the service of the established government. Franco Solinas, who started his career in the early 1950s, had just signed a script Battle of Algeria By Luigi Pontecorvo and Especially in the West by Sergio SolimaColorado, which contained in germs the story principle on which the screenwriter would, for several years, play many variations.

A metaphorical view of imperialism

Two men of different origins, one from the West, the other a poor citizen of the third world a victim of colonialism, measure each other, confront each other, and eventually ally themselves or remain enemies, prisoners of their class affiliation. and their individual influence. This pattern would later be repeated in other titles in Solinas’ text: Western Zapatistas (mercenaries by Sergio Corbucci, Three to massacre by Giulio Petroni) or Forward Educational Historical Film (burnt by Jello Pontecorvo). All of these titles, however overtly commercial, would offer an allegorical view of imperialism while questioning, even shaking, the spectator’s ability to identify with the irreducible characters in their single psychological construction.

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