DOLLARS FOR A FAST GUN (1966)

“Frontier Economics: Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent’s Dollars for a Fast Gun (1966)”

Dollars for a Fast Gun (1966) 

Directed by Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent

also known as: $100,000 for Lassiter (USA); 100.000 dollari per Lassiter (Italy); La muerte cumple condena (Spain)

Courting a curious tone of strangely-pitched cowpoke humor inside of a complex, politicalized tale of restitution and retribution, Dollars is another in a steady stream of westerns signed by Spanish director Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent, all leading up to his most well-known, 1972’s grimly misanthropic Cut-Throats Nine. Here, Marchent casts a broad net of disparate characters eking out miserable lives and locked in a plot that bounces around like the metallic sphere inside of a pinball machine. A hungry family on desiccated farmland with bone-dry wells, an exploitive land barren in a wheelchair, a truth-seeking stranger with a lively wit, several armed toadies vying for position and respect, and the newly released bank robber with private knowledge of the town despot’s past. It’s a lot of complicated moving parts, but thankfully for Marchent’s sake, his co-writer is preeminent Italian western dramatist Sergio Donati (The Big Gundown, Face to Face, Duck, You Sucker!). Marchent/Donati skillfully weave the intricate plotting, vivid characterizations, strong-and-sparse dialogue, and moments of comedic whimsy required to make a cohesive and gratifying whole. They even have something to say beyond your usual western entertainment trappings. 

Dollars opens with two men riding across an empty bluff, with the delicate occasional strums of an acoustic guitar on the soundtrack. It takes a moment to pick up on the predicament: these two men are in the throes of a getaway, being chased away by law enforcement. Martin (José Bódalo), injured, doesn’t look like he’s going to make it. Frank Nolan (Jesús Puente) turns and fires an uncoordinated shot at his partner, leaving him to bleed out. Between the credits and when our story picks up, a lot of history in this frontier town will transpire. The wounded man not only survived but prospered, eradicating any semblance of law or ethics until he secured the prime spot of affluence in this paltry land. The Sheriff takes a backseat and lets Martin reign, only paying lip service to law and order while citizens are beholden to Martin’s stipulations, all in debt and all in terror. Present day, Martin stays conscientious of not breaking the rules - he’s not taking any chances - but more as the equivalent of a politician aware of the angles, painstakingly keeping those he exploits impoverished. It’s a pointed portrait of a profiteering individual keeping the majority down, obliterating any progress, ably realized by Marchent/Donati, and running deeper than this sort of thing usually does. 

Marchent and Donati depict a lived-in tapestry of hardscrabble frontier life with Uncle Pedro (Roberto Camardiel), Sarah (Pamela Tudor), and her small children (Dina Loy, Miguel Angel Hidalgo). An alcoholic doctor (Francisco Sanz) rides to their home and spots an injured man down on the ground, two bullet-holes in his back. He gets down on his knees, pokes at the body, but it turns out to be a barely conscious Pedro. Pedro wakes and laughs - he works at the only saloon in town, and for payment, he’s paid in partially shot-up garments left over by the many men foolish enough to get into gunfights. It’s a cleverer-than-usual character introduction, informing us of what we need to know about Pedro: He’s a trickster keenly aware of his station in life, doing what he can for the little things, like securing new threads, and remains uncommonly proud. The doctor is there to take a look at their sickly pig, residing in a lean-to; hardly an important part of the ambling storyline. (Pedro will later make reference to being so poor that he’s had to feed the hog whiskey in order to keep it alive.) But really, this whole drawn-out scenario unveils itself like a one-act play, with Marchent/Donati deliberately spacing and sketching in the details about their characters and their limited opportunities before that nasty subject of a viable plot rears its head in audiences’ minds. 

At last, an emissary of Martin’s shows up to collect on that month’s rent. But the quartet has a scam in place: The children goad passing strangers into believing their mother (Sarah) is sick, whereas she’s really hiding nearby behind some obscured boulders. After bonking them on their heads, the trio pilfers these stranger’s pockets - an inventive way to make that month’s rent. Sarah has her children trained to be cunning in matters of money, especially when bills are overdue. When the debt collector arrives, the children run off and hide: “You sure gotta know how to run when you’re poor,” Pedro deadpans. Sarah knows she’ll need to hand over the money, but it infuriates Pedro - with an uncontrollable burst of aggression, he runs towards the man, but abjectly darts instead into his home at the last possible moment, remembering this act would be putting his life in danger. Instead, he shoots some cans and, when he misses, blames the bullets. 

Danny, played by Luigi Pistilli (The Good, The Bad and the Ugly), is the opulently-dressed debt collector in black and red. He’s the best earner for Martin; dependable but has a rivalry with Tod (Luis Gasper), Martin’s spoiled, cocky stepson. Several other men work for the town’s oppressor - we see them like dogs hoping for a scrap of meat in Martin’s well-stocked offices, receiving their marching orders to terrorize the locals. It’s this push-pull of unchecked lawlessness destroying any evidence of encroaching civilization that Marchent/Donati seem to be so fascinated with.

But someone must ride into town to stir things up. The customary anti-hero doesn’t emerge until thirty minutes in: Lassiter, played by the lanky (over 6’5) hawk-nosed Robert Hundar. (He turns up in Cut-Throats Nine.) He’s an unusual presence who practically bulldozes his way into the farmhouse of Uncle Pedro and Sarah. He sits comfortably at their table, uses social niceties and mind tricks to convince Pedro to offer him his last cigar, and expects to be invited to dinner. (He is.) Pedro doesn’t pull any punches when discussing Martin’s nefarious past, much to the consternation of Sarah (who asks him to hold his tongue). Martin purchased everyone’s land, routed the irrigation, so it bypassed the homes of townsfolk. Then, he bought everyone’s now-worthless property for a song - and then, in a further unconscionable ploy, re-routed the water back again, renting the land to the masses for more money.

Pedro takes Lassiter to the one saloon in town. His mode of dress - ill-fitting suit and glasses - draws ire with the rowdy, uncultivated masses, but he still gets an audience with Martin. He confesses he knows where Frank Nolan is. As can be expected, Martin wants the man who put him in a wheelchair to be couriered to him. Danny and Tod, on Lassiter’s tip, head out in seek of Nolan. He wants to be found, so it doesn’t take too long. Nolan is repentant, having not been sure if that pre-credits bullet landed or not. This campfire scene, before Danny/Tod escort Frank Nolan, is an evocative and yet another unhurried briefing, with frogs sounding off in the background, Nolan speaking candidly of past events and current remorse. 

In the finale, Lassiter and Frank (former prison roommates, it is revealed) will both get what they came for, but Lassiter isn’t involved in the final shoot-out. It’s strictly a settling-old-debts affair for Frank and Martin - “I’d drag myself back from hell to be here”, Frank nonchalantly declares before approaching the man in the wheelchair. Martin’s shady backstory will damn him, this returning figure with evidence of wrongdoings spelling the end of his foothold on the town. But as this is the end of the picture, we won’t be around to see the town’s subsequent growing pains or - more likely - if someone else assumes the role of conniving persecutor. 

Predictably, Lassiser falls for Sarah. In a curious foreshadowing of a similar final scene in Nick Nostro’s One After Another, it’s Pamela Tudor now trying to pack-up and make a hasty retreat before her expected love interest returns. Despite limited screen-time in the last forty-five minutes, Marchent still uses her natural charisma and feistiness to great use. Hundar, on the other hand, remains a peculiar lead. Far from a typical leading man, as this is more of an ensemble, it plays just OK here. (His best line: after being observed reading a book in the saloon by a bartender, the bartender asks him upon return, sarcastically, where his book is. Lassiter, smart-tongued: “I only read in saloons on Mondays.”)

Cut-Throats Nine to the contrary, Marchent seems to be a classicist filmmaker. There’s none of the trendy filmmaking tricks of the day here, no zooms or dutch angles or handheld, just properly-framed long and medium shots with sparing close-ups. Marchent’s father - Joaquín Romero-Marchent Gómez de Avellaneda - founded a film magazine way back in the 1930s, entitled Radio Cinema. (He later became a Producer.) Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent grew up with cinema all around him, so it’s natural this unfussy style is one he gravitates toward. (His brothers and sister would also find themselves in the industry.) Recognized as one of the great western directors in Spain, if not the greatest, his reputation elsewhere appears to rest solely on Cut-Throats Nine, an uncharacteristically violent piece. He pre-dated Leone in the genre, with 1955’s El Coyote, but other than writing scripts for a western series in the 1970s, he quit making them after Cut-Throats Nine, almost as if he had nothing else to say on the subject. Maybe it’s the inclusion of the exceptional Sergio Donati, but Dollars for a Fast Gun has Marchent firing on all cylinders, and it really should be considered a stronger representation of the man and his work, more than the cynically-minded Nine. It’s a missed opportunity for spaghetti western film history that the partnership of Marchent/Donati lasted but one film.