:34:00
It's interesting that they're using these
bodies as if they were puppets, or decoys,
:34:05
because Leone claimed that
one of the inspirations for his Westerns,
:34:09
particularly Fistful of Dollars,
was puppet theatre.
:34:12
Particularly the Sicilian puppets
called the Pupi Siciliani,
:34:17
rather like Punch and Judy in England, or
other puppet traditions all over the world.
:34:22
They were large, metal puppets
which were operated by rods from above,
:34:28
which enacted stories from
the middle ages. The Song of Roland.
:34:31
Orlando and his magic steed
and his magic spear and his sidekick,
:34:36
who would fight the Moors
in a re-enactment of medieval battles.
:34:40
Puppeteers would go round Sicily,
perform these stories,
:34:43
but adapt them to the locality.
:34:45
They'd find out who's the local mayor,
the chemist, the bank manager,
:34:49
and those characters would appear
in this traditional mythological setting.
:34:55
And Leone said when he made his first
Western, he was doing exactly the same.
:35:00
He took the Hollywood Western,
:35:02
and in the case of Fistful of Dollars,
two Westerns he was very fond of:
:35:06
Shane, with Alan Ladd, made by George
Stevens, and Edward Dmytryk's Warlock,
:35:11
a complicated Western
made in the 1950s with Henry Fonda.
:35:15
He was taking those two films, reworking
them in this Italian and Spanish context,
:35:20
and doing exactly
as the Sicilian puppeteers did.
:35:23
Take the puppet show, take the Western
as a given, adapt it to the local culture.
:35:28
And there are the two puppets sitting
there, lying against the gravestone.
:35:51
West German actor playing Baxter,
:35:54
conversing with Spanish actor
playing his wife Consuelo.
:35:58
And officials and sheriffs
and bank managers and bank tellers