:02:08
In the shooting script, the movie
begins with a map of the Rio Grande,
:02:13
or the Río Bravo, as Mexicans call it,
:02:15
with northern Mexico
and the southern United States.
:02:18
And it's 1872, New Mexico. You see
the water, you see the mule's feet.
:02:24
You see the rider go across
the water, and his name is Ray.
:02:28
He's a Confederate sergeant.
And you see him steal a poncho
:02:31
off a hatless Mexican peon
who's having a swim in the Rio Grande.
:02:36
He puts on the poncho, cut,
and then the movie begins.
:02:39
But in the final version, it's much more
enigmatic, and more iconic as a costume,
:02:44
because you don't know why he's wearing
it, but he looks at home in Mexico.
:02:50
This sequence was shot
in Almería, in southern Spain,
:02:53
at a place called Cortijo el Sotillo,
at San Jose, east of Almería,
:02:58
and it looks much the same now
as it did then. This is an actual place.
:03:05
Now, in a traditional Western,
the hero would look at this child,
:03:09
and take an interest in what was going on.
:03:11
Perhaps intervene in some way
in what's about to happen.
:03:15
But Eastwood is simply
having a drink, watching,
:03:18
sussing out what's happening around him,
he's not going to intervene.
:03:22
At this stage, he's just an onlooker,
trying to see what's going on.
:03:26
And the look of Eastwood
is so distinctive in Western terms.
:03:30
The stubble. American
Western heroes didn't have stubble.
:03:34
There's the poncho. There's the sort of
laid-back look, the coolness of the hero.
:03:39
Plus he's a big man on a little mule,
which is interesting.
:03:42
One of the references in the opening
is to Shane, a favourite with Leone,
:03:46
where you have a little man on
a big horse, Alan Ladd, at the beginning.
:03:50
But this is a big man on a mule,
and he's dressed in a very stylish way.
:03:56
This is a Roman actor called Mario Brega
playing Chico, a sadistic thug,