THE VALDEZ HORSES [aka CHINO] (1973)
d. John Sturges; pr. John Sturges, Dino De Laurentiis; scr. Clare Huffaker; novel. Lee Hoffman; ph. Armando Nannuzzi; m. Guide De Angelis, Maurizio De Angelis; ed. Luis Alvarez, Vanio Amici; cast. Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Marcel Bozzuffi, Vincent Van Patten, Fausto Tozzi, Ettore Manni (98 mins)
A Downbeat, Quiet Italian Western that couldn't find a US Distributor
By the early 1970s, Charles Bronson was a major box-office drawcard, especially in Europe.
He had enough clout with American studios to insist that the vehicles offered him be written around his emerging laconic but sweetly melancholic tough-guy image and that they feature his wife, Jill Ireland. The husband and wife team began acting together in 1969, making six films together before Bronson was offered the chance to work in Spain on an offbeat European western, The Valdez Horses. The project would reunite Bronson with the one director who had recognized his potential and initiated his road to stardom in both The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven – John Sturges. Though responsible for creating the “super-Western” of the 1960s, Sturges had withdrawn from the genre, coming back to tackle the influence of the spaghetti western in a film with Clint Eastwood, Joe Kidd. Filmed quietly with European crews, Sturges worked on The Valdez Horses with an uncredited co-director, Duilio Coletti, who took over after Sturges was sackeed midway through; the result making for one of the most unusual of European-American aesthetic hybrids. Indeed, some European prints credit Coletti as sole director and make no mention of Sturges. Although the film was tonally intriguing, its highly melancholic nature and downbeat ending made it a dicey box-office prospect outside Bronson’s core European cult. Thus, although it was backed by veteran producer Dino De Laurentiis, The Valdez Horses was unable to attract a major US distributor.
Synopsis (contains spoilers)
Bronson plays a half-breed, Chino Valdez, a loner who runs a horse ranch outside of a small community. He is content there, breaking in his wild horses. One day, a teenage boy (Vincent Van Patten) rides in, looking for warmth.
Bronson offers him food and shelter for the night and Patten accepts. In the morning, Bronson offers the boy work and to stay for some time. Patten responds to the kindness and agrees to stay. They go into the nearby town, where Bronson sees a prissy woman (Jill Ireland) arrive, escorted by the main landowner in the area (Marcel Bozzuffi). Although Bronson has little work for Patten he can see Patten’s eagerness to remain. One day as Bronson is riding the outskirts of his property he sees that barbed wire fences have been put up and so goes to confront Bozzuffi, resenting being so closed off. There he sees Ireland, Bozzuffi’s sister. Ireland has an interest in horses and so goes to see Bronson in the hope of learning more. However, she is accompanied by a single bodyguard. Bronson insists that if she returns she does so without the bodyguard. Ireland returns, wishing to learn to ride better. Bronson is confused by her intentions towards him although a romance develops. He offers to pay the boy a wage and keep him on indefinitely. Bozzuffi resents Bronson’s contact and when he finds out that Bronson has plans to marry her, warns Ireland and sends his thugs to intercept Bronson.
Transplanting Moby Dick to Native American Mysticism in a Freudian Western
The Valdez Horses is perhaps Bronson’s gentlest film, one of the few to explore the truly melancholic nature of the wronged loner persona he was slowly developing.
He is world-weary figure here, the rugged individualist put upon by the greed and violent prejudice of others and it is clear that he exists in a kind of emotional limbo. Hence, his status as a half-breed is symbolic – he can play with the Indians but has no place within their community though he rests there. Indeed, he must choose between women – between the naked eroticism of the squaw, the “other” and the clothed, civilized pretence of Ireland, an escape from the world of the “other”. He cannot reconcile these urges and thus has displaced his yearning for freedom onto his horses: he breaks them in just enough so as not to destroy their spirit. His silent longing for the pleasures of fatherhood and husbandhood slowly emerge in his developing relationships with Patten and Ireland. Thus, underlying the film’s melancholia is a quiet hope – a study of a wild but gentle man confused about his own emotional needs but stoic in dealing with them. In so doing, Bronson here displays the most laconic yearning he has ever allowed his persona and the film becomes a tragic and romantic western. Just as Sturges brought righteousness to humanize the amoral Eastwood persona in Joe Kidd, so he brings loneliness to humanize the rugged Bronson.
However, Bronson is finally a doomed figure. There is thus an air of inevitability about the film’s course of action, the lonely man of melancholic yearning finally aware that he does not belong anywhere and will be forced to move on.
<His attempts at a surrogate family, though touching and hopeful are only a temporary respite from the fate of the loner and the film is truly saddening in the way Bronson realizes that he must accept his loneliness. He does not choose it as does, for instance Charlton Heston in Will Penny when offered a brief taste of fatherhood and family, but is resigned to it. As such, The Valdez Horses is a deconstruction of Bronson’s persona, examining the emotional burden of the silent man, ruined by others and destined to wander in regret and longing. Indeed, the film marked a period of almost self-reflexivity for the actor and his many films with Ireland would echo the sense of a fleeting romantic idyll soon to be shattered by a cruel fate. Bronson is a sad figure and for Sturges finally the knowing embodiment of emotional burden. Although Sturges does contextualize this in terms of a developing social and class structure, with Bozzuffi a kind of European aristocratic figure and Bronson the silent everyman he would oppress, the director is less interested in the social legacy than in the baggage of persona. Few westerns have captured longing, quiet hope and irreversible sadness as well as The Valdez Horses.
American Sensibilities & Europeanized Dignity
The visual transfer is, alas, available in fullscreen only. As Sturges has a reputation for his command of a widescreen image, this is unfortunate although compositionally the version reviewed seems balanced.
The transfer is better with light than shadow although the rather Europeanized casting choices emerge strongly. What is remarkably conveyed is the sheer pleasure Bronson finds in riding horses. Indeed, there is much emphasis on these horses as participants in the West and responsibility towards horses parallels the characters’ emotions. Dignity and respect emerge in these scenes, qualities not accorded Bronson outside his own private circle. In colour and tone the film is deliberately low key although production design is always detailed. Sturges is here not concerned with pace but with character and so much of the film’s nuances emerge in well-timed reaction shots and facial expressions. There are fights, perhaps expected of Euro-westerns but they have a telling place within the unfolding characterizations. The scene where Bronson finally claims Ireland manages a kind of tender force, essaying a man’s desire to take what he wants and a cultured woman’s silent desire to be so taken. There is a nice parallel between cultural rituals (Indian and Mexican) and some zooms make for a European aesthetic although the film is less stylized than others, being a fine balance of European and American sensibilities.
From Quiet to Communicative
The sound transfer is available in Dolby Digital mono only.
The credit sequence song sets the perfect note of bittersweet melancholy and the judicious score keeps this well integrated into the film, progressing to capture the sad dignity, hope and gentility underlining this movie. Details are surprisingly crisp and although voices are centred, they seem to have some depth on occasion. Dialogue always serves the characters’ emotional natures and delivery is subtle and restrained in Sturges’ hands. There is a clever use of the wind as a reminder of the cold and desolation surrounding the warmth that emerges between Bronson and Patten especially as the beginnings of a family. The horses seem characters, their selectively included neighs being both reflections of the human characters – from displeasure to joy and freedom – and comments on their emotional state: as silly as this could have been, it works splendidly in this film. The actors’ diverse accents reflect the social cross-section in the background to this movie and also make it perhaps relevant to a European community as much as the American genre legacy. There is some humour and tenderness between Bronson and Ireland, most telling when she says that he is not a man but a horse, this remark underlining the symbolic significance of the horse-breaking scene as a psycho-dramatic ritual for Bronson. The move from quiet to communication also underscores the film.
USA DVD PURCHASE INFORMATION:: Chino
UK DVD PURCHASE INFORMATION: Valdez Horses [DVD] [1973]
AUSTRALIA DVD PURCHASE INFORMATION: N/A
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LAST UPDATED:
December 25, 2011 23:42
