I must confess, dear Gemma (presumably) fans, that I have never seen a bad or uninteresting Italian western; never. Many of them have certain noticeable deficiencies in the content's sectoryet, despite this poor content, they are wellmade and likable. The one I have chosen here looks very low-budget; it has some qualities that make it very enjoyable, and a must for all Gemma fans. It shares with other similarly themed films the same desolate, barren landscape and notions of a dehumanized society.
To describe it in one word, Silver Saddle is a somewhat _cartoonish nonstop adventure western. Very compact and concise , while the content itself is quite average (the kidnapping and ransoming of a boy). (Allow me here a parenthesis, to mention that the western as a genre meant to me:--at first comics, in Romanian and French magazines;--then books, novelsFrânculescu, Reid,May and Cooper ;--in the third place, movies . So I guess I especially enjoy this comic book look of the westerns.)
In a certain sense, I like Gemma more than Nero. He has, if I may say so, a more interesting presence . Sella d'Argento (1978) came one year after California (1977) (another good Gemma western),and two years after The Desert of the Tartars. It marks the end of Gemma's career as a western mythical actoras well as that of the European westerns as such. These movies are still considered like something of a guilty pleasureand still don't receive the esteem they deserve.
Sella is a quite straightforward western, no-nonsense and violent; there is a scene of cruelty, when a kid is whipped by Garrincha. The tone is fortunately deprived of melodrama. Some of the characters are comic, or funny, or do comic thingsSerpent (who is comic, but in a grim way) and the kid.
The silver saddle in this film is an item belonging to Roy Blood,a gunman played by the cultactor Gemma.
The score that accompanies the suspense moments is very good; the song with English lyrics a la Keoma is less happily chosen.
At least six of the characters are noticeableRoy Blood himself; his partner Serpent; Turner; Sheba; Margaret; and the kid."Creatures bizarre and grotesque, yet somehow always familiar"as Nathan M. Powers once happily wrote about Lem's world of Ijon Tichy.
Like in many other Italian westerns, there is a strange, uncanny atmosphere.It is Lucio Fulci's film.
To describe it in one word, Silver Saddle is a somewhat _cartoonish nonstop adventure western. Very compact and concise , while the content itself is quite average (the kidnapping and ransoming of a boy). (Allow me here a parenthesis, to mention that the western as a genre meant to me:--at first comics, in Romanian and French magazines;--then books, novelsFrânculescu, Reid,May and Cooper ;--in the third place, movies . So I guess I especially enjoy this comic book look of the westerns.)
In a certain sense, I like Gemma more than Nero. He has, if I may say so, a more interesting presence . Sella d'Argento (1978) came one year after California (1977) (another good Gemma western),and two years after The Desert of the Tartars. It marks the end of Gemma's career as a western mythical actoras well as that of the European westerns as such. These movies are still considered like something of a guilty pleasureand still don't receive the esteem they deserve.
Sella is a quite straightforward western, no-nonsense and violent; there is a scene of cruelty, when a kid is whipped by Garrincha. The tone is fortunately deprived of melodrama. Some of the characters are comic, or funny, or do comic thingsSerpent (who is comic, but in a grim way) and the kid.
The silver saddle in this film is an item belonging to Roy Blood,a gunman played by the cultactor Gemma.
The score that accompanies the suspense moments is very good; the song with English lyrics a la Keoma is less happily chosen.
At least six of the characters are noticeableRoy Blood himself; his partner Serpent; Turner; Sheba; Margaret; and the kid."Creatures bizarre and grotesque, yet somehow always familiar"as Nathan M. Powers once happily wrote about Lem's world of Ijon Tichy.
Like in many other Italian westerns, there is a strange, uncanny atmosphere.It is Lucio Fulci's film.