La resa dei conti aka The Big Gundown (1966)

[cigar joe]

The "cane fields" that I have on FrancoCleef's version is part of a whole musical sequence, I'll time it when i get a chance. 

[Novecento]

The "cane fields" that I have on FrancoCleef's version is part of a whole musical sequence, I'll time it when i get a chance. 

https://forum.spaghetti-western.net/t/the-big-gundown-la-resa-dei-conti-sergio-sollima-1966/335/114

[cigar joe]

https://forum.spaghetti-western.net/t/the-big-gundown-la-resa-dei-conti-sergio-sollima-1966/335/114

Thanks I can live with 2 seconds 

[Cusser]

I'm assuming that the Franco Cleef version in English is unobtainable, correct?  Can anyone make a copy or a VHS copy from his?

[Novecento]

I'm assuming that the Franco Cleef version in English is unobtainable, correct?  Can anyone make a copy or a VHS copy from his?

Why don't you just buy the German BD?

[Novecento]

I'll try and get some information on the cuts you said that Columbia made on the U.S. version and post them for you...

That would be great 

[Cusser]

Why don't you just buy the German BD?

So the German BluRay DVD is the Franco Cleef version ?  Can that play on North American BluRay players ?

[cigar joe]

I'm assuming that the Franco Cleef version in English is unobtainable, correct? 

It's not in English it goes to English subs whenever the cuts part comes on. Now off the top of my head the biggest cuts are more at the beginning. The biggest at the very start. In the English version we see Corbet confront the three outlaws and they see Gulick hanging from a tree, then there is a quick cut to the shootout.

In the original cut when Van Cleef confronts the outlaws he goes into a more elaborate set up for the final shootout with them. He removes three bullets from his revolver, and places them on a log, the angle is such that each bullet covers one outlaw, this is done to a music score. So he only has three bullets, one for each rather than six, then he tells them to draw and we then go back to the English language cut.

Another cut is still near the beginning at a town when he brings in a dead man draped over a horse that he thinks is Cuchillo but it turns out he killed the wrong man, and he says a few lines to the sheriff when he finds this out, those lines were cut.

After those, the cuts are smaller more like trims rather than whole scenes.

[stanton]

Shorter versions harm the film considerably. It was definitely a lesser film in the German theatrical version, which runs only about 80 mins.

At the same time I think the long ranch scene also hurts the film considerably, only that that one is always part of the shorter versions. It would be ideal to cut that overlong and comparatively superfluous scene out, but they never did that.

Well it's a film I now always watch in Italian with subs. But actually I watch most Spags in that form.

[Cusser]

In the original cut when Van Cleef confronts the outlaws he goes into a more elaborate set up for the final shootout with them. He removes three bullets from his revolver, and places them on a log, the angle is such that each bullet covers one outlaw, this is done to a music score. So he only has three bullets, one for each rather than six, then he tells them to draw and we then go back to the English language cut.

I watched that scene yesterday on YouTube; in Italian.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmu-cdNr7l8

[uncknown]

You can read all about differences between the Italian and English language versions in my article linked at the bottom of this post. Also in the thread

Btw I have a copy of the Franco Cleef dvd in PAL .

[cigar joe]

When the film was first being promoted in the US the ad agency got it wrong. I first saw the posters that proclaimed Mr. Ugly is Coming to Town and they gave the date. These were down in the subway stations and in some Newspaper ads.

They of course got Lee Van Cleef pegged as Mr. Ugly instead of Mr. Bad, lol.

So anyway was watching a Grindhouse flick the other day and took this screen cap of a Times Square theater with the Mr. Ugly marquee. Enjoy!

[drinkanddestroy]

Great stuff, CJ!

I could be wrong, but I seem to recall Frayling saying that Van Cleef was mistakenly billed as Mr. Ugly in subsequent films in Europe due to confusion over the order of the title (which in Italian is read as "The Good, the Ugly, and the Bad." I did not realize this was the case in America!

[titoli]

Pic is interesting because I hadn't realized so far that in USA in 1966-7 1) LVC could be a name to be put above Dino's 2) That GBU was already (though mistakenly) proverbial (even before Bob Kennedy's quotation) 3) That an italian SW could be billed above prime Hollywood stuff. Which makes me wonder about the influence SW really had on american audience, as Hollywood seems to have waited for Eastwood to come home to take notice. So far I had thought that, apart from Leone, SW was something of a minority taste, that people followed the critics in not taking seriously the whole business. It would then be interesting to know more about the numbers of the SW in USA: how many movies were distributed and the B.O. data.   

[Cusser]

Great stuff, CJ!

I could be wrong, but I seem to recall Frayling saying that Van Cleef was mistakenly billed as Mr. Ugly in subsequent films in Europe due to confusion over the order of the title (which in Italian is read as "The Good, the Ugly, and the Bad." I did not realize this was the case in America!

And the writer of the narration for the US English-language trailer also got it that wrong way, trailer is on the DVDs and YouTube. 

By the way: I believe Big Gundown was filmed before GBU, and Day of Anger advertising used the term "Mr. Ugly Comes to Town".

In Italian better read as "The Good, the Brutal, and the Bad."

Sergio Donati personally returned an E-mail to me years ago (in English), responded to my question says that title order flowed better in Italian language.He might have said that he was the one who thought of the title.  And the German title for GBU simply sucks.