A Bullet for the General

Italy | 1967 Directed by Damiano Damiani Starring Gian Maria Volonté Klaus Kinski Martine Beswick Color | 118 Minutes | Not Rated Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC) Blue Underground

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Also reissued by Blue Underground (July 2007)

		Review by Brian Lindsey

7     5   10 = Highest Rating

This "Marxist" spaghetti western by director Damiano Damiani makes an interesting counterbalance to Sergio Leone's Duck You Sucker (1971). Both films are set in revolutionary Mexico during the early 20th Century. Both focus on the relationship between a Mexican bandit chief and a foreign outsider, on how their actions and philosophies affect each other. A machinegun figures prominently in the story and lots of people die. There the similarities end. Damiani (How To Kill a Judge) had a very different agenda than Leone would a few years later.     Gian Maria Volonté is Chuncho, a murdering brigand with the proverbial heart of gold (albeit a rather tarnished one). He leads his gang on raids against the Mexican Army with the goal of stealing arms and munitions to equip rebel forces. As the film opens, Chuncho's band ambushes a train carrying civilian passengers but also a platoon of soldiers guarding a consignment of Mauser rifles. Surviving government troops are ruthlessly massacred — after surrendering — with about as much consideration given to swatting a fly. The noncombatants, on the other hand, are left unmolested per Chuncho's explicit order. After all, it is for the peasants that they fight — provided there's a bit of gold in it on the side.     Chuncho is surprised to find an American aboard, a young, baby-faced adventurer he immediately dubs El Niño ("The Child"). The sharply-dressed Yank (Columbian actor Lou Castel) actually took a hand in the train's capture, shooting the engineer and tripping the brakes. Now he asks to join Chuncho's gang. Niño clams to have no interest in the politics of the revolution; he's a wanted man north of the border and needs to make some quick money. He also has a few ideas to help the gang score a large cache of weapons that can then be sold to General Elias, commander of one of the rebel factions. Chuncho, intrigued by the brash American (and short a few men after the battle), invites Niño to ride with him and his muchachos.     The dapper mercenary makes an uneasy fit with Chuncho's band of scruffy guerillas. Naturally he's viewed with suspicion, since the United States sides with the repressive government they wish to overthrow. His participation in attacks on the Mexican Army and growing friendship with Chuncho, however, bring Niño fully into the fold. Even so, the gringo remains an enigma. To the chagrin of the gang's only female member, flirtatious spitfire Adelita (Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde's Martine Beswick), he doesn't seem to be interested in women. Nor does he care about the plight of Mexico's peasants, bluntly telling Chuncho that the downtrodden peons aren't worth fighting for. Niño is focused like a laser beam on one thing and one thing only — money. When Chuncho becomes sidetracked liberating a village and playing the local hero, Niño causes a split in the gang by appealing to the greed of its members. They have a wagonload of arms, including a valuable machinegun, to deliver to General Elias and until they do they won't get paid. Determined to rendezvous with Elias' forces posthaste, Niño and all the gang members except Chuncho's half-brother, religious fanatic El Santo (Klaus Kinski), depart with the guns. Chuncho leaves Santo in charge of village defenses and takes off after the defectors, vowing to talk some sense into them and bring back the machinegun. But it is not to be. Instead Chuncho will learn not only the true depth of his commitment to the revolution, but whether his sense of honor and love of country are stronger than the allure of gold.     With A Bullet for the General, director Damiani and screenwriter Franco Solinas (The Battle of Algiers) use the Mexican Revolution as a prism through which to view the sociopolitical convulsions of the 1960s. Their depiction of Niño is an undisguised condemnation of American imperialism and CIA interference in the Third World. Predatory capitalism is represented by a bourgeois landowner (Black Sunday's Andrea Checchi) who can't understand why the local peasants, who've worked his land for generations under a feudalistic system, have turned against him and now bay for his blood. Kinksi's El Santo — borderline insane but "pure", the most altruistic character in the film — is the embodiment of the Liberation Theology movement sweeping Latin America at the time Bullet was made. A man of God, his motivation to wage war against the ruling class springs from Jesus Christ's unequivocal call to aid and comfort the poor. (If that means standing people against a wall and shooting them, then so be it... Thy will be done.) Chuncho's advice to a beggar — "Don't buy bread with that money, hombre... Buy dynamite!" — proclaims in the simplest terms possible the filmmakers' creed: that there are times when violent action against a government and its institutions becomes a necessity. To not act, to not become involved, is to deny justice. This is the direct opposite of the message Sergio Leone imparts in Duck You Sucker, made four years later.     Yet despite championing such heavy themes, the film never devolves into a Marxist polemic bogged down with long-winded speeches about class struggle and the nobility of the poor. Damiani gets his message across within the framework of a solid action-adventure yarn that can be enjoyed regardless of politics. His visuals are impressive without being ostentatious, taking full advantage of the wide Techniscope canvas. Don't expect the stylized operatics of a Leone spaghetti western or the dead-eye gunslinging supermen who can shoot the wings off a fly at a hundred paces... That's not what this movie is about. The violence, while not bloody (its almost as if they didn't have enough money in the budget for squibs), is completely unglamorized and presented as a grim, ugly affair. Composer Luis Bacalov's appropriately Mexican-flavored soundtrack is more traditional sounding than the groundbreaking spag western scores of Ennio Morricone and his host of imitators, although it does feature some acoustic guitar riffs evocative of similar themes used in Leone's Dollars Trilogy. (Morricone, it should be noted, is credited as music supervisor on the film.)     Not by any means a "buddy" picture, Bullet is very much Volonté's show — his Falstaffian bandito dominates the narrative, since Chuncho's character arc is the medium for the film's message. Best known to American audiences as the psychotic, dope-smoking bandit chief Indio in For a Few Dollars More, Volonté (a communist in real life) gives a compelling, larger-than-life performance that shines even through the English dubbing. Kinski, the infamous madman of Euro-Cult cinema, is well-cast as the fanatical Santo but has comparatively little to do; his scenes are nonetheless memorable, as when the wild-eyed Christian zealot peppers his 'benediction' to the enemy with hand grenades. ("In the name of the Father—" BOOM! "—the Son—" BOOM! "—and the Holy Spirit!" BOOM!) In the pivotal role of Niño, Castel seems to be underplaying it too much at times; however, since his character is supposed to be a mysterious, aloof outsider, it generally works. (Had an American actor been cast instead, this film would likely have become more known in the States.)

A Bullet for the General was initially released on R1 DVD by Anchor Bay Home Entertainment in 2001; while OOP for over a year now, unopened copies of the disc are quite easy to find. Earlier this year Blue Underground reissued a number of former Anchor Bay titles, Bullet among them.     The Blue Underground DVD uses the exact same transfer as the old AB edition, which — despite not having been revisited in the interim — is a damn good one. In its original 2.35:1 AR (16x9 enhanced) and in very good condition, the film looks marvelous here... This may be an 'old' transfer but Bullet still ranks among the best-looking of the spaghetti westerns not to have a major company like MGM ponying up the dough for a full-blown restoration. Minimal print damage and a mild sheen of grain never detract from one's enjoyment of the movie. The English-dubbed mono audio track is without issues, clean and fairly robust. As with the AB version, two theatrical trailers (international and U.S.) are included as extras. The liner notes booklet that came with the original release is not carried over. 7/24/07

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