Savant Short Review: Compañeros Compañeros DVD company 1970 / Color / 2:35 anamorphic 16:9 / 120m. / Vamos a matar, Compañeros! Starring Franco Nero, Tomas Milian, Jack Palance, Karin Schubert, Fernando Rey, Francisco Bódalo Cinematography Alejandro Ulloa Production Designer Adolfo Cofiño Film Editor Eugenio Alabiso Original Music Ennio Morricone Writing credits Sergio Corbucci, Massimo De Rita, Fritz Ebert and Dino Maiuri Produced by Antonio Morelli Directed by Sergio Corbucci
	Reviewed by Glenn Erickson Spaghetti Westerns are making news in DVD, in no small part due to a series of Anchor Bay discs concentrating on films starring Franco Nero. Americans identify Italian westerns almost completely through those made by Sergio Leone with Clint Eastwood; although there's a big fan base for the rest of the thousand-odd Spaghettis produced since the early 1960s, what we've seen until now have been only wretched pan'n scan cutdowns and redubs of the originals. The tardy appreciation of the genre can be judged by Philip French's comment in his critical 1973 book Westerns, Aspects of a Movie Genre, responding to a list of Italian titles: "... to me (it) reads like a brochure for a season in hell." Anchor Bay released a double bill of two Django films a few seasons back, and now has brought out in close succession Texas Addio, Keoma, and Sergio Corbucci's Vamos a Matar, Compañeros. Savant doesn't have the overview that other reviewers do (see Lee Broughton's Savant essay on The Spaghetti Western Genre for that) but he was informed that Compañeros is considered one of the best, and the height of Corbucci's career. Synopsis: The Mexican revolution. Shoeshine boy Vasco (Tomas Milian) kills a federale officer and is made a Lieutenant by General Mongo (Francisco Bódalo), one of many warring revolutionary warlords. Vasco and Swedish gun salesman Yodlof Pederson (Franco Nero) become unlikely companions when Mongo sends them to Yuma, to liberate authentic revolutionary Xantos (Fernando Rey), a pre-Gandhi preacher of nonviolence imprisoned by American oil interests in the hope of extorting oil leases from him. Vasco and Yodlof successfully spring Xantos and begin an eventful ride back to San Bernardino, Mongo's stronghold. Besides the American Army, the Federales, Mongo's bandits, and Xantos' student revolutionaries, a crazed dope-smoking American named John (Jack Palance) is on their trail. He uses a beloved pet falcon (that once saved his life by chewing off his hand when he was nailed to a cross) to locate his quarry. Some critics credit Sergio Corbucci with 'politicizing' the subgenre. The locale has been shifted from a vague 'West' to revolutionary Mexico, where violent upheaval reigned from before the turn of the century, well into the 1920s. The conflict is a simple one between virtuous Communists and oppressive generals and capitalists. Corbucci's mood is less cynical, and more inclined toward comedy. He seems to have discovered 'radical chic', before it was popularized by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which took its cue from Bonnie & Clyde: We're vicious, lawbreaking killers, but also cute fun-loving innocents fighting an injust system. That means we're really revolutionaries, like, for, you know, freedom. Compañeros co-opts the emotions of the political upheavals being felt across Europe and America at the time, which had fostered the sorry notion that some kind of glorious revolution of justice was imminent. It's too trivializing in its tone to really have anything to say. But it is complicated. And rather simpleminded, too. The evil federales are introduced casually shooting voters who wish to place ballots for other than their approved candidate. The revolutionary warlord Mongo is a phony who sends green recruits like the earthy, profane Vasco to fight his battles. He spouts lots of revolutionary slogans, but is really a mercenary seeking to make a big score and then exit the scene. By contrast,the honest intellectual leader Xantos is presented as an unassailable bastion of wisdom and virtue. His student followers are idealistic, confused, and very young. Finally, Americans are represented through an Army post shown importing prostitutes for the evening, and oil businessmen seeking to profit from the redistribution of power in Mexico. Their main agent is the venal John, a madman more ruthless than anyone. Our buddy-buddy heroes are the 'neutral' gun salesman Yodlaf and the instinctual lowlife Vasco, who of course go through the countless genre-required petty doublecrosses before choosing the side of the virtuous students. In Yodlaf's case it's almost involuntary, but Vasco is charmed by the (naturally) beautiful student leader Zaira (the beautiful Karin Schubert, later in Dymtryk's Bluebeard). Besides the cartoonish stereotyping on view, there are details like John's wooden hand and its backstory that are colorful but don't add much. The radical chic is accompanied by anachronistic attempts to universalize the revolutionary theme. None of the cast seem particularly Mexican. Corbucci gives the students at least one Asian member and costumes them as if they belong on the Paris barricades in 1968. Vasco even wears a beret with a medal, an instant nod to Che Guevara. Is it hip, or just silly?  1 Corbucci's direction is not all that impressive. Scenes are blocked well enough, but annoying zooms and forced compositions are frequent. The comedy direction is broader than broad, and obvious to the point of playing to juveniles. There is plenty of action in the film, guaranteeing a shootout or stunt every few minutes. None of it is very serious, but things never stay calm for long. The acting is broad and basic. Tomas Milian's Mexican peasant (okay, a Basque emigrant) peppers his performance with Italian gestures that destroy any attempt to elicit 1920 Mexico. He does get some good bits in with facial tics and rude grins, but he and Franco Nero seem to have made a deal that Milian gets to mug, while Nero plays cool as his straight man. As usual, Jack Palance is just out of control, grimacing and threatening but frightening nobody. Fernando Rey plays his intellectual sage for quiet sympathy, and is the most consistent of all. One reason Savant hasn't gotten too deep into Spaghettis is the lack of quality once you leave the safe territory of Leone-land. TCM had a festival of Italian Westerns a few months back and it was hard sitting through most of them. Well known titles like Death Rides a Horse turned out to be rather undistinguished, with the same generic situations (operatic revenge, casual cruelty, invincible gunslingers) failing to keep up interest. As a production, Compañeros is fairly elaborate. The Techniscope photography is very attractive, and the whole enterprise is graced with a typically quirky Ennio Morricone score. Even when Spaghettis seem hopeless failures, like Corbucci's Navajo Joe, just listening to the music can get one by. Morricone's main tune for Compañeros is his usual quirky collection of strange noises and lusty vocals, and it peps up the movie whenever it comes belting back to the foreground, which is every time an action scene pops up. Anchor Bay's disc of Compañeros is very, very good-looking. The colors are bright, and the wide image is clean and clear with 16:9 formatting.  2 I watched it with the Italian track, which seemed preferable to the English dub. The docu extra is given over to Milian, Nero, and the composer. Morricone says some very interesting things about the score, but both of the stars have totally unrealistic ideas about the importance of the film and the worth of their performances. Just the same, Spaghetti Western fans are going to enjoy getting such a fine-quality DVD of this oddball Italo oater. On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Compañeros rates: Movie: Good Video: Excellent Sound: Excellent Supplements: Packaging: Amaray case Reviewed: August 16, 2001 Footnotes: 1. Over a year ago, Savant saw a pre-restoration screening at a studio of Sergio Sollima's La Resa de Conti, aka The Big Gundown. Although what we watched was a miserable pastiche print probably shorter than the cut American release, the movie was very 'revolution-themed' years before Corbucci went in his cartoon politics direction. For those who care, Savant was very interested in whether the studio had plans to release a DVD of The Big Gundown, alas, it was just trying to put together a decent copy for foreign TV sales. A technical tale, for those really interested: Being in Techniscope, the half-frame original photography format, the negative for the show was stored (beautifully) in Rome on a bunch of reels. When studio technicians printed the reels to try and sync up the American soundtrack, they found that the Italians in the '60s used a clever method of keeping all of the international versions of the feature together in one negative: the first reel had nothing but main title sequences, five of them, for various languages, one after another. Then the first scene might be intact, but would be followed by five short sequences segue'ing to different second scenes, depending on how the film was cut in a different market. So the negative was three or four times longer than the movie! The Italians had a punch-tape optical printer system that was amazing: The operator would load the first reel of negative, put in the punch tape for the German version, and the printer would skip around the Techniscope reel, printing only those sections that belonged in the German cut! With the punch-tape trick a lost technology, the Studio had to print everything, and sort it out by comparing it to the tattered American release copies they had, and to videotapes. They were first going to create a 'master length' version, as long as the movie could be without repeating scenes, and then do cut downs. This made Savant's mouth water at the possibility of getting some kind of super-length version of the film, in Italian. Unfortunately, all this was done at the HDTV level, so access to it was not practical. As of yet there is still no word of any kind of release of The Big Gundown on American DVD. Return 2. I've read some bulletin board entries about some 'shifting' going on in the image during the show. I noticed nothing like this on my 16:9 monitor. Return [Savant Links] [Article Index] [Review Index] [About Savant] DVD Savant Text © Copyright 2007 Glenn Erickson Go BACK to the Savant Main Page. Return to Top of Page