Friday, May 10, 2013

Film Review: Once Upon A Time A Revolution aka Duck You Sucker


                                           
“Duck You Sucker” or DYS, was Sergio Leone’ second movie in the “Once Upon A Time...” series. The first one being the 1968 movie, “Once Upon A Time in the West” which starred the legendary actors Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robbards and Claudia Cardinale. Duck You Sucker was originally titled “Once Upon A Time A Revolution” but the American studios decided against the title because they thought the title was too “Leftist”. DYS was released in 1971 and it stars James Coburn and Rod Steiger as the dual main leads. Many film critics and Leone fans have regarded DYS as Leone’s first Zapata western, which is a sub-genre of westerns that are set in the times Mexican revolution of the 1920s. Sergio Leone is known more for his “Dollar Trilogy” namely “A Fistful of Dollars”, “For A Few Dollars More” and the epic “The Good The Bad and The Ugly” and the “Once Upon A Time In The West” and this movie happens to be his lesser known film. The musical score in the movie was provided by the famous music director and a class-mate of Leone since his early school days, Ennio Morricone, who had also composed soundtracks for his earlier films. For some reason, DYS is a hugely underrated film that does not enjoy the popularity of Leone’ other films. Not that it is any inferior in any sense of the word, compared to his other works, in fact it stands on its own and completely alone.


The film begins with a poor Mexican peasant getting a ride in a luxurious horse driven omnibus, passing through the dry and arid Mexican landscape. He is ridiculed by the upper class bourgeoisie passengers, who mock him for being an uneducated, uncultured, undiscerning fool and as one of the passengers says “unfortunate brutes”. The whole stagecoach sequence is powerfully shot and acted. Leone through his impeccable directorial style articulately depicts the relationship between the feudal bourgeoisie and the clergy in relation to that of the poor and the down-trodden masses and how they view them, sitting in comforts of their ivory towers, as nothing more than animals fit for exploitation for their own satisfaction of their greed and advancement of their wealth and property.



Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger) is a ruthless but a bumbling yet a likable bandit chief. He has one big dream, the only goal in his life and that is to rob the Bank of Mesa Verde. On his way, he meets an Irish revolutionary on the run, Sean Mallory (James Coburn) who is also a dynamite expert and is wanted by the British government for his involvement in the activities of the Irish Republican Army. Juan understands Mallory’ skills with dynamite and sees him as a valuable asset to his group and his mission to rob the bank of Mesa Verde. After a couple of runs and chases, the two eventually get together and accomplish a successful raid in the bank. Unbeknownst to Juan, he released hundreds of the political prisoners kept in the make shift jail in the Bank of Mesa Verde and he has suddenly become the most famous leader of the revolution. Now whether he wants it or not, he has been sucked into revolution and he has no choice getting out of it much to his personal dismay.


The movie has many subtle themes of friendship, trust, loyalty and faith. For the first time in a Leone film we see characters undergoing a change in their innate personality. Juan undergoes transformation from being a greedy and a ruthless bandit to a fighter participating in a revolution. The film does not have heavy dialogues, no boring political commentary, no needless sermonizing but only situations and how they have profound effect on us and how they force us to think and act differently.


Leone, who grew up in Fascist Italy under the rule of Benito Mussolini, was a sympathizer of the leftist cause, leaves no room to express his distaste for those “pseudo-leftists” and “pseudo-revolutionaries”. In one scene in the film, a character remarks “People who can read books tell people who cannot read books, that time for change has come. They talk and talk, eat and eat and what happens to the poor people? They are dead!”. 

 

 




Also to note is the Sergio Leone' use of artistic impressions of “Surrealism”. Sergio Leone was no doubt a product of the new wave movement of neorealism in Italian cinema post WWII. Sergio Leone was also a great admirer of the works of surrealist painters such as Giorgio Di Chirico and Salvador Dali and tried to incorporate the surrealist art in his movies starting from “The Good The Bad And The Ugly” to “Once Upon A Time In The West” and then again in “Duck You Sucker”. The film has all the trademarks of Sergio Leone, the extreme close ups of face and the eyes of the actors, use of arid, desolate landscapes, use of non-actors, minimalist dialogues, sudden gun fire etc. Of course, no mention of a Leone film is complete without the mention of film’s soundtrack and its composer Ennio Morricone. “Gui La Testa”, “Invenzione Per John” and “March Of The Beggars” are some of the best tracks ever composed for a film. “Invenzione Per John” is just a superb composition that would take a listener to a completely different plane of consciousness and the composition is the very heart of movie. Perhaps it is “Invenzione Per John” that makes the movie more than ever likable  It is hypnotic, it is soothing and it is calming and yet at the same time it arouses your creative instincts.


In all Duck You Sucker is a movie that is paced enough from the beginning. It takes its own time for characters and situations to develop and though it may slow down a bit in intervals but that is hardly noticeable. This is one Leone movie that needs to be seen by one and all along with his other well-known movies. 

All Images Courtesy: Google.

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