This joyous Leone-conceived Western has been called a critique of Sam Peckinpah (that other great 60s genre revisionist), and elaborates the same theme, the passing of the Old West. MY NAME IS NOBODY is much more interesting than that in its combination of dream, farce and elegy. It borrows its style from its two heroes - Jack Beauregard is an aging gunslinger with fading eyesight, and the film is full of strange optical effects, trompes l'oeil, lurches in perspective, halls of mirrors etc.; while Nobody is like a figure out of a dream, randomly passing through a series of absurd situations, making a mockery of old nihilistic values.
This is Leone's triumphant reductio ad absurdum of the traditional Western, where hoary ideals are revealed as murderous nonsense, and manifest destiny becomes pinball passivity. All the traditional elements - the wide open spaces; the move from Europe to the West; the closure of shootout - are mocked or reversed. This whizzing carnival is creamed by an audacious Morricone score, mixing parody (hoedown Valkyrie), menace and beauty (the gorgeous, breezy, 70s theme song that will colonise your mind. For ever.).
This is Leone's triumphant reductio ad absurdum of the traditional Western, where hoary ideals are revealed as murderous nonsense, and manifest destiny becomes pinball passivity. All the traditional elements - the wide open spaces; the move from Europe to the West; the closure of shootout - are mocked or reversed. This whizzing carnival is creamed by an audacious Morricone score, mixing parody (hoedown Valkyrie), menace and beauty (the gorgeous, breezy, 70s theme song that will colonise your mind. For ever.).