Year Of The Western! #13 Day of Anger (1967)

I have mentioned in previous reviews about how a lot of the people in these stories are not heroic even though they are placed in that traditional role within the framework of the story being told. You don't aspire to be them or wish for their lives. So I find it interesting that this film faces that notion head on. What if you had the chance to be thing you always wanted?

I do admit that I kind of want to be Lee Van Cleef, the actor, because that guy could stare the paint off a barn.

Film #13 Day of Anger (1967)

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production.

The film starts off with Scott (Giuliano Gemma) as bastard garbage man emptying buckets for the rich locals of the town of Clifton. He is constantly reminded of his second class citizen stature by almost everyone except for an old stable worked named Murph. Scott is saving up his money to buy a pistol so that way people will start to respect him. Murph, who regrets teaching Scott how to draw a gun, is trying to show him there is more to being a man than who can drawer faster than another. 

Then in rides Frank Talby (Lee Van Cleef), a man who does what he wants when he wants. He meets Scott and offers him a dollar to take his horse into the stables, but will give him the dollar after at the saloon. Scott does this and rushes off to get his pay when the owner of the saloon tells Talby that Scott is trash and can't sit and have a whisky that Talby wants to buy him. Talby puts the saloon owner in his place but a local tries to stand up to Talby and draws his gun and gets immediately shot by Talby. The rules in Clifton have changed. 

Scott follows Talby into the desert because he is not welcome in Clifton and has no other direction to go and he wants to learn from Talby how to be a gunslinger. Talby reluctantly takes him under his wing and starts teaching him hard and painful lessons about the life Scott wants to live. 

Talby has a reason for being in the area. He wants to collect of a $50,000 debt owed to him by Wild Jack. Jack claims that the rich and affluent of Clifton (including the Judge and saloon owner) double crossed him and took the money for their own and left him to rot in prison for 10 years. Talby considers the debt his to collect from them. Jack attempts to shoot Talby, but he misses and Talby wounds him. Scott sees that Talby about to shoot a wounded man and tries to get him to stop. Jack uses that opportunity to grab his gun and try to kill Talby. Again, he fails and Scott learns a lesson: 'If you wound a man, you better kill him or else one day he will come back to kill you.'

Talby puts a plan in place to get what he believes is his and he brings Scott along with him. The way he is able to leverage his knowledge to get money from the local bank, to buy a 50% share of the saloon, and to manage to always stay within the law is very Game of Thrones like. It is impressive the way he can use a secret that would ruin the lives of many to put him basically in control of Clifton. And Scott keeps learning. And getting better with a gun. And his rage at once being shit on by the townsfolk spills out, and Talby is fine with it as long as it does not interfere with his plan.

Eventually, Scott starts to question the extremes that Talby will go to keep his hold on things and Murph lets it be known that he has a past with Talby and that eventually all gunslingers hit an age where their physical skills degrade so they find younger men, like Scott, to put themselves in harm's way.  

Soon a day will come when the lessons stop and the student has to face the teacher.

The student/teacher dynamic is not one I have seen in the films I have watched so far in this list and it didn't occur to me how big of a idea this is. You see this situation in a lot of films, (hell, Star Wars is just one big cycle of teachers and students) but it is a little different here. The young want to learn but the old don't want to give up all their secrets because it keeps the playing field balanced in their favor. Age will sap reaction time, but experience will know which way the sun is shining so you can stand with your back to it and leave your enemy squinting. 

Day of Anger does a good job of showing just how wily and good at his job that Talby is. When he is faced with a hired gun brought in by the rich Clifton folk to kill him, he accepts the paid gunman's challenge of shooting by long rifle while riding a horse (a western take on a joust). 'I'll kill you anyway you want.' So matter of fact. So bad ass.

Lee Van Cleef is great in this role. It was good to see him in a feature with more screen time to himself. He was great in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but here, you he gets the opportunity to stretch and chew up the whole town. I said up above he could squint the paint off a barn and that is true. His face sells so much of what he is thinking before his mouth gets a chance to. I don't know if people are ever 'born for this' but Lee Van Cleef is about as close as you can get for someone born on this earth to play complicated bad guys. 

It is shown a little bit in the film, not always quite in a full establishing shot that I would have loved to have seen, but he eventually opens up a casino/saloon called Club 45 in honor of the gun he uses. The exterior is these four large .45s that double as supports. Here's the best I could find to show them:

Everything in Talby's life was brought to him by the gun. This is his shrine to it. By the end of the film, everything in Clifton pretty much runs through him and his gun. A little on the head, but I love the visual metaphor.

Eventually Scott starts using the lessons he learned when he decides he needs to face off against Talby. I will always be a fan of dialogue stated in the first half of the film being repeated in the second half with different context. Scott has learned the true weight of the words and we see what he really has learned. 

The more I ruminate on this film, the more I like it. It has everything I want (that I know of) so far in a western: rich color palette, great music with horns and electric guitars, Lee Van Cleef, and an ambiguous-ish ending. However, it is not perfect. The music literally stops mid note when a scene ends and a different music starts up immediately in the next scene. That might just be a stylistic choice of the time but it annoyed me. I do understand that this film did receive some edits due to the violence but I don't think that impacted all the edits. Also, the passage of time during the telling of the story wasn't always clear. For example, when Talby said he was going to open a new saloon, it was finished and open for business in the next couple of scenes. Same thing with the progression of Scott. He went from garbage man to well dressed gunslinger of excellent skill in no time. I don't normally say this, but this film could have used another 20-30 minutes in setting up these portions so that the pay off at the end would hold more weight. 

I normally try to find one scene that captures the essence of the film, but this one below is an excellent fan made video showing off the long gun joust and some of Talby's lessons. It also has the excellent score from Riz Ortolani.  

Day of Anger is interesting 'be careful what you wish for' story. Scott did get everything he thought he wanted but the cost may have been too high. The gun always takes, it never gives back.  

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? Wild Jack is as close as we got. Scott was given the last name Mary (it was his mother's first name, he never knew her or her last name) by Talby, so he was called Scott Mary the whole film. It was a little weird. 
• Beautiful landscapes? Some. I preferred the rich reds and golds of Club 45 though.
• Does a building catch fire? Hell. Yes. Lee Van Cleef sure as hell made sure the old saloon (and its owner) didn't last long as soon as he lit the match.
• Any terrified horses? No. I was terrified for the stuntman that was in place for Van Cleef as he was being drug on his stomach behind three horses with his hands tied together. No matter how much protection you had for your belly and chest, that had to hurt.
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? No. But it does have a great pop art style title sequence with the Riz Ortolani score. Why can't more films just give in to the weird and try things like this? Side note: I didn't know a lot about him. He may eventually become a number two to Morricone in my heart.

Rating:

4 out of 5 tin stars. The story of a knocked around bastard that wants to stand up for himself and is taught to do so by a remorseless gunfighter is a good one. I have said it already, but Lee Van Cleef is the driving force for the whole film and he carries it wonderfully. The shoot outs are inventive and showdown at the end is good but not quite earned due to the weird pacing and not distinctly mapping out how much time has passed between scenes. Still, this is highly recommended.