This film by the Italian classic of political detectives and the future creator of the legendary “Octopus” was created in the wake of the success of the spaghetti Western genre invented by Sergio Leone and fully justified the producer’s investments. But under the shell of genre cinema, the creators of “A Bullet for the General” presented on the screen an impressive dramatic story of the path of a character who does not suffer from reflection from drowsiness to gaining a truly revolutionary consciousness. By the power of their talent, the creators of the tape gave rise to a special subgenre – zapata-western. This name refers us to Mexico at the beginning of the XX century, where, in parallel with the events in Russia, its own revolution took place, stretching in the form of a civil war for a whole decade from 1910 to 1920. One of the most striking figures of these milestone events in the history of Mexico was Emiliano Zapata, a folk hero who created a mighty myth with his life, equal in strength to what Che Guevara would later brand with his life and death.
Well, one of the first scenes of the western that we are now remembering is the classic train robbery. How can you not remember that the first western in history was a short film by Edwin Porter (born on the same day as the leader of the Great October) “The Big Train Robbery”. Only if in the 1903 film the robbers are inveterate holdupers (train robbers), then the thieves’ gang of Chuncho drummer is camouflaged as a partisan detachment mining weapons on the rails. This scene is masterfully staged. The locomotive carries not only wagons with civilian people, but also a fairly large detachment of government troops. To stop the train, it turns out, it is not necessary to undermine the rails, it is enough to put a crosspiece on them with an army captain tied to it, so that the internal stopcock of piety works. It is not possible to pull the crosspiece away and save the senior officer in any way, the soldiers sent by the lieutenant die, and then he himself. And in parallel with this, the sounds of the Chuncho drum fly down from the mountains, causing panic. We will not continue to retell the screen action in detail in a stack frame. It is necessary to introduce another hero, or rather an antihero, with a comely appearance of a young man. This is Bill Tate or, as Chuncho calls him, Nino, which means “Baby” in Spanish. The audience, unlike Chuncho, who opened his friendly arms trustfully, understands perfectly well who this dandy with a valise is and what goal he is pursuing, ingratiating himself with the leader of the partisan gang.
Chuncho and Nino
Further events and a more detailed presentation of the handy Chuncho shows that they are not revolutionaries, but just a bunch of rabble who just want to get rich by selling the weapons they captured to the rebel army. However, there is one blessed one among these semi-partisans who does not understand that his comrades are those who don’t care about the revolution. His name is El Santo, the Saint. The most unusual thing is that Klaus Kinski played his role with inspiration. Directors usually used the actor’s external data in the roles of negative characters, including westerns, let’s remember, at least a little later, the filmed “The Great Silence”. And in the future Kinski will create a whole gallery of monstrous types, such as Aguirre, Nosferatu, Fitzalrado, etc. But Santo, the named or genuine brother of Chuncho, does not serve as an example for the rest. He is important in this story as a pure romantic of the revolution, who is not forbidden by the cassock to try to achieve the “kingdom of God on earth” through violence. And the same character serves as a living reproach for Chuncho, who leaves the rebellious inhabitants of the town of San Miquel at a critical moment, succumbing to the obsession of greed.
As for the Baby, he still finds his goal – General Elias, revered by the common people. In this kind of invented image, the screenwriter of the tape Franco Salinas and director Damiano Damiani presented a character very similar (including externally) to Emiliano Zapata. “Golden Bullet” (by the way, this western was so called in the Soviet box office) fights the national hero. And the American killer who released her, Bill Tate, receives a substantial reward from the Mexican authorities. This laconic and mysterious professional with the face of an innocent young man was presented on the screen by 23-year-old Lou Castel, who a year before impressed the audience with his role in the debut film of the living patriarch of Italian political cinema Marco Bellocchio. In 1967, another master of political cinema, Carlo Lidzani, he will play a positive hero in the spaghetti western “Kill and Pray.” And in “A Bullet for the General,” his comely character deliberately repels the audience with his emotionless calculation and arrogance. His Baby looks like Kai, from whose heart the ice splinter of the Snow Queen has never been extracted.
Chuncho and an officer of the government forces
The central role of the film was played by one of the absolute geniuses of Italian cinema of the 1960s – 1970s, Gian Maria Volonte. A master of the highest acting aerobatics, he got used to any role so much that, with all the external recognition (like his colleague Marcello Mastroianni), he created the most powerful and diverse images, causing either dumbfounded (as in the Oscar-winning “Investigation of a citizen without any Suspicion”), or admiration for sacrificial courage (as in the role of Giordano Bruno from the film of the same name by Liliana Cavani). It is curious that a year before the role of Chuncho, he, along with Klaus Kinski, played in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western “For a Few Dollars More”, and his western debut took place in the first film of Leone’s “dollar trilogy”. Chuncho, whom Volonte revived on the screen with the power of his talent, appears to be a merry man and the ringleader of the company, whose horizon of ideas about the world is very narrow. Due to his intellectual underdevelopment, he not only does not know how to read and write, but also to separate the good from the bad. But somewhere in the depths of his heart there is a slumbering conscience, which is first awakened by General Elias, and in the finale, when she wakes up, she condescends to the hero with enlightenment, changing his fate.
And finally, we note the musical fabric of the tape, for which Oscar-winner Luis Bakalov, known for his soundtracks to many spaghetti westerns, including the cult Django, was responsible.
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