Requiescant (1967)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Carlo Lizzani

Writers:

Lucio Battistrada (writer)
Andrew Baxter (writer)

Release Date:

10 March 1967 (Italy)

Genre:

Western

Plot Keywords:

Spaghetti Western | Priest | Violence | Bible | Beautiful Woman

Cast

Lou Castel	...	Requiescant
Mark Damon	...	Ferguson
Pier Paolo Pasolini	...	Don Juan - a Priest
Barbara Frey	...	Princy
Rossana Krisman
Mirella Maravidi	...	Edith
Franco Citti	...	Burt
Luisa Baratto	...	Lo
Ninetto Davoli	...	The trumpeter (as Nino Davoli)
Nino Musco
Carlo Palmucci		(as Charles Palmset)
Anne Carrer
Lorenza Guerrieri	...	Marta
Vittorio Duse		(as Victor Duse)
Ferruccio Viotti	...	Dean Light

Also Known As:

Kill and Pray (USA) (DVD title)
Mögen sie in Frieden ruh'n (West Germany)

Runtime:

West Germany:92 min

Country:

Italy | West Germany

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Poland:15 | Sweden:15 | West Germany:16 (f)

Company:

Castoro

A performance of the Western myth

In some ways this is, I take it, a fairly generic spaghetti western as I understand the genre. It's rough, violent, in places bordering on sadistic (in keeping with the genre's reputation). While the bad approach some absolute limit of imaginable badness, the good are only quite relatively good and life on the border is definitely ugly. The opposition centres on the possessors/colonisers/Americans versus the dispossessed/colonised/peasantry, and that rather than any traits of character distinguishes bad from good. Unlike the American B-western premise of one short and simple story-line, the plot twists along with the hero's mixed aims, and serves largely as a string to hold the various episodes together until he finally finds his vocation and brings the image full circle. And while narrative ambition is quite high, production values are fairly low, so that everything unfolds among a complement of plastic bones and a papier-maché hacienda constructed to fall down around the hero's ears.

Along with the above, in visual and episodic terms the film shows a surreal imagination. If some images call to mind other Westerns, some seem to have been imported from other genre-stocks - particularly those which concern Ferguson, the decadent dandy in his Dracula-cloak - and some seem to have no equivalent but dream images - the peasants on the massacre-site gathering up bones which look unreal and for that very reason even eerier.

Requiescant, finally, works for me as a performance of a Western, where the process of the filming is always visible; a fantasy Western-play acted out on the broad stage of the Spanish lot - which looks exactly the same whether it's supposed to be Kansas or Mexico, but it doesn't matter. Partly it's the contrast of the imagination involved in the action with a low budget which prevents the work-in-progress being hidden.Partly it's the shuffling of clichés which occasionally come together in such an unexpected way that they make something startling. Partly it's the presence of Pasolini whom it's impossible to insert unproblematically into a Western story - one cannot but be aware that the actor will have his own opinion of the action and it's probably impossible not to look for hints of it ...but then, that's why I watched the film in the first place. Partly, it's the scripted resonance of some of the dialogue, not at all on the Clint Eastwood model, Mark Damon's shameless hamming, the resonance of other quite different films which intrude with Citti and Davoli who have both to some extent imported their characters (though Citti makes an excellent Western Villain), and the fun that everyone, except unfortunately Lou Castel, seems to be quite visibly having even (or especially) when asked to pretend to do things they're not too good at ... .

Enjoyable.