Yesterday I watched the exciting, and a little sad at the end, Giarrettiera Colt (Garter Colt) with the beautiful Nicoletta Machiavelli as the title heroine. To my knowledge (and feel free to let me know in the reply comments if I’m mistaken here) Garter Colt is really the only true Female Anti-Heroine of the SW genre. The genre has certainly seen its fair share of strong women from saloon keepers to shop owners and even the right hand to the main villain, but I doubt we’ve ever seen a woman come close to the personage that is Garter.
What makes the character so interesting and unique, at least from my perspective, is that she’s completely independent and resilient. Most women of the genre at this time were strictly eye candy for the male demographic (which in Garter’s case isn’t a bad thing), a punching bag the bad guys, or just some extras in the background. Garter Colt is an exception because she gets solid characterization, a background story, and a great screen presence. This is a woman who’s not going to let a man dictate how she lives, does was she wants, and loves it.
Signora Machiavelli (a descendent of the famous Niccolo Machiavelli) was the perfect choice for the part as her soul piercing eyes, her face, and her acting skills allow her expertly embody this fierce independent woman who’s botth good with cards and a gun, and certainly doesn’t hesitate to use the latter if necessary. When she upsets the plans of the crazy Rosso (Red) (played to the hilt of hamminess by Claudio Camaso), she sets out to protect the innocent and her boyfriend as he aids the Mexican Resistance against the forces of Maximillian. In this way she has the qualities if the Anti-Hero in that she’s generally out for herself, but when push comes to shove, she’ll always do the right thing.
My only gripe is that by film’s end she kind of loses her spirit in the wake of her lover Carlos’ death, and just seems to go off for nowhere. I would’ve really loved to have seen Machiavelli continue to play the character in a series of adventures, like with Gianni Garko and the Sartana character. The screenwriters could’ve easily gone with she continues to help the oppressed as a means to preserve Carlos’ memory, going from place to place, giving aid and hope to those who can’t do it alone. I just think it’s a damn shame we didn’t get more characters like this as they were refreshing and something new the genre could’ve utilized more of.
It seems to be a rather interesting SW (judging by an Italian Youtube video) , but I would like to watch a potentially official DVD/Bluray release with English audio.
I’ve only seen this film without subtitles. It is awful. But I feel that she was wasted in most of her roles but had potential and was crying out for a good director and superior scripts for her to really flourish. Perhaps this is why she dropped out of films and became rather sharp-tongued in later life.
Garter Colt has different layers of the story (warning for possible spoilers!). In the background we have the war between the by France supported new monarch Maximilian of Austrian origin and the republicans and their former President Benito Juárez. However we do not see anything of the troops supporting the emperor Maximilian.
Garter Colt was obiously bored in upper class France and has become a fast shooting adventurer or drifter with a certain poker cheating speciality. She meets a French spy named Carlos (with another poker cheating trickery) who has infiltrated the Mexican republican army and the two fall in love with each other. Carlos gets information of deals regarding by the French unwished smuggling of weapons from USA to the Mexican revolutionary army. He and his other French companion Jean thus even succeed to steal a cargo of weapons aimed for the republicans.
There are different turns in the plot relating to that, for example with the wild man bandit and arms dealing called Red (very well played by Claudio Camaso) who still wants another sweet girl who now has fallen in love with Jean. Red, whose arms deal was inhibited, later steals probably the same weapons in the American western town (maybe supposed to be situated in Texas, or New Mexico which had been annected by USA) where much of the action takes place (all shot on Sardinia). There Red also performs a robbery for gold, but which as opposed to the weapons, Garter Colt manages to steal for herself.
Carlos, who like Garter Colt basically also is a drifter, continues to support his own France and easily persuades Garter Colt to instead use the gold to buy back the weapons from Red so that the revolutionaries will not get hold of them. She agrees and manages to do so.
By all this I conclude that while Garter Colt was an independent female antihero, she still acted pro France and pro her lover and his belief, and both of them thus against the republican Mexican revolutionaries.
I am not so sure if this also was so common in other spaghetti-westerns at least regarding later events in the Mexican history - since those “Zapata” SWs are not among my preferred.
Anyhow I have now finally increased my rating of Garter Colt to a 7/10 mainly due to the mixture of very nice mood, visual aspects, nice music, lovely female anti-hero and an entertaining somewhat unusual story. The occasionally slight comedy or rather absurdities are OK for me since the underlying mood is steadily serious through out the film. There are a few other SWs which I also rate high in spite of passages with more boring fist fights or wild shooting. I have nothing against the end which is rather typical in style and mood for many SWs (where Garter Colt has adapted another poker cheating scheeme).
