Character Profile: Douglas Mortimer

When discussing Leone's wonderful "Dollars Trilogy" the obvious character to discuss is Clint Eastwood's role as the memorable anti-hero we've come to know and love as "The Man With No Name", but instead I've decided to shift focus to a slightly different character. When discussing Lee Van Cleef's performances in these films, the obvious choice to bring up is the ruthless villain Angel Eyes in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but let's look instead at his role in the second installment of the series: For a Few Dollars More.

This is certainly a film that likes to mess with your expectations and there is no clearer example than the Lee Van Cleef's performance of Douglas Mortimer. From the moment we first see him you'd be forgiven for assuming he was going to be the main villain. The fact that he has a habit of dressing in all black doesn't help, but the first thing we see him do is force a train to make an unscheduled stop just so he can get off.

It isn't a very pleasant thing to do, but if you pay attention he never actually causes any serious harm. He never forces anyone at gunpoint or resort to any drastic measures. He simply pulls the emergency break and gets off as soon as the train stops. It's small but it is a little clue that he is not who he initially seems.

Once in town the man is ruthless. He forces a man into revealing information about an outlaw's whereabouts and proceeds to gun him down in the street. He makes plans to track down other outlaws and is especially entranced by a wanted poster for the film's real villain, El Indio and the money offered for him dead or alive.

In the town of El Paso there are hints that he's in league with Indio, with him apparently understanding their plans to rob a highly fortified bank. In fact at the same time as the bad guys are counting the seconds it takes for the security patrol to complete one move around the building he is making the same observations. He seems like a cold-blooded killer desiring nothing but money, right? Wrong.

As we eventually discover, Mortimer may in fact by the most honest man in the film, and the closest person to having a truly noble cause. Once the plot starts to get going, he gets his first confrontation with Manco (the nickname given to Clint Eastwood's character in this film). During this confrontation they quickly prove to each other that they are both a force to be reckoned with (hey, it takes a lot of nerve to be able to hold your own in a gunfight against the Man With No Name) and become what might be considered worthy opponents.

They get pretty friendly with each other, having a drink and sharing information, but one gets the sense Mortimer is an experienced man. He says he's around 50 years old and it's implied he has been working as a bounty hunter for some time. He knows the job inside and out and already knows ahead of time the risks he's about to face and the best way to minimize them. This creates a sharp contrast to our hero, who is much younger and a lot more aggressive.

The partnership between Manco and Mortimer is one that becomes very strenuous, and is really only solidified when circumstances necessitate the two to work together when they're both living among Indio's gang (after all, they can trust each other a lot more than anyone else in their immediate vicinity). However, one thing you may notice is that while Manco tries to get out of it several times and even makes attempts to double-cross his partner, Mortimer always sticks to it. He remains loyal to his comrade and never shows any indication to the contrary.

In the end, Mortimer even shows his respect for Manco by allowing him to keep the reward for Indio himself, his gang, and returning the money they stole. However, this is not simply a generous move on his part but because his reasons for going after Indio were far more personal. As it turns out, Indio murdered his sister's lover and then raped her, which led to her committing suicide.

At first it seems Mortimer is just a cold-blooded scoundrel interested in money, but that ultimately had nothing to do with it. The whole reason he was so keen to get Indio was because he was rightfully angry with the man and wanted revenge. He's not doing it for himself, but for the sister he presumably loved dearly. Contrast with Manco's clearly money-centric incentive, and suddenly he seems a far more noble man.

Of course, given this is a Leone western you can hardly expect Mortimer to be a perfect human being. He is still a bounty hunter who kills without remorse, but in the long run, he is the closest person the film has to an honest man. He has a moral code and he sticks to it, and while he may be a killer his motivations extend far beyond a mere desire for a few dollars more.

Duck, You Sucker!... Or Maybe Don't

Sergio Leone had a very small (though influential) body of work, but there are a few films of his that tend to be overlooked. Many forget his (uncredited) directorial debut in The Last Days of Pompeii as well as the feature that followed: The Colossus of Rhodes. Those two were followed by Leone taking a job working on a cheap spaghetti western to make up for the studio's previous failure, which would become A Fistful of Dollars and which in turn would become such a success that Leone was launched to fame and given incresingly larger budgets with which to make For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. He then went on to direct Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America.

There is one movie I left out of that description. It is an easy one to forget of Leone's known in English by one of two different titles: Duck, You Sucker or A Fistful of Dynamite (even DVD copies tend to print both titles). If you've been to my YouTube Channel you may have heard of this film, in which case I'd imagine the first thing you'd think of is John Mallory's relentless determination to blow up Hitler for no readily apparent reason.

But what of the original movie? The parodies are hilarious but let's look at the film as Leone originally intended it. Rod Steiger plays the role of Juan Miranda: a Mexican bandit trying to provide for his family who is really only as rough as he is because it's the only way to survive.

James Coburn plays the role of John Mallory, an Irish demolitions expert who has a tendency to blow things up (though it is taken up a few notches in the parodies). He also has a dark past involving a friend who betrayed him, which becomes a major impact on his actions in the present.

Both men cross paths in the midst of the Mexican revolution, and team up to rob a bank. However, that plan soon takes an unexpected turn and Juan finds himself forced to join the Mexican rebels. Most of the movie centers around the relationship between these two characters: a sort of uneasy friendship that develops between them (though they're not above double crossing each other).

When you get down to it, the whole movie is really about deconstructing the concept of a "revolution". The Mexican revolution provides a backdrop, but at its core it's really about the ethics of revolutions in general. Revolutions are violent and ultimately never justified. Even if the people conducting the revolution have noble intentions, thousands of people will die for nothing, and ultimately the rebels seem no better than the oppressive government they are fighting against. There's even a really good scene where Juan pretty much sums up the whole theme of the movie:

There's no doubt the movie can be pretty disturbing at times, especially in the second half when we really start to see the darker side of revolutions. It does take a strong stomach to sit through the scenes of mass executions by firing squad.

From a technical standpoint, Duck, You Sucker! is also a pretty well-done movie. Coburn and Steiger do play well off of each other, the action scenes are appropriately tense, and the darker scenes can get pretty emotional. As you might expect from a Sergio Leone film, we also get a great soundtrack by Ennio Morricone, some very interesting ways to utilize sound to different effects, and plenty of great landscapes. It is definitely an underrated film of his, and one worth checking out, so don't duck, you sucker, or you might miss it!

Why I Love Westerns

I've been saying a lot of negative things lately and doing a few hateful reviews, so I decided for this one to do something a bit more positive and look at something I like. As you may have already figured out I'm quite fond of the science fiction genre, but I've decided here to look at another area in which I have a certain appreciation for. That area is the Western.

It's hard to say just what it is about the Western that I enjoy. It's a genre that can be simultaneously formulaic and unpredictable. Usually you have some idea what you're getting into. You know there's probably going to be a showdown of some sort, though you can't be sure if it's going to be a one-on-one shootout between the hero and the villain (as in For a Few Dollars More, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Blazing Saddles, and Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead), a three-way Mexican stand-off (the famous climax of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, helped by the incredible music of Ennio Morricone), a survival course past numerous outlaws in order to get to the station before your train arrives (both versions of 3:10 to Yuma) a tense fight that goes on to include most if not all of the main cast (the shootout near the end of Rio Bravo), our heroes are going to be hopelessly outgunned but go out in a blaze of glory (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) or they're going to subvert your expeditions and skip any kind of showdown all together (as in No Country for Old Men and Red River, although both by very different means).

One of the most memorable showdowns in any Western.

Despite being a very formulaic genre, the Western does also seem to lend itself to a variety of memorable and lovable characters. From Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name" to John Wayne as Chance in Rio Bravo to Bart in Blazing Saddles and his best friend Jim (most people call him... Jim) to the mysterious heroine of Raimi's The Quick and the Dead, not to mention Rooster Cogburn and Mattie Ross in both versions of True Grit.

How could we discuss Westerns without bringing up Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name"?

John Wayne in Red River memorably shifts back and forth between hero, anti-hero, and villain.

The Dude in an eye patch. What's not to love?

It's not just the heroes either. For every good Western you need not just a great hero but also a great villain to stand in their way. There's plenty of those to go around: Lee Van Cleef as Angel Eyes in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Henry Fonda as Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West (a role cast specifically to surprise audiences expecting him to play the hero), Harvey Korman as Hedy Hedley Lamarr in Blazing Saddles, and John Wayne as Tom Dunson in Red River.

The interactions between Hedley Lamarr and his right hand man Taggart are a source of comedic gold in Blazing Saddles.

I can't understand a word this guy says, but dang it his rousing speech in Authentic Frontier Gibberish is just so inspiring.

Then of course we've often got the impressive landscapes to enjoy. They vary between movies but usually in a Western you can expect to see plenty of desert, which allows for some excellent scenery. 

The very first shot of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly we get an impressive landscape shot only for some outlaw to shove his ugly mug in front of the camera.

Even a modern Western like No Country For Old Men can't avoid the incredible desert landscapes.

Perhaps the interesting thing about Westerns is the fact that they play a significant role in film history. After all, one of the most significant early motion pictures was Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery. Contrary to popular belief, this was not the first motion picture to tell a story (that area had already been explored by Georges Méliès, most famously in A Trip to the Moon a year earlier). However, it was significant in being one of the first to explore then-revolutionary editing techniques such as crosscutting.

This scene might not look like much now, but when audiences first saw it 1903 they thought they were actually about to get shot.

Of course naturally it should hardly be a surprise that some of the biggest directors have made Westerns at some point. John Ford's name became synonymous with the Western, Howard Hawks is know to have done at least two great ones (Red River and Rio Bravo). Even one of my all-time favorite directors, Sergio Leone made a career primarily of making Spaghetti Westerns. In the present day we have people like The Coen Brothers (most memorably No Country for Old Men and True Grit, with some Western influence clearly present in The Big Lebowski). Another of my favorite directors, John Carpenter, even made his 1998 film Vampires because the script seemed to resemble a Western and you can certainly see that in the film's frequent use of desert landscapes and ghost towns.

My Favorite Directors

As a cinema enthusiast, I often get asked a certain set of questions. One of the most common ones is "what's your favorite director?" This is a question I get asked a lot and don't really have a definitive answer to, so usually I have to start listing the directors I like. I thought it might be worthwhile to compile some of my personal favorites into a list. I was thinking about doing a "top ten"-style list but I'm not going to rank them.

Since there's a lot of directors I like it would be hard to go into all of them, so for the purposes of this list, I'm going to focus specifically on those who I feel have had the strongest impact. For each, I also think I'll include a particular favorite of that director's work. I have selected four of which to discuss. I do present a fairly diverse body of work for each, though there may be some limitations (all of them are white men and only one is not American)

Also, some of you may be surprised to find out that Alfred Hitchcock is not on this list.

John Carpenter

 This is a character I might have been completely indifferent to if not for a specific project I did in High School examining his work. Carpenter also has a unique place on this list, as he is currently the only one of these directors I have actually had the opportunity to meet.

Carpenter is an interesting character with an extremely diverse range of work. He is often recognized as the "Master of Horror" but there is really so much more to him than that. He has done some excellent horror work (and in fact one of my favorite films of his fits into the horror genre), but he has also made some interesting action films, science fiction, comedy, and romance. In fact ironically my least favorite movie of his is Halloween, followed by The Fog (which I don't hate quite as much but still feel is weaker compared to some of Carpenter's other films), but barring those two exceptions there has never really been a film of his I can honestly say I didn't enjoy: even Ghosts of Mars and Escape From L.A.

I suppose what I like about Carpenter is his diversity. Though he is best known for his horror movies he enjoys trying out different things. 

The Thing

I like most of Carpenter's movies but The Thing has a tendency to stand out for me. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what makes this particular film work: between the solid acting with only two big stars (the others aren't completely unknown, but certainly aren't as well-known as Kurt Russell or Keith David), the brilliant special effects, the claustrophobic atmosphere, the total sense of paranoia that these men endure. It is a rare case of a remake that may actually have improved on its predecessor (The Thing From Another World is a decent movie in it's own right, but is also quite a bit different). 

Stanley Kubrick

2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey is one that often comes up when I'm talking about movies. This isn't just, in my opinion at least, Kubrick's ultimate masterpiece, but also one of my all-time favorite movies. In fact, this film may have had one of the most significant impacts on me, as it is possibly the movie that got me interested in cinema to begin with.

I could go on about everything that makes this film so great: the scientific realism, the visuals, the soundtrack. 

Sergio Leone

I'm not normally a huge fan of foreign cinema. I had to watch Fellini's 8½ in cinema studies class and found it to be kinda frustrating and confusing. Sergio Leone, however, is an example of Italian cinema at its finest. He really only made seven movies (eight if you include his uncredited work on The Last Days of Pompeii), one of which (The Colossus of Rhodes) has more or less faded into obscurity, and all but one of the rest were spaghetti Westerns. 

What makes him interesting is how he handled his Westerns, not being confined to the formulaic structure of classical Hollywood. This gave him the opportunities to play with conventions in ways even John Ford (an earlier director known for his Westerns) could never imagine. To provide a simple example is the famous "quick-draw" move displayed by Clint Eastwood, which has been repeatedly copied in countless Westerns since (and taken to it's logical extreme in the case of Jim from Blazing Saddles). 

Even disregarding his influence, Leone's Westerns (and his one gangster film) are just so well executed. All of them feature extremely memorable characters ranging from Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name" to the emotionally troubled demolition expert John Mallory in Duck, You Sucker! They also come with an excellent theme by Ennio Morricone, which always blends perfectly with the environment.

Once Upon a Time in the West

As great as The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly was, this was the movie that really showcased Leone's talent for Westerns. Here he took everything he learned from his previous films and created something entirely new. Of particular note is the use of sound, a trademark of Leone's, and minimal dialogue.

David Lynch

This one may sound massively hypocritical on my part. I have before voiced my disliking for Jean-Luc Goddard and lack of interest in the works of Fellini, and often refer to those films as "weird", yet I admire a man like David Lynch. As with many of these directors it is hard to pinpoint exactly what it is I like about his work. His more straight forward films are extraordinarily well-executed and have plenty of emotion (The Elephant Man and The Straight Story being two good examples). 

Perhaps it's the fact that he never tries to tie himself to one type of film and does whatever he wants. He never seemed to make the same movie twice, even if there were patterns that emerged among his work. In fact it's hard to find one particular film of his that stands out. Whereas with many of the other directors on this list, I can usually identify one particular film as their best, it is much harder to do so with Lynch. Most of his movies seem to have some element that stands out and remains in your head. 

Lost Highway

This particular movie is an interesting one and a good example of how Lynch plays with conventions and does his own thing. I personally find the whole structure interesting, how the film sets up one plot and draws us in only to abruptly change everything, introducing a new protagonist who has never been seen before and beginning a whole new plot with very few connections to the previous one (it is only at the end that both threads meet, and then things get weird).