E poi lo chiamarono il magnifico (1972)

Director:

Enzo Barboni

Writer:

Enzo Barboni (written by)

Release Date:

28 September 1972 (West Germany)

Genre:

Action | Comedy | Western

Tagline:

He's A Fun-of-a-Gun!

Plot:

By his dying father's last wish Joe is sent to the Wild West to become a real guy. The dreamy young man despises guns and fights...

Plot Keywords:

Bicycle | Spaghetti Western | Greenhorn | Cowboy | Hit In The Face

Cast

Terence Hill	...	Sir Thomas Fitzpatrick Phillip Moore
Gregory Walcott	...	Bull Schmidt
Yanti Somer	...	Candida Austin
Dominic Barto	...	Monkey Smith
Harry Carey Jr.	...	Holy Joe (as Harry Carey)
Enzo Fiermonte	...	Frank Austin
Danika La Loggia	...	Iris
Riccardo Pizzuti	...	Morton Clayton
Jean Louis	...	Prison Warden
Alessandro Sperli	...	Tim
Sal Borgese	...	Bounty Hunter #2 (as Salvatore Borgese)
Steffen Zacharias	...	Stagecoach Driver
Luigi Casellato	...	Boarding House Owner
Pupo De Luca	...	Prison Director
Rigal Suzanne Leone

Also Known As:

A Man from the East
El Magnifico (Italy)
Et maintenant, on l'appelle El Magnifico (France)
Magnifico, l'uomo dell'Est (Italy)
Man of the East (UK)
Ein Gentleman im wilden Westen (East Germany) [de]
I després li van dir el magnífic (Spain: Catalan title) [ca]
Mannen från öst (Sweden) [sv]
Mies idästä (Finland) [fi]
Trinita: O anthropos ap' tin Anatoli (Greece) [el]
Verflucht, verdammt und Halleluja (West Germany) [de]
Y después le llamaron el magnífico (Spain) [es]

Runtime:

Germany:125 min | USA:123 min

Country:

Italy | France | Yugoslavia

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:12 | West Germany:12 (nf) | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 | Sweden:15 | USA:PG | Canada:AA (Ontario)

Filming Locations:

Plitvice, Yugoslavia

Company:

Jadran Film

Quotes:

Sir Thomas Fitzpatrick Phillip Moore: Stop dreaming. This is 1880. You can't evade progress forever. The West is... Well, the West is finished.
Bull Schmidt: Son, as long as we can see a sunset, there'll be a West. I guess we gonna' have to follow that sunset.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Profession: Acrobat - An Afternoon with Riccardo Pizzuti (2008) (V)

One of the most complete movies ever made

This is, except perhaps for Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid", my favorite movie at all. It's biggest quality is its completeness in almost every respect. Completeness in its themes, in its means, and a glorious cast.

It's a film most of all about friendship (I most often think of the scene where monkey, usually the most 'rude' of the protagonists, eagerly grasps the last letter of their dead friend, and then, realizing he can't read at all, is forced to pass the letter to Holy Joe, but in fact the friendship theme is present in the whole movie), about the antagonism of freedom and civilization, about the need and the struggle to find and defend your own position towards everything surrounding you (the 'star' to follow), about how dreams and reality can influence each other (remember the scene of Candida experiencing the man of her dreams riding towards her in a gracious slow motion, while Terence Hill in fact cusses his half-dead horse), about technological progress, it's consequences, and about almost every other theme that has ever been dealt with in 80 years of western history.

The movie's means are comedy, satire, drama, buddy movie, a really great musical score by Guido & Maurizio de Angelis, and all style elements of the classical western.

The cast is superb, creating at least half a dozen unique characters you can root on; unfortunately with one exception: Yanti Somer's lousy performance as Candida.

Another wonderful thing about this movie, is that it doesn't condemn any of its characters; everyone has his place in the film's world and gets his respect by script, direction and cast: the protagonists as well as the whores, the 'villains', the bounty hunters and the jailers. By the way: This quality also characterizes most films by Sam Peckinpah.