Country: USA
Year: 1976
Duration: 126'
Montana, 1870. The bounty hunter Jack Clayton (Brando) is hired by some farmers to eliminate a gang of rustlers. Clayton, who is a crafty quick-change artist, hits his victims when they least expect it but is eventually killed by sly Tom Logan (Nicholson), who uses Clayton’s same weapons. At his third western, after The Left Handed Gun and Little Big Man, Penn shoots a major, big-budget production with the two most famous actors of the moment but he doesn’t give up an iota of his cinema: in the full of the New Hollywood moment, with a tone that is both ironical and desperate, he has fun rewriting the codes of the genre, passing on all the codified steps (including the final showdown), and finding in Nicholson and, above all, Brando two extraordinary actors – the first magnetic, the latter an incredible quick-change artist.
Biography
film director
Arthur Penn
Arthur Penn (Pittsburg, PA, USA, 1922 - New York City, USA, 2010) was one of New Hollywood’s favorite directors. His movies have always carefully described and criticized American society. His most successful films include the drama The Miracle Worker (1962), which received two Oscars; the schizophrenic Mickey One (1965), influenced by Europe’s nouvelle vague; the gangster movie Bonnie & Clyde (1967), which also won two Oscars; the crepuscular western Little Big Man (1970); the disenchanted noir Night Moves (1975); another western, only more crude and desperate, The Missouri Breaks (1976); and the mournful drama Four Friends (1981).
FILMOGRAFIA
Billy the Kid (Furia selvaggia, 1958), The Miracle Worker (Anna dei miracoli, 1962), Mickey One (id., 1965), The Chase (La caccia, 1966), Bonnie & Clyde (Gangster Story, 1967), Alice’s Restaurant (id., 1969), Little Big Man (Il piccolo grande uomo, 1970), Visions of Eight (Ciò che l’occhio non vede, ep. The Hightest, 1973), Night Moves (Bersaglio di notte, 1975), The Missouri Breaks (Missouri, 1976), Four Friends (Gli amici di Georgia, 1981), Target (Target - Scuola omicidi, 1985), Dead of Winter (Omicidio allo specchio, 1987), Penn & Teller Get Killed (Con la morte non si scherza, 1989), Lumière et compagnie (ep., 1995), Inside (tv, 1996), 100 Centre Street (ep, serie tv, 2001).
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR: Arthur Penn. SCRENPLAY: Thomas McGuane (Robert Towne, uncredited). CINEMATOGRAPHY: Michael C. Butler. EDITING: Dede Allen, Gerald B. Greenberg, Stephen A. Rotter. PRODUCTION DESIGN: Albert Brenner. COSTUMES: Patricia Norris. MUSIC: John Williams. CAST: Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, Harry Dean Stanton, John P. Ryan, John McLiam, Kathleen Lloyd, Frederic Forrest, Steve Franken, Richard Bradford, Luana Anders, Hunter von Leer, Virgil Frye, Charles Wagenheim. PRODUCTION: Elliott Kastner, Robert M. Sherman per United Artists.
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