A stranger with no name

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Movie
German title A stranger with no name
Original title High Plains Drifters
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1973
length 105 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Clint Eastwood
script Ernest Tidyman
production Robert Daley
music Dee Barton
camera Bruce Surtees
cut Ferris Webster
occupation

A Stranger Without a Name is a 1973 American western . Clint Eastwood is the director and leading actor . The film describes the revenge of a nameless gunslinger on his brother's murderers.

action

A nameless stranger comes to a small gold mining town . After provocations, he shoots three gunslingers who interfered with his shave, and rapes a woman who had berated and beaten him. Despite or because of this violence, the city's residents hire him to protect them from three feared criminals. The residents of the place are afraid.

More is shown in retrospect: The announced criminals were once employed as gunslingers by the owners of the local gold mine to protect them. The mine stood on state land and was therefore illegal. That was known to the local marshal . When he threatened to make the information public, he was whipped to death by the trio without any of the residents intervening - but everyone was watching. The three gunslingers grew bolder and bolder and seized the mine’s gold reserves until they were finally sent to prison. The three vowed to return for revenge.

Those three other gunslingers whom the stranger killed at the beginning were also there to protect the town's residents. And they too had quickly noticed that the town was a place full of cowards, which is why they behaved so badly that one was relieved when the stranger shot them.

As the new protector, endowed with every imaginable authority, the stranger resort to increasingly unusual means to humiliate the residents. He makes Mordecai, a short man , sheriff and mayor (who, however, saves his life in the finale). He also instructs people to paint all the houses red, to hang a banner at the entrance to the city that reads “Welcome home boys” and to organize a picnic to give the expected criminals a proper reception. So exposed and made aware of their own ineptitude, a few citizens want to kill the stranger, but pay for this plan with their lives.

When the three gunslingers finally approach, the stranger deliberately stays in the background and leaves the residents to their fate. In the end, the place has a number of residents less, but the three criminals are killed by the stranger.

After his work is done, the stranger rides away again. In the cemetery he meets Mordecai, who is in the process of repairing the grave of the murdered marshal. When asked who he is, the stranger replies that he is the marshal's brother. In the original language version, the viewer is not informed in this way, but can only make assumptions about the identity. However, the last shot of the film shows the stranger suddenly disappearing in the haze of the plain. In the previous shot, you could see the inscription “Marshal Jim Duncan Rest in Peace” on the tombstone. Together with the information from an earlier part of the film that according to a legend, the dead without a proper tombstone can never find peace, one can conclude that it was the marshal himself who took his revenge here. Now that his grave has been properly marked with his name, he can rest in peace and disappears into the shimmering heat while riding away.

background

The fact that the title character is the brother of the murdered marshal is an alienation of the story caused by the German version . (However, Clint Eastwood said in an interview for Inside the Actors Studio that in earlier versions of the script the stranger was actually the brother of the marshal.) In the original one can only speculate. There the stranger replied to the dwarf sheriff, when he later engraved the name of the long-dead marshal on the grave plaque, when asked about his name ("I never did know your name") with a "Yes, you do". The title character even has memories of the murder of the marshal, and so one could even assume that the marshal has returned from the dead to seek revenge, because how can the brother added by the German version have such memories? Due to this circumstance in the German version, the figure loses part of its mythical character as an angel of vengeance, which it receives through the shadowy appearance and disappearance at the beginning and at the end of the film.

In this film, Eastwood once again varies the type of the taciturn, cynical and nameless loner, a character that is actually atypical of Westerns of American origin. In its design and the figure drawing of the anti-heroic title role , the stripe is clearly influenced by the spaghetti western , which in 1973 clearly outstripped the American representatives of this genre. It can also be seen as an homage to the directors to whom Clint Eastwood owed its popularity and success. On a poster photo for the film, the "stranger" can therefore be seen with two gravestones bearing the names of Sergio Leone and Don Siegel . However, this scene does not appear in the film itself.

Locations

Mono Lake , California , USA . Eastwood had a fully functional village built on the lakeshore for the film and won out against the producers who wanted the film to be shot entirely in the studio by choosing the location.

Reviews

The Lexicon of International Films writes: “Westerns by and with Clint Eastwood, staged in a straight line and beautifully photographed. Eastwood is working on his myth: he is the opaque, lonely avenger, cold-blooded, cynical and brutal. The law of the thumb in the service of men's morality. "

Joe Hembus argues that Eastwood shot a stranger without a name Leones for a handful of dollars in his own way; The film is thus "a fascinating footnote to the history of Sergio Leone's impact." It drives "everything, and above all everything morbid and baroque, to its climax." The stranger without a name is "actually Jesus Christ , crucified, buried, but immortal: resurrected to hold the Last Judgment without hesitation, but observing all rituals . "

Phil Hardy notes that the film is "one of the most exciting and mysterious westerns of the 1970s." Eastwood works "with Leone-esque flashbacks, " mimicking "Leone's most mannerist style," but the twists that Eastwood gives the material are " entirely his own ”. The result is a "delightfully self-confident, formalized and abstract work."

Home theater publication

The first release was already at the end of the 1970s, before VHS and DVD, by Universal Eight (subsidiary of Universal) in the then common Super 8 format with a total length of approx. 35 minutes (cut version); in Germany this version was released by Piccolo Film in Munich with German magnetic sound. This version is now one of the coveted rarities among the remaining Super 8 feature film collectors.

At the end of June 2017, the film was removed from the index in Germany.

literature

  • Marcus Stiglegger: A Stranger Without a Name - High Plains Drifter in Film Genres - Western / Ed. By B. Kiefer u. N. Grob with the collaboration of M. Stiglegger. Reclam junior, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-15-018402-9 ; Ss. 322-325

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for A Stranger Without a Name . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ A stranger with no name. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ^ Joe Hembus: Western Lexicon - 1272 films from 1894-1975. Carl Hanser Verlag Munich Vienna 2nd edition 1977. ISBN 3-446-12189-7 . P. 150
  4. ^ Phil Hardy: The Encyclopedia of Western Movies. Woodbury Press Minneapolis 1984. ISBN 0-8300-0405-X . P. 338
  5. ↑ A stranger with no name at super8rezensions.de
  6. ↑ schnittberichte.com, accessed on June 30, 2017