The Magnificent Texan / Il magnifico texano (Luigi Capuano, 1967)

[Mickey13]

Copied from the Spagvemberfest 2023 thread:

@Mickey13

I do not believe it is entirely fair to fulminate against these Capuano’s works: they are not badly made and possess their own distinct charm if you are willing to look for it. With that being said, these flicks feel more like soap operas rather than veritable oaters in that most scenes take place indoors, the interiors are lavished with fancy furniture and candelabra, most characters are draped in swanky garments and utter long-winded sentences in a judgemental tone, there is little gunplay and all of the components appear to come from a different genre insofar as it seems justified to not lump this film in with the rest of the field and to simply appreciate the narration on its own merits.

In that sense, prescinding from genre’s standards, it does work quite well. If it qualifies as a spaghetti western, then it must be the cleanest and most moralistic one of them all which I suppose would not be so wearisome if Capuano’s execution had not been so ossified and utterly conventional on all fronts. The inclusion of the exceedingly corny romantic subplot compounds the antediluvian, gradiloquent character of the production and De Masi’s habitually old-fashioned soundtrack does not disabuse the viewer of that impression at all; the movie feels as though it had been made at the very least five years before 1967, so if it is novelty you are looking for, search elsewhere, though it is not that awful by any stretch of the imagination.