Flicking through Marco Giusti I read that Duccio Tessari had a different title in mind for his breakthrough film, namely ‘Troppi morti per un uomo solo’.
I don’t speak Italian, so translating it myself, using an Italian dictionary, and running it through dictionary.com’s translator I get something like, ‘Too many deaths/dead men for one man’ - I’m obviously missing a nuance here.
Could somebody who speaks the lingo offer something more precise?
Mille grazie.
NB: Giusti also states that Dessari had called Clint Eastwood’s character ‘Ringo’ in his treatment for A Fistful of Dollars.
Morti (dead people) probably should be read as ‘victims’ here, so the meaning is something like : Too many victims for a single man
I’m not sure what Tessari had in mind, but I’ll check the article tomorrrow (maybe there’s more specific info on this); in general I’d say you shouldn’t pay too much attention to the exact meaning of Italian titles. Italian is a very poetic language, sound often is as important as meaning. Troppi morti per un uomo solo - I like that title, but I also like titles like Death rides a Horse and Tomorrow never dies, although I have no idea what they mean.
The more florid the Italian titles, the more I like them (not always the case with the films of course).
George Hilton makes a point about the length and complexity of later Italian Western titles in Giusti’s entry for They Call me Hallelujah - you’ll get a lot more out of it than I did.