I recorded this film which I had not heard of before and expected a similar movie to "A Fistful of Dollars" or "The Good,The Bad and The Ugly" but I was in for a surprise as it is more like a "Butch Cassidy & Sundance" film. It is about a group of young bandits who are later joined by a couple of ladies and go around robbing banks and shooting people. The story bounces between serious and farce and contains some pretty good shoot- outs against a group led by Jack Palance who are chasing them. The acting is good although the dubbed voices are obvious, but that is always the case with spaghetti westerns. The big name star Jack Palance should have had no trouble learning his lines for this movie because he probably says no more that half a dozen words and is only seen on screen for probably no more than 7 or 8 minutes (if that!). I quite enjoyed this obscure movie and if you get the chance give it a look.
4 Reviews
Good Late Italian Western, Incredible Cinematography by Storaro
rmahaney424 June 2009
Warning: Spoilers
In the late 1960s and the 1970s, revisionist American westerns re-represented the genre in a more pessimistic, more irreverent, and perhaps more human including The Wild Bunch, The Hired Hand, McCabe and Mrs Miller, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. The American genre had become simply an agglomeration of gestures and conventions which were performed mechanically, without the thematic dynamism which had once made the movies of John Ford and others so compelling. These movies, and similar films like Bonnie and Clyde, influenced the tail-end of the Italian western cycle in films like Keoma, Mannaja, and California. Enzo Castellari even edited Keoma to Bob Dylan's soundtrack from Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid; unfortunately, the soundtrack that the DeAngelis brothers wrote for his own film was terrible. Most of these late Italian westerns are somewhat different than the American ones in that they are often nostalgic for the early years of the western boom. Keoma recreates numerous scenes from Django while California is return to the type of films that Gemma made with Lupo, Tessari, and Gastaldi.Matt Blake (The Cheeseplant, Issue 3) described these movies as having a "strangely dissociated feeling of looking at the spaghetti western genre rather than being a part of it."
Blu gang vissero per sempre felici e ammazzati (The Short and Happy Life of the Brothers Blue) is another one of these late films that has picked up on the flavor of the American revisionist western. Unlike the other Italian and Spanish examples, it is not a nostalgic and self-conscious rehash of early spaghetti westerns but idiosyncratically very close to its American models. Overall, its a decent movie, though marred with a number of sequences which have not aged well. These include a series of 1970s style montages, a naive adulation of an adolescent conception of freedom, and some slightly heavy-handed if fun symbolism. Furthermore, it conforms predictably to the narrative of movies like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Bonnie and Clyde - the free spirit of the West and of youth are doomed as the forces of capitalism and the state close in and smother them. Though filled with populist political rhetoric, this film is really about the end of youth. It is very different from the buoyant optimism in the earlier working class Italian westerns - the revolution is coming and the worker will be elevated. This movie portrays a revolt also, but a much different self-indulgent one. Ultimately, its a little silly. That said, this is still one of the better late spaghetti westerns made a time when the boom was going bust. All considered, it is worthwhile for fans of the genre as well as general viewers.
This is one of the most difficult to find Italian westerns. For years, finding copies of this movie was something of a holy grail for fans of the genre.
Bazzoni and Storaro did an excellent job staging scenes, creatively using color, light, shadow, and angles to make this movie visually appealing. Vitorio Storaro is a legendary cinematographer, noted for his philosophy regarding the color, the use of which is stunning in this film. There is a stunning sequence in a jail with blue light falling through the windows across the profile of Palance which should be one of the iconic images of the genre, up there with the final gunfights in the Dollars movies or of Django dragging his coffin in sea of mud. Storaro's most famous work includes shooting Appocalypse Now and The Last Emporer, for both of which he won Oscars.
Bazzoni's attractive, spaghetti-western style adaptation of Carmen starring Franco Nero is better known (Man, Pride, and Vengeance, 1968), but it is not very emotionally involving. This is the better film. The violence is more realistic than the grand stylizing typical of this Leone-inspired genre and is really effective. While the characters are unequally developed, character is focused on instead the of the dynamics of the plot. The plot is episodic and predictable. As is the case with most genre movies, it is not a question of how it is going to end - we already know the formula (modeled on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). Instead, we are interested in the style, in how it conforms to the formula and how it varies. In this case, the film delivers an interesting variation and so it is satisfying.
Augusto Caminito churned out screenplays for a large number of Italian westerns, especially in 1967-68, including: Turn the Cheek (1974), The Rutheless Four (1968), Poker With Pistols (1967), Days of Vengeance (1967), Django the Last Killer (1966), The Greatest Robbery in the West (1967), and Pecos Cleans Up (1967).
Jack Palance is top-billed, but he does not really do much except stand around and look really cool.
Top spaghetti western list http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21849907
Average SWs http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21849889
For completest only (bottom of the barrel) http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21849890
Blu gang vissero per sempre felici e ammazzati (The Short and Happy Life of the Brothers Blue) is another one of these late films that has picked up on the flavor of the American revisionist western. Unlike the other Italian and Spanish examples, it is not a nostalgic and self-conscious rehash of early spaghetti westerns but idiosyncratically very close to its American models. Overall, its a decent movie, though marred with a number of sequences which have not aged well. These include a series of 1970s style montages, a naive adulation of an adolescent conception of freedom, and some slightly heavy-handed if fun symbolism. Furthermore, it conforms predictably to the narrative of movies like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Bonnie and Clyde - the free spirit of the West and of youth are doomed as the forces of capitalism and the state close in and smother them. Though filled with populist political rhetoric, this film is really about the end of youth. It is very different from the buoyant optimism in the earlier working class Italian westerns - the revolution is coming and the worker will be elevated. This movie portrays a revolt also, but a much different self-indulgent one. Ultimately, its a little silly. That said, this is still one of the better late spaghetti westerns made a time when the boom was going bust. All considered, it is worthwhile for fans of the genre as well as general viewers.
This is one of the most difficult to find Italian westerns. For years, finding copies of this movie was something of a holy grail for fans of the genre.
Bazzoni and Storaro did an excellent job staging scenes, creatively using color, light, shadow, and angles to make this movie visually appealing. Vitorio Storaro is a legendary cinematographer, noted for his philosophy regarding the color, the use of which is stunning in this film. There is a stunning sequence in a jail with blue light falling through the windows across the profile of Palance which should be one of the iconic images of the genre, up there with the final gunfights in the Dollars movies or of Django dragging his coffin in sea of mud. Storaro's most famous work includes shooting Appocalypse Now and The Last Emporer, for both of which he won Oscars.
Bazzoni's attractive, spaghetti-western style adaptation of Carmen starring Franco Nero is better known (Man, Pride, and Vengeance, 1968), but it is not very emotionally involving. This is the better film. The violence is more realistic than the grand stylizing typical of this Leone-inspired genre and is really effective. While the characters are unequally developed, character is focused on instead the of the dynamics of the plot. The plot is episodic and predictable. As is the case with most genre movies, it is not a question of how it is going to end - we already know the formula (modeled on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). Instead, we are interested in the style, in how it conforms to the formula and how it varies. In this case, the film delivers an interesting variation and so it is satisfying.
Augusto Caminito churned out screenplays for a large number of Italian westerns, especially in 1967-68, including: Turn the Cheek (1974), The Rutheless Four (1968), Poker With Pistols (1967), Days of Vengeance (1967), Django the Last Killer (1966), The Greatest Robbery in the West (1967), and Pecos Cleans Up (1967).
Jack Palance is top-billed, but he does not really do much except stand around and look really cool.
Top spaghetti western list http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21849907
Average SWs http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21849889
For completest only (bottom of the barrel) http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=21849890
Jack Palance's easiest paycheck...
Bezenby3 November 2015
Warning: Spoilers
The entire proper title is a spoiler so don't complain. Also, if you looking for this one (and it's referred to here as a 'holy grail' of spaghetti westerns) I recorded it off of TCM so keep an eye out for it there.
Basic premise: It's a spaghetti western about a bunch of young bank robbers and such like. It really does feel for the most part a bit more aligned with American post-modern Western than Western All'Italia, but then the cinematography is pure Italian bliss.
What we have here is four robbers (two of the brothers) out to rob banks and make money while sticking it to the bank for doing something or other to their father. It's a bit Bonnie and Clyde when this chick gets involved and also reminded me of that film with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Bitch Scumdance and Billy the Cad? I don't know American films.
As for Jack Palance? He does nothing. NOTHING! He speaks one line at the end of the film and I guess was meant to represent death as this film was made by Luigi Bazzoni, who made Footprints on the Moon, which is a rather arty giallo type film. You know Italian cinema. Something always got to represent something.
This is a good film and well worth a watch. Nice soundtrack too.
Basic premise: It's a spaghetti western about a bunch of young bank robbers and such like. It really does feel for the most part a bit more aligned with American post-modern Western than Western All'Italia, but then the cinematography is pure Italian bliss.
What we have here is four robbers (two of the brothers) out to rob banks and make money while sticking it to the bank for doing something or other to their father. It's a bit Bonnie and Clyde when this chick gets involved and also reminded me of that film with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Bitch Scumdance and Billy the Cad? I don't know American films.
As for Jack Palance? He does nothing. NOTHING! He speaks one line at the end of the film and I guess was meant to represent death as this film was made by Luigi Bazzoni, who made Footprints on the Moon, which is a rather arty giallo type film. You know Italian cinema. Something always got to represent something.
This is a good film and well worth a watch. Nice soundtrack too.
Butch and Sundance, the Spaghetti Years.
hitchcockthelegend2 January 2014
Blu Gang e vissero per sempre felici e ammazzati (The Short and Happy Life of the Brothers Blue) is directed by Marc Meyer (AKA: Luigi Bazzoni) and written by Augusto Caminito. It stars Guido Mannari, Tina Aumont, Antonio Falsi, Jack Palance, Maurizio Bonuglia, Paul Jabara and Guido Lollobrigida. Filmed in Technospes Color, with music by Tony Renis and cinematography by Vittorio Storaro.
Determined bank guard Hillman (Palance) pursues the bank robbing Brothers Blue across the years as they make merry hell with care free abandon.
Strange Spaghetti Western that takes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, sprinkles in some Bonnie and Clyde seasoning and finally dresses it up with a Peckinpah and Altman sauce. For the most part it struggles to make all the parts work, where quite often director Bazzoni gets confused as to just what sort of film he is making. However, some of the visual flourishes are worth the time spent with the movie, be it the shifts into black and white for reflective passages of the gang's life, or the use of slow motion and angled techniques, it's a picture not without technical merit.
It also features violence that hits the right notes by not being over grandiose and ridiculous, the makers clearly aiming for, and getting, a balletic quality to the carnage as the corruption and arrogance of youth in the Wild West is laid bare. Renis' musical score is, different, but pleasing, and the cast perform adequately as per the screenplay. Palance, it should be noted, is more a peripheral character, he's the cool looking sniper adorned ghost out in the wilderness hunting his prey, his dialogue and screen time minimal, so fans of his should not expect a "Palance" movie.
Fascinating Spaghetti Western that nods to its American Revisionist cousins, but ultimately it bites off more than it can chew. 6/10
Determined bank guard Hillman (Palance) pursues the bank robbing Brothers Blue across the years as they make merry hell with care free abandon.
Strange Spaghetti Western that takes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, sprinkles in some Bonnie and Clyde seasoning and finally dresses it up with a Peckinpah and Altman sauce. For the most part it struggles to make all the parts work, where quite often director Bazzoni gets confused as to just what sort of film he is making. However, some of the visual flourishes are worth the time spent with the movie, be it the shifts into black and white for reflective passages of the gang's life, or the use of slow motion and angled techniques, it's a picture not without technical merit.
It also features violence that hits the right notes by not being over grandiose and ridiculous, the makers clearly aiming for, and getting, a balletic quality to the carnage as the corruption and arrogance of youth in the Wild West is laid bare. Renis' musical score is, different, but pleasing, and the cast perform adequately as per the screenplay. Palance, it should be noted, is more a peripheral character, he's the cool looking sniper adorned ghost out in the wilderness hunting his prey, his dialogue and screen time minimal, so fans of his should not expect a "Palance" movie.
Fascinating Spaghetti Western that nods to its American Revisionist cousins, but ultimately it bites off more than it can chew. 6/10
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