“They hommes between eux”: The day of the anger. Tonino Valerii, learning and reflection between the eurowestern and the American classicism.

The day of the anger (I Giorni dell'ira)

The director: Tonino Valerii

Year: 1967

Country: Italy / Germany

112 min.

It photographs: Enzo Serafin

Music: Riz Ortolani

Script: Ernesto Gastaldi, Renzo Genta y Tonino Valerii as the novel of Ron Barker Der Tod Ritt Diemstags (?)

I distribute: Lee Van Cleef, Giuliano Gemma, Walter Rilla, Christa Linder, Ennio Balbo, Lukas Ammann, Andrea Bosic, Pepe Calvo, Giorgio Gargiullo, Anna Orso

A truly extraordinary movie and one of the best spaghetti-western produced in the whole Europe, which supposes the masterpiece of Tonino Valerii (already claimed here with his curious twilight and autoconscious eurowestern My name is none and with an onlooker giallo like bloody Summary of the kidling Estefanía, a movie which personality is born of the contrast between the moral sordidness of fund and the polished cinematic form that he adopts), the personal director (and ignored) like few ones during the epoch and perhaps the one that more has felt Leone's weight like legend (of which also it was collaborating) despite being who more conscious effort realized to become alienated from his aegis. (Here an interview to Valerii and to the excellent critic and historian Roberto Curti)

On an excellent script, the paternal - subsidiary history between a young despised and maladjusted bastard and a cold gunman who him will take under his protection while it dominates a small village by means of lead and fear, Valerii applies his absolutely intimate conception of the movies of genre (shared with an aprpar of Spanish authors: Joaquín Romero-Marchent and Eugenio Martín) across an elegant planning and a narrative and “clear line”, triumphing after the North American outstanding figures being sent principally (especially magnificent outlaws' Hunter-1957 - of Anthony Mann although with different dramatic sense and to the "psychological" school in particular, even with similarities italianizadas with the monumental novel of Oakley Hall, Warlock, mediocremente adapted / simplify for Edward Dmytryk in The man of the golden guns, 1959) and without limiting itself to exploiting the lode way Leone seguidista.

And it does it up to the point of which The day of the anger is content like a big western to dry seasons, without surnames, which of not belonging to a moment and a few so particular coordinates would be considered to be a summit, for conceptual thickness, moral depth and reflective keenness.

Also Valerii does not also despise the styling and the excess in the characterization (debtor of the series - b, the tebeo and the pulp as perfect examples of expressive economy of means) proper of the movies of Italian genre, intelligently used in details like the mythical character (of which also a conscious and deep analysis is tackled) in the proper personage of the hitman (delightfully delirious duels, for example that one that develops on horseback as if it was a medieval joust) or in this gun belonging to Doc Holliday that the boy as the only heredity hoards and that reflects the importance icónica of the objects as components of one imaginary essential ritual in the universe of the eurowestern.

But the movie would not go on from a modest attempt if everything was entrusting it to the plot (minimal and schematic), the real power of this work resides in his sensational personages protagonists, both very well interpreted by an absolutely stellar duo: Giuliano Gemma leaving of his archetype, a species of always smiling, athletic and positive Mediterranean Burt Lancaster that it tested for the festive qualifications in which Duccio Tesari tried to offer a festive alternative and innocently unpolluted to the dirt and the brutalización of the genre. Gemma, in his best interpretation, is battered boy, that it has not even surname (he will be Frank Talby who baptizes it, ungiéndolo this way of manliness and dignity for the first time) and whom the whole world there abuses, progressively turned into a feverish gunman for the power of the weapon and for the influence of his teacher, one Lee Van Cleef who controls the movie with his imperturbable and merciless freightage of hawk (simply unforgettable, so much like his "Colonel Mortimer" of The death it had a price, which already that is to say).

It is this relation of teacher / pupil, of father / son, so typical of the western on the other hand, which it provides to the movie of all his complexity (and of a lyricism to which the anthological score of Riz Ortolani is not foreign), on having established about the same one a series of ideas and reflections, I half-close to the violence and his use, the power, the dichotomy law / justice (or rather “who“ applies it) and the disappointment, with the component of ripeness and evolution that this implies (and quite without pretentiousness none). A trip of learning and construction of the personality designed cinematográficamente in such a way that the raised during his first one half-closed the personages and the fascinated vision that of Talby there has Scott (and with him we, the spectators that we inform permanently of his subjective perception), it is dismantled systematically during the second one, in which, simultaneously, Gemma's personage transforms in the naked and grotesque portrait of that of Van Cleef and finally he realizes, having been recognized after if the same and his teacher in this real image without idealizing, of where it has come and of that in his hand is to finish it. Although it will have to be, paradoxically, for a final act of violence in which it will have to apply all the learned lessons. Up to the last one and cruelly.

Filed bajo:60's, The day of the anger, Eurowestern, craftsmen's Union, Italy, Politique give auteurs, Tonino Valerii Tagged: to the Italian, pupil, learning, killer, bullets, bastard, classicism, duel, The day of the anger, Eurowestern, Giuiliano Gemma, José Calvo, lesson, Lee Van Cleef, maturation, teacher, to kill, paternofilial, gunman, spaghetti-western, shooting, Tonino Valerii, violence