Hmm… I might have in parts a bit more style, but DoA is the better SW. PoP is not really a SW, it tends more into the American direction.
I always post about SWs I don’t like too. To me its like therapy. It lessens the pain of the movies I don’t like and serves to enhance my love for the movies I do like!
As for Price of Power, I thought it was pretty good. Not much action, not very spaghetti like, but a good story. I guess you have to watch it with the mindframe of watching an American western in order to appreciate it.
Hey, we have to have some reason to subject ourselves to the worst SWs, a reason other than our obsession that is…
[quote=“Col. Douglas Mortimer, post:22, topic:392”]I always post about SWs I don’t like too. To me its like therapy. It lessens the pain of the movies I don’t like and serves to enhance my love for the movies I do like!
As for Price of Power, I thought it was pretty good. Not much action, not very spaghetti like, but a good story. I guess you have to watch it with the mindframe of watching an American western in order to appreciate it.[/quote]Completely agree with your methods. I haven’t seen this one but I have it high on my to see list. I don’t mind slow and the Flagstone set is very impressive.
I really like this one a lot. Each viewing it moves higher on my list. Now, I ain’t sayin’ it’s perfect or that everybody ought to like it. In parts it is really uneven and I don’t think a lot of Van Johnson’s performance.
I DO like Gemma a lot so that, no doubt, colors my opinion.
But I like this one for how bizarre it is. Dillinger, amigo, I don’t think this is like an American western at all. It has all the peculiar elements of a classic Sapghetti to me.
For instance, the death of Jack, Gemma’s black friend. is over the top and very visually powerful. That is something you would not see in an American western of that time.
Valerii does try to say something about the Kennedy assasination and that alone elevates it IMO.
I love the music. I can still hear it.
Has anybody read the American 19th century writer Ambrose Bierce? When Gemma is talking to Van Johnson (who as a army officer during the war courtmartialed Gemma), Gemma describes a situation taken from one of Bierce’s Civil War stories, A Horseman In The Sky.
Bierce was incredibly misanthropic and his stories were always macabe and sometimes shocking. He often has twists at the story’s end much like the British writer Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) did.
Anybody read Horseman In The Sky? It is one of his best.
I think I have read some of his work, if I’m not mistaken, Bierce wrote alot of horror short stories, like Poe or Lovecraft, is that the one?
Yes, they could be classified as horror but they are more kind of like groteque representations of real life.
One of his stories, I think it is called Chickemagua (after the Civil War battle), describes a toddler/infant who is lost in the woods and comes across the aftermath of the battle and plays by himself among the dead and dismembered. Really creepy.
But he had a really dark sense of humor. He also wrote a book called the Devil’s Dictionary which is a satiric lexicon for those who share his dark view of humanity.
I looked and it can be read on line at Goggle books:
I didn’t like Bierce’s spooky stories, I always considered them as somehow flat.
But his Civil War stuff is really interesting ans authentic. I think the most famous one is The Occurrence at Owl-Creek Bridge which has an interesting narrative structure. Genette uses this Story as an example of Prolepsis.
[quote=“Dillinger, post:28, topic:392”]I didn’t like Bierce’s spooky stories, I always considered them as somehow flat.
But his Civil War stuff is really interesting ans authentic. I think the most famous one is The Occurrence at Owl-Creek Bridge which has an interesting narrative structure. Genette uses this Story as an example of Prolepsis.[/quote]
Yes, you are right. His Civil War stuff is the best of his fiction. And you are also correct about Occurrence. It was even put to film at one time (on American public TV).
Dillinger, have your read his story Horseman In The Sky?
It is one of his Civil War tales.
Is that the one with the son who wants to fight for the north and shoots his father? That one’s good.
Yup, that’s the one.
That’s the one they used to describe Gemma’s experice in the War in Price of Power. Except: Gemma didn’t shoot his father as the character in the story does. That is why Gemma was courtmartialed in PoP.
Oh man, I just can’t remember all that in PoP. I think as I watched it I was so disappionted by the un-SW-ness of the movie, that I somehow repressed the memory 
I would even say, that Bierce’s spooky stories aren’t spooky at all. There are just strange things happening, like a man was executed or so, and the day after a man saw him somewhere. That’s all. Not really the stuff that causes sleepless nights.
[quote=“Dillinger, post:33, topic:392”]Oh man, I just can’t remember all that in PoP. I think as I watched it I was so disappionted by the un-SW-ness of the movie, that I somehow repressed the memory
I would even say, that Bierce’s spooky stories aren’t spooky at all. There are just strange things happening, like a man was executed or so, and the day after a man saw him somewhere. That’s all. Not really the stuff that causes sleepless nights.[/quote]
I’m very impressed that you have read Bierce. Where do you live?
Most Americans have never even heard of him.
Mexican author Carlos Fuentes wrote a novel about him called the Old Gringo which speculated on what might have happened to Bierce when he disappeared in Mexico. There was a movie made of the book that starred, I think, Gregory Peck.
Sounds like an interesting movie, I like Peck, and mysteries like Bierce’s strange fate are always fascinating.
I live in Germany, but I happened to have a course on 19th century American short prose at the university. Therefore the knowledge of Bierce.
[quote=“Dillinger, post:35, topic:392”]Sounds like an interesting movie, I like Peck, and mysteries like Bierce’s strange fate are always fascinating.
I live in Germany, but I happened to have a course on 19th century American short prose at the university. Therefore the knowledge of Bierce.[/quote]
Interesting. What do you have your degree in?
I recently read Ken Parker comic (awesome Italian western comic book series) which had four stories based on these Bierce’s civil war stories. Horseman In The Sky is among them too. Interesting, grim stories.
Nice to know that he is still having his stories told/used.
Another Civil War story that they made a American public tv show/episode out of is Parker Addison, Spy.
If anybody wants to read Horseman In The Sky (it is a relatively short story (and worth the read), it is available here to read:
[quote=“Romaine Fielding, post:38, topic:392”]Nice to know that he is still having his stories told/used.[/quote]well, the story is made already in early 80’s but they started re-releasing the series now in Finland.
German and English