SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: Week 105: Django

[Cubo de Sangre]

In fact, Terence Hill is that sort of unknown, forgotten Western guy that provided some seriously great moments.

Don't know about the westerns, but as a kid this was entertaining.

 

[the muntjac]

As our club leader as mentioned, really the only thing about this movie that feels outdated is the lack of blood, even if they movie is incredibly violent.

We've come from this:

And have gone to this:

But despite Django's lack of bloodshed, it doesn't take away the awesome and memorable moment of seeing a guy hiding behind a log while a small militia approaches him, and he pulls a goddamn gatling gun out of a coffin he's been dragging around and kills everyone. Talk about coming prepared.

This is one of the most callous and cold-hearted movies I have seen. Even our "hero" isn't the nicest guy. He shoots up the old man's bar, a guy who has been nothing but helpful to him, to demonstrate the gatling gun. There was no reason to do that besides not giving a flying fornication. He treats Maria as a peace offering for Hugo and wasn't about to care what became of her. He was a man running from a haunting, mysterious past. His compassion died with his true love. All that remained was a man dragging around a coffin. A coffin that he's hoping to bury his past in, and no, he wasn't digging with a shovel. He was digging with a chain gun, and any man who got in his way would be put six feet in the hole along with his past.

In the ending when Major Jackson is taunting Django by shooting the gravestone and doing the sign of the cross, when Django shouts back AMEN! and blows them all away, that's so damn cool.
Maybe you're one of the poor souls who only listened to the English dubbing, and it's changed to the Major telling Django to pray, and saying he can't hear him. Then Django shouts, "Can you hear this?!" and shoots them all. What lame shit is that? Whoever rewrote the dialogue for the dubbing needs their ear cut off and fed to them.

One day I'm going to make a print of this shot, frame it, and hang it on my wall because that's how much I like this shot. This picture says it all.

I could just keep going on with all the stuff I thought was awesome in this movie, but I'll spare yinz for now.
Basically, I'm Chris Farley in this gif, and Paul McCartney is the movie.

 

[europe1]

I don't know if you just knew all that or looked it up but it really puts some stuff into perspective.

Just a big-time interest in cinema. I've read books and articles on the subject and listened to audio commentaries. Much of what I write is basically me paraphrasing this book from memory. It's absolutely awesome! It's hard to get though, I was thinking about trying to re-aquire it through a library but I just didn't have the time or energy.

Needless to say, the book discusses tons of more themes and aspects that I am. I'm just scrapping off the tip of the Iceberg with tese posts.

In fact, Terence Hill is that sort of unknown, forgotten Western guy that provided some seriously great moments.

Yeah. He went big when he started doing comedies but he was in a whole slew of serious Spaghetti westerns before that. Including a few Django films like "Django, Prepear a Coffin", which is one of the better Django cash-ins along with Viva Django and Django The Basterd.

I grew up watching Westerns and Spaghetti Westerns and just loved them as a kid. I can remember watching My Name is Nobody and just thinking it was awesome.

In fact, Terence Hill is that sort of unknown, forgotten Western guy that provided some seriously great moments.

To this day, I have never, EVER, laughed as hard as I did when I was twelve years old and watched Terence Hill in They Call Me Trinity. That shit was so hysterical that my lungs hurt. I think it was the first time I ever thought a film was brilliant. When they introduced his brother as the left hand of the devil I thought it was the most clever thing I've ever heard. These days... I honestly don't find the movie funny at all, but the memories remain.

 

[the muntjac]

In case anyone is unaware, Franco Nero even shows up in Django Unchained.

An interesting fact about the original Django is that when it was made, Franco Nero was only 23-years-old, so Corbucci had him grow a beard, and they put fake crow's feet around his eyes to make him appear older and more weathered.

Sometimes being too handsome can be a setback.

I wish I could only speak from experience.

 

[europe1]

This is one of the most callous and cold-hearted movies I have seen. Even our "hero" isn't the nicest guy. He shoots up the old man's bar, a guy who has been nothing but helpful to him, to demonstrate the gatling gun. There was no reason to do that besides not giving a flying fornication. He treats Maria as a peace offering for Hugo and wasn't about to care what became of her.

People say that Clint Eastwood's characters were morally ambigious..... shit Franco Nero was straight-out evil at times!

Part of the Spaghetti experience. The Italians really injected some darkness into their Westerns that you didn't see in American ones. Of course... just a few years later Peckinpha came along and fucked that up even more.

Maybe you're one of the poor souls who only listened to the English dubbing

The english dubbing just loses all punchy-ness. It's like when Django makes that comment about vultures when he first encounters Major Jacksson. In the Italian version it's darkly humorous, in the dubbing it's just a really awkward, clumpsy exhange.

One day I'm going to make a print of this shot, frame it, and hang it on my wall because that's how much I like this shot. This picture says it all.

This movie is just a series of paintings.

I once read that Italian movies tend to be so visually exquisite because of the great amount of art that exists in the land. Walk into a church and your basically walking into an art-gallery. And not to mention all those statues and ruins laying about. This affected the directors, made them more artistic in their compositions, more visually-oriented. The art just permeates the culture and bleeds into the film industry through cultural osmosis.

Let's not forget. Django was intended as a B-picture. It was shoot quickly and on pennies. They didn't even have a script ready when they started shooting only a premise. And despite basically shooting-from-the-hip, they managed to create those artistic and evocative images. Pretty darn inspiration.

 

[MusterX]

Just a big-time interest in cinema. I've read books and articles on the subject and listened to audio commentaries. Much of what I write is basically me paraphrasing this book from memory. It's absolutely awesome! It's hard to get though, I was thinking about trying to re-aquire it through a library but I just didn't have the time or energy.

Needless to say, the book discusses tons of more themes and aspects that I am. I'm just scrapping off the tip of the Iceberg with tese posts.



Yeah. He went big when he started doing comedies but he was in a whole slew of serious Spaghetti westerns before that. Including a few Django films like "Django, Prepear a Coffin", which is one of the better Django cash-ins along with Viva Django and Django The Basterd.

To this day, I have never, EVER, laughed as hard as I did when I was twelve years old and watched Terence Hill in They Call Me Trinity. That shit was so hysterical that my lungs hurt. I think it was the first time I ever thought a film was brilliant. When they introduced his brother as the left hand of the devil I thought it was the most clever thing I've ever heard. These days... I honestly don't find the movie funny at all, but the memories remain.

You never cease to surprise me. What a read, I bet that one is tough lol.

Yes, I've seen the Trinity movies as well. I watched all those Spaghetti Westerns when I was a kid and I didn't even know who guys like Sergio Leone were or why I even liked them so much. I just knew they were awesome and often funny. Its one of those weird things from my childhood, maybe 12-16 years old range that made an impression on me and I can still remember watching these movies clearly.

 

[MusterX]

In case anyone is unaware, Franco Nero even shows up in Django Unchained.

That one is almost as good as Alexis Arquette playing the homosexual character Georgette in Last Exit to Brooklynn and also being the guy in Pulp Fiction who bursts out of the bathroom to shoot at Samuel Jackson and John Travolta.

 

[the muntjac]

People say that Clint Eastwood's characters were morally ambigious..... shit Franco Nero was straight-out evil at times!

No kidding. He makes the Man With No Name look like a saint.

Part of the Spaghetti experience. The Italians really injected some darkness into their Westerns that you didn't see in American ones. Of course... just a few years later Peckinpha came along and fucked that up even more.

Yeah, the Italians seemed to celebrate the carnage moreso in their westerns. There wasn’t a rape in Django, but for some reason, the Italians can’t help themselves by throwing in a rape of a Mexican girl in their spaghetti westerns. It’s very peculiar.

The english dubbing just loses all punchy-ness. It's like when Django makes that comment about vultures when he first encounters Major Jacksson. In the Italian version it's darkly humorous, in the dubbing it's just a really awkward, clumpsy exhange.

The first time I saw it was with the English dubs because it was the version playing on one of those premium movie channels. Later I was talking with my brother about the film and quoting some of the lines, and he was like, “what the fuck is that shit?” So then I had to rewatch it with the subtitles, and I was stunned by how different it was.

This movie is just a series of paintings.

I once read that Italian movies tend to be so visually exquisite because of the great amount of art that exists in the land. Walk into a church and your basically walking into an art-gallery. And not to mention all those statues and ruins laying about. This affected the directors, made them more artistic in their compositions, more visually-oriented. The art just permeates the culture and bleeds into the film industry through cultural osmosis.

It’s the land of Michaelangelo and Leonardo, two of history’s greatest artists...

Spoiler

...of ninjutsu and pizza!

Let's not forget. Django was intended as a B-picture. It was shoot quickly and on pennies. They didn't even have a script ready when they started shooting only a premise. And despite basically shooting-from-the-hip, they managed to create those artistic and evocative images. Pretty darn inspiration.

It definitely worked to the film’s advantage. The town with the whore house was such a barebones set, and it felt so empty since it wasn’t hustling and bustling with townspeople, but that only further added to the ghostly void that hangs over the film.

I had more to say about this movie, but you came in here first all Billy Big Guns and beat me to the draw. Or at the very least, punched me into a wagon of manure.

 

[the muntjac]

That one is almost as good as Alexis Arquette playing the homosexual character Georgette in Last Exit to Brooklynn and also being the guy in Pulp Fiction who bursts out of the bathroom to shoot at Samuel Jackson and John Travolta.

Oh yeah, that was weird.

In that picture of the two Djangos together, I can’t help but think that Nero wearing white gloves was done on purpose since they kinda look like when his hands are bandaged after they were broken in the original. I know that wearing white gloves are a sign of high status, and he plays a wealthy character in this, but something tells me Tarantino was putting in a nod to the 1966 character.

 

[Andersons Foot]

I think it would be cool to add a poll to the discussion threads as well so we could rate the movies 1-10.

Then at the end of each cycle we could rank them based off of the average score from our votes.

@europe1 @shadow_priest_x

Have you guys ever considered this?

 

[europe1]

I think it would be cool to add a poll to the discussion threads as well so we could rate the movies 1-10.

Then at the end of each cycle we could rank them based off of the average score from our votes.

@europe1 @shadow_priest_x

Have you guys ever considered this?

I fear that that could cheapen the discussion. More arguments centered on people's rankings and films median rankings rather than the films content, craft and themes itself. We still personally rank films at the end cycle, after all.

But if other members like the idea, we could impose it at the beginning of the next cycle.

 

[Tufts]

Django begins with a great visual -- and ends with a great visual. You have the bloodstained gun and withered crosses propped up in the foreground. Django is silouted against a blue sky, giving him an almost ethereal appearance. The music that was there in the begnining as well is now almsot cathartic in mood instead of mystifying as it was in the beginning.

I LOVED this final shot....This really was a beautiful film! I couldn't believe how good it still looked. Helped that I watched the Blue Ray version.

 

[Tufts]

• The belt has bullets still in the cartridges on both sides.
• It's not in a position that could actually feed.
• In a Gatling gun the barrels would just be around the perimeter.
• In a Gatling the barrels spin and I didn't see that spinning.
• His hands don't seem to be in position to fire.

<45>I thought the same. Plus he never ran out of bullets. In the scene where he rigged the gun to get out of the cellar, that gun shot out hundreds of bullets, and there was only a foot of belt on each side of the gun. I don't know shit about guns, and I could tell it was bogus. Highly entertaining though

 

[Tufts]

Movie was all downhill after that.

I appreciate a movie that spares the animals. It annoyed me when Django killed that horse!

 

[Tufts]

That's awesome. I don't know if you just knew all that or looked it up but it really puts some stuff into perspective. I grew up watching Westerns and Spaghetti Westerns and just loved them as a kid. I can remember watching My Name is Nobody and just thinking it was awesome.

In fact, Terence Hill is that sort of unknown, forgotten Western guy that provided some seriously great moments.

I grew up in Europe watching Terence Hill and Bud Spencer spaghetti westerns. I couldn't get enough of them. Loved the cheesy slapstick. When I watched Django, Franco Nero immediately reminded me of Terrence Hill. It's like he is is long lost mean brother.

 

[Tufts]

I really enjoyed this movie. It was absolutely a feast for my eyes. I was totally amused at a bunch of Italians playing either Mexicans or white southerners. They all looked Italian to me! And there were definitely actors in the white group that looked more Mexican than some of the actors cast in the Mexican group. It was totally cracking me up. I also really noticed the open discussion of racism in the movie. It felt like criticism of US culture. I thought it was interesting as I wouldn't think an American movie from that time would be so explicit about racism in 1966. Maybe I'm wrong. There were just several times where racism was openly discussed and it struck me.

 

[MusterX]

I grew up in Europe watching Terence Hill and Bud Spencer spaghetti westerns. I couldn't get enough of them. Loved the cheesy slapstick. When I watched Django, Franco Nero immediately reminded me of Terrence Hill. It's like he is is long lost mean brother.

Absolutely, had that same weird feeling.

 

[europe1]

That one is almost as good as Alexis Arquette playing the homosexual character Georgette in Last Exit to Brooklynn and also being the guy in Pulp Fiction who bursts out of the bathroom to shoot at Samuel Jackson and John Travolta.

Since we're on the subject of Spaghetti Westerns and weird casting... remmber this guy, Tatsuya Nakadai, from Ran?

Well he was in a Spaghetti Western... playing a Mexican Bandit-General... Tatsuya Nakadai, a Japanese actor, playing a Mexican, in an Italian producton...

They still gave him a sword though.

The movie has the ultra-spaghetti title Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die! and despite the wonky casting it's really good actually. Terrence Hill's perpetual duo Bud Spencer is also in it.

• The belt has bullets still in the cartridges on both sides.
• It's not in a position that could actually feed.
• In a Gatling gun the barrels would just be around the perimeter.
• In a Gatling the barrels spin and I didn't see that spinning.
• His hands don't seem to be in position to fire.

What are your thoughts on some of the more common movie-gun sins? Like silencers sounding nothing like they do in real life. Or assault rifles set on auto being able to spray bullets for an ungodly long period in comparison to reality before emptying?

I LOVED this final shot....This really was a beautiful film! I

It was totally cracking me up. I also really noticed the open discussion of racism in the movie. It felt like criticism of US culture. I thought it was interesting as I wouldn't think an American movie from that time would be so explicit about racism in 1966. Maybe I'm wrong. There were just several times where racism was openly discussed and it struck me.

Racism wasn't excactly a hot topic back then. But there are several that are more explicit. In the Heat of the Night, for instance. Or the great but little-known western Reprisal (1956). Cheyenne Autumn would be another but that one handled it really clunkily.

What was new with Django though, wasn't that it didn't just put-down racists, it blew them to smithereens with a freaking machine gun. You didn't see such a vitriolic response to the subject back then. Directors tended to handled racism very delicately so to not offend. Corbucci would make another Spaghetti Western centered on ex-confederates called the Hellbenders just a year after in 1967.

On the political spectrum, there is another factor in Django though. The 60's was an decade when "revolution" was a hot buzzword. People spoke seriously about the subject as an actual possibility -- with everyone from hippies to communist insurgencies wanting to fundementally change society. A lot of Spaghetti directors were very pro-revolution, with movies like The Big Gundown or A Bullet for the General. But in Django, the Mexican revolutionaries are basically ravaging bandits, virtually no better than the ex-confederates. Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Leone were a lot more ambivalent and negative towards the concept of revolution than most of the other Spaghetti directors were, though for very interesting and unusual reasons. Leone handled the subect in "Duck, you Sucker!" and Corbucci did it more in The Great Silence (a movie so good it's possibly better than Django)

Absolutely, had that same weird feeling.

When I watched Django, Franco Nero immediately reminded me of Terrence Hill. It's like he is is long lost mean brother.

Knowing Spaghetti producers... Terrance Hill probably got his jobs in the first place because they wanted someone who looked like Nero.

 

[MusterX]

Well he was in a Spaghetti Western... playing a Mexican Bandit-General... Tatsuya Nakadai, a Japanese actor, playing a Mexican, in an Italian producton...

They still gave him a sword though.

The movie has the ultra-spaghetti title Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die! and despite the wonky casting it's really good actually. Terrence Hill's perpetual duo Bud Spencer is also in it.

In today's more PC and SJW climate, films that cast white guys as Mexican's and other hilarity just can't happen anymore like it did in the past. I mean fuck, some people actually get offended at the word Mexican, insisting that you say Latino. My response is the term Mexican is not even a race you stupid son of a bitches, its a nationality. Then the argument ultimately comes that its a form of black face. The practice of white actors playing other races is often referred to as whitewashing.

Johnny Depp played Tonto but its done in the most professional and concealing way possible.

Its not the same as Laurence Olivia playing full black faced Othello.

Anyway, just some thoughts about how the film industry has dealt with these sorts of problems. We still have white actors playing other races but our makeup techniques have become so good it passes the eye test for most people.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

What are your thoughts on some of the more common movie-gun sins? Like silencers sounding nothing like they do in real life. Or assault rifles set on auto being able to spray bullets for an ungodly long period in comparison to reality before emptying?

If one wanted to have a stuck up their ass about it, one could find endless (g)un-realities to bitch about. But I don't watch movies because I need to see something real. Loved Shoot 'Em Up! That film was ridiculous in every way. The suppressors thing i certainly more annoying than impossible marksmanship, since I suspect these portrayals help fuel their restriction/prohibition.

Speaking of marksmanship, Nero was as good as it gets. With his pistol wasn't it something like 15 shots out of it during the film and 14 kills? Almost every dude dropped instantly and only one guy needed a second bullet. Most all moving targets even. I laughed. It was fun.