Keoma - The Song of Death

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Movie
German title Keoma - The Song of Death
Original title Keoma
Country of production Italy
original language English
Publishing year 1976
length 97 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Enzo G. Castellari
script Enzo G. Castellari
Nico Ducci
production Manolo Bolognini
music Guido & Maurizio De Angelis , texts: Susan Duncan-Smith and Cesare De Natale
camera Aiace Parolin
cut Gianfranco Amicucci
occupation

Keoma - The Song of Death from 1976 is one of the last classic spaghetti westerns . Director Enzo G. Castellari staged genre star Franco Nero ten years after his appearance as Django again as a taciturn avenger.

The film was sold in German-speaking countries under the titles Keoma - Melodie des Sterbens , Keoma - Melodie des Todes , Keoma - A man like a tornado and Coolman Keoma (heavily shortened video version) . In the USA the film was released under the name Django rides again .

action

After a massacre of Indians, William Shannon finds the little Indian boy Keoma, a half-breed , as the only survivor and takes him into his care as his son. After Keoma had fought in the civil war as an adult , he returned to his homeland.

The city is in the hands of Caldwell, a former southern officer who is using a smallpox epidemic to terrorize the city with his bandits. On the side of the bandits are Keomas three stepbrothers who have despised Keoma since childhood. Keoma frees Lisa, a pregnant woman, from a trek that brings sick and unwanted residents from the city to a guarded mine, where they are supposed to die without medical help.

Keoma, along with his stepfather and old paternal friend George, a released black man, tries to rid the city of Caldwell's bandits. When Caldwell kills the stepfather in cold blood in front of Keomas, the stepbrothers Keomas stand against the bandits and kill Caldwell. You blame Keoma for his father's death and take over the running of the city. With the help of the pregnant woman, Keoma is able to escape, but has to kill his three stepbrothers in a final shootout. This takes place parallel to the birth of Lisa's child, during which the old woman (death) provides obstetrics. Lisa dies in childbirth and Keoma leaves the newborn boy to the old woman and moves on.

Idea, script and dialogues

The idea for Keoma came from screenwriter and actor Luigi Montefiori (aka George Eastman). The script worked out by Nico Ducci was almost completely rewritten by Enzo G. Castellari during the shooting. Joshua Sinclair (actor of Sam Shannon) and partially Franco Nero (Keoma) acted as dialogue authors.

Staging

The staging of Keoma ( Indian for "far away" or "avenging angel") takes, according to director Enzo G. Castellari , bonds a. a. in the Old and New Testament (the prodigal son, the healing of leprosy sufferers, crucifixion, rebirth), in Shakespeare's King Lear , Hamlet , Macbeth and in Ingmar Bergman and his films The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries . In addition, Castellari adapted the content and motifs of well-known American westerns , similar to Sergio Leone in Spiel mir das Lied vom Tod (1968). In addition, Castellari also quotes spaghetti westerns, so u. a. the first saloon sequence from Corbucci's Django (1966) or Woody Strode's shooting from Django - The Night of the Long Knives (1970).

With the figure of the old woman pulling a wooden cart full of belongings behind her, Castellari personalizes death as Keoma's omnipresent companion. Death spares Keoma as a child (Keoma survives the massacre), he receives Keoma on his return home; death moves into town in his cart, he appears to Keoma as a omen (announcement of the approaching death of George) and as a warning conscience (Keoma strangles one of Caldwell's bandits in the dark); death eventually even becomes a midwife and nanny.

The background story of Keoma's childhood is told in flashbacks , some of which are integrated into the film's present time without cuts. This will u. a. achieved by the adult keoma walking as a silent observer within his own childhood episodes; Ingmar Bergman also used this trick in Wild Strawberries . At the reunion with his brothers a different flashback technique is used. Here, short shots of similar scenes from childhood are cut into the ongoing action. It is also unique that Castellari allows the first of the numerous flashbacks to take place within the introductory sequence - that is, before the opening credits.

Castellari also uses the rare assembly technology of the front panel , so u. a. to depict the moral decline of the three stepbrothers Keomas. "His (= Castellaris) film is a puzzle of flashbacks and flashes ahead, a patchwork of memories and premonitions ..."

Psychological background

Keoma helps the pregnant Lisa, whose husband was killed because, as he says: "Your child has the right to live." His own stepfather took him in for precisely this reason.

The three brothers never got over the fact that their father viewed Keoma as his fourth son. Because of this rejection, however, the father felt he had to take more care of Keoma. As a result, the brothers felt increasingly neglected by their beloved father. When their father is shot by Caldwell, they take revenge on the murderer, but at the same time they declare Keoma, who was "crucified" on a wagon wheel by Caldwell's assistant, guilty. They want a judge to come. If they can't kill him themselves, they want a judge to find him guilty.

Image composition

Castellari uses a number of prominent pictorial means, which on the one hand quote western classics and on the other hand take up the tradition of experimental staging in spaghetti westerns. This “declaration of love to cinematography” shows up among other things. a. in the staging of the violence. Many of the people falling to the ground are shown in slow motion shots , which are cut in alternation with shots of normal speed. This stylistic device made Sam Peckinpah popular in The Wild Bunch .

Furthermore, unusual angles are often used. For example, Castellari shows B. Keoma and his father shooting from behind the target. The two only become visible after a few hits. In a similar shot, four Caldwell bandits are initially covered by Keoma's outstretched fingers, before they are "released to be shot" by the viewer by counting from one to four - finger by finger.

It is also noticeable that Castellari consistently “releases” or “frames” his protagonists by using objects that are out of focus in the foreground and thus emphasize them. Castellari der Western Southwest to Sonora (1965) by Sidney J. Furie served as a template for this . In addition Castellari placed in many settings of the film image determining motives of the left or right-fifth Techniscope -Breitwandbildes ( framing ), so unusually far to the side. These include u. a. the very first take of the film (Keoma rides into the abandoned city) as well as a 3-minute 180-degree tracking shot around Keoma and his father (removed from the German theatrical version). In widescreen fiction films, subjects that are important to the picture are usually placed in the middle three fifths of the widescreen picture.

Many of the plan sequences of the film were realized with the handheld camera without using the camera truck . Here Castellari led the Techniscope - Arriflex camera itself Thus, the dialog hectic change of three brothers on the ranch of the father in a single setting is as a result of. Whip pan staged and thus "cut into the camera" quasi. Elsewhere, Castellari moves the handheld camera 270 ° around Keoma's head, while Keoma waits for the attack by Caldwell's gang.

Due to the special image design, the Museum of Modern Art ( MoMA ) has a copy of the film in its collection. On the occasion of a screening, Keoma was announced by one of the curators as the "stylistically most impressive western". The series shown at the time was overseen by, among others, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino , both great admirers of the film.

Sets and outdoor shots

The sets were designed by Carlo Simi , who had previously performed this function for all of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. This was u. a. The western set from the Elios studios east of Rome, which has been unused for years and already used for Sergio Corbucci's Ringo with the golden pistols (1965) and Django (1966), is available. In order to give the mining town in the film (“Skidoo City”) a particularly neglected look, Simi covered the already badly dilapidated set with scrap metal and machine parts. In addition, artificial wind, dust, fog or rain were used. The opening sequence (Keoma meets death) and the final duel were filmed in an - even more dilapidated - small western set near Palestrina , around 50 km east of Rome.

Almost all of the landscape shots - such as the riding scenes of Keoma and the Caldwell gang, the hearse rides through the canyon, the hiding place in the rock cave, the attack by the three Shannon brothers, etc. v. a. - were filmed in a road canyon on the Campo Imperatore plateau in the Italian Abruzzo . The Gran Sasso d'Italia range can often be seen in the background .

This rather European-looking film location was rarely used for spaghetti westerns. Exterior shots were usually shot on the Cabo de Gata peninsula or north of Almería (both Andalusia ). There the landscape is very similar to the southwest of the USA ( Arizona , New Mexico ).

music

Castellari was inspired by the music of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen's score for McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) while editing the film . Castellari therefore commissioned the film composers Guido & Maurizio De Angelis to orientate themselves on the Cohen songs.

The De Angelis then created a ballad-like score track reminiscent of Bänkelsang , in which a bass and especially a female soprano voice ( Sybil & Guy ) accompany and comment on the film. The female voice is very reminiscent of Joan Baez . The sometimes unclean intonation and the noticeable accent of the two voices are unusual.

Shortened German theatrical version

The German theatrical version was shortened at the time for marketing reasons and primarily reduced to "Action", which is also indicated by the lurid additional titles of the film (e.g. "Melodie des Sterbens"). Most of the flashbacks fell victim to the scissors.

In the German theatrical version, the following scenes are missing or have been severely cut:

  • Flashback: Keoma considers himself a little boy while being beaten up by his three stepbrothers.
  • Flashback: William Shannon introduces the adopted Keoma to his three biological sons.
  • Flashback: The three stepbrothers walk around Keoma and abuse him.
  • Flashback: William Shannon lifts the orphan Keoma onto his horse and hugs him.
  • A two-minute dialogue between Keoma and his father in front of his ranch
  • The doctor returns to town with a cart full of medicines.
  • Sam Shannon charges Keoma, who is tied to the wagon wheel.

DVD edition

The DVD editions by Anchor-Bay and Kinowelt contain all the scenes that were previously cut in the German theatrical version; the sound was left in the original English. In addition, the two DVD editions contain an English-language audio commentary by Enzo G. Castellari (in conversation with Waylon Wahl ) as well as a ten-minute feature about Franco Nero and the production of Keoma.

reception

  • The film creates a successful synthesis of US late-westerns and the topoi of the spaghetti western. Formally above average, prominent spaghetti westerns, in which poetic and violent sequences alternate. A late high point of the genre.
  • Keoma, one of the last examples of a cinematic period of the manic before the age of irony.
  • Keoma is a ... bold mixture of western revenge, apocalyptic end-time vision and Christian passion play. Strong parallels to Jesus can be seen in Keoma: Keoma, too, is crucified (on a wagon wheel) and, although believed dead, rises from the dead.

Kind of a continuation

In his late work The Revenge of the White Indian (1993), which is based on The Dance with the Wolf (1990) , Castellari revisits the figure and many of Keoma’s film design motifs . a. the staging of flashbacks within uncut shots of the present time. The title role, an orphan raised by bears and Indians, is played by Franco Nero . However, the film was a commercial failure and never even hit theaters in Germany.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Enzo G. Castellari : Keoma . Audio commentary on the Kinowelt DVD
  2. ↑ Interview with Enzo G. Castellari in Splatting Image
  3. ↑ a b c d Hans Schifferle: Bänkelsang of death . In: Studienkreis Film (ed.): The breath of death blows around them: the spaghetti westerns - the story of a genre . Bochum: Schnitt, 1998. ISBN 3-9806313-0-3
  4. ^ Thomas Groh: Keoma - Melody of dying. A masterpiece of the late Spaghetti Western . In: Jump Cut Magazine
  5. ↑ Keoma - The Song of Death. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  6. ↑ Michael Kraus: Once Upon a Time in the West! 180 selected Italian and Euro westerns . Anzing, 1998