cinema history class: sabata (1969)

The session: Viva Sabata!
Four Movies featuring Sabata, a James Bond of the wild West

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 1: Sabata (1969)
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini

My Level of Prior Knowledge
I'd heard of it, but didn't really know much about it except that there were several films with the Sabata character. Sort of like Sartana or Django.

Plot:
A stylish, enigmatic gunman rides into a corrupt frontier town and uncovers a criminal conspiracy by local power brokers. Using deadly marksmanship, clever gadgets, and sharp wit, Sabata turns the conspirators against one another and dismantles their plot.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
I’ll start by admitting that Sabata just wasn’t for me. For reasons I can’t entirely pin down, I found it oddly hard to follow—specifically the web of interrelationships and shifting loyalties among the various bad guys. That confusion probably fed into my other big issue: the movie felt long. There were multiple moments where I was sure we were heading into the wrap-up, only for the plot to wind itself up again and keep going. The ongoing gunfights just got tedious -- admittedly, though, they tried to keep those interesting via dynamite. On its own, the tedium wouldn’t have bothered me much—but combined with the narrative murkiness, it wore me down.

Ironically, the character I found most engaging wasn’t Sabata himself. William Berger’s Banjo is genuinely interesting and unpredictable, bouncing between alliances and situations in a way that kept me guessing what kind of man he really was. I had a hard time deciding how I felt about him, which is usually a good thing. By comparison, Sabata felt flatter—cool, stylish, and hyper-competent, yes, but not especially complex.

Late in the film, there’s what should have been a real OMG moment: we’re led to believe Sabata has been killed, only to learn that his death was an elaborate ruse. In theory, that’s a great beat. In practice, it didn’t land for me—partly because I already knew there were sequels, which makes it hard to buy into the idea that he’s really gone. That’s not entirely fair to the film, of course; someone seeing it in a theater in 1969 wouldn’t have had that foreknowledge.

The movie also borrows very heavily from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, especially in the dynamic between Sabata and Banjo. By the time we got to the ending, the parallels were so strong that I could practically hear a writers’ room conversation along the lines of, “How do we make this feel like that ending?” followed by enthusiastic nodding.

Some of the stylistic gimmicks didn’t help. Sabata’s magical control over tossed coins struck me as more silly than impressive—less iconic gunslinger, more Wild West Fonzie. And while Keith warned us in advance that this would lean more toward humor than the classic spaghetti westerns I love, I still think it would have benefited from dialing that back a notch. It mostly avoids going full Up the MacGreggors! thankfully, but then there’s that awful “boing” sound effect whenever Sabata outsmarts someone. Everyone else seemed amused; I just cringed.

On the other hand, I absolutely loved the the theme song. That surf-music twang was unexpected, catchy, and easily my favorite part of the experience. At least Sabata left me with a tune in my head (which I then downloaded from Youtube.