A Bullet For the General (1966)

Posted By: Someonelse
Date: Dec. 2, 2010

A Bullet For the General / El chuncho, quien sabe? (1966, Uncut)
DVD9 | PAL | 720 x 576 (2.35:1) | MPEG2 | 113 mins | AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | 7,07 Gb
Lang: English dub for European & international distribution, English dub for North American distribution, German dub | Subs: German
Genre: Western | Untouched KOCH Media remastering (2007) | Italy

Director: Damiano Damiani
Story: Salvatore Laurani & Franco Solinas
Starring: Gian Maria Volonté, Lou Castel, Klaus Kinski, Martine Beswick, Jaime Fernández, Spartaco Conversi & Aldo Sambrell

Damiano Damiani's masterpiece "El Chuncho Quién Sabe?" aka. "A Bullet For The General" of 1967 is a very political Spaghetti Western set in the Mexican Revolution. A quite brutal tale about ideals, greed, friendship and selfishness, is not only a very entertaining Spaghetti Western, but also a unique study of an idealistic man's struggle between his greed and desire for wealth on the one hand, and his beliefs and ideals on the other hand.

IMDB



El Chuncho (Gian Maria Volontè) is a bandit and revolutionary with a strong fondness for women, alcohol and cigars. Along with his slightly insane, but religious and very idealistic brother El Santo (Klaus Kinski), he leads a gang of bandits with beliefs, who help the poor and rob the government's army to sell the weapons to the revolutionary army. When the gang is joined by Bill Tate, an American who, due to his youth, is just referred to as "El Nino" by El Chuncho and his fellow Mexican bandidos, the gang leader starts to befriend with the gringo. El Nino, however is basically almost the opposite of El Chuncho, he doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke and he doesn't waste his time with women, and neither does he believe in any causes or ideals, the only thing he is interested in is quick and good money. His friendship to the baby-faced but selfish and cold-blooded Nino, becomes a breaking test for Chuncho, who is torn between his greed and his ideals.



Although Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci are two of my favorite directors of all-time, and their movies "Giù La Testa" ("Duck You Sucker", Leone) and "Il Mercenario" ("The Mercenary", Corbucci), are two awesome movies, and furthermore there are quite a few more excellent Mexican Revolution Spaghetti Westerns , I would name "A Bullet for the General" as my favorite of the Mexican-Revolution-themed Spaghetti Westerns. The acting in this movie is superb. Gian Maria Volontè played in four Spaghetti Westerns and each one of them is a masterpiece. After his excellent performances in "A Fistful Of Dollars", "For A Few Dollars More" and Sergio Sollima's "Faccia A Faccia"/"Face To Face", Volontè is superb as El Chuncho, the most lovable Spaghetti Western character he played. Klaus Kinski is great as always, the character of the rather crazy but idealistic El Santo is quite unusual, since Kinski's roles in Italian Westerns were, with a few exceptions, normally those of extremely cold blooded and selfish killers, who didn't think of anybody but themselves. Lou Castel perfectly fits into the role of baby-faced El Nino, and he manages to point out his character's cleverness and selfishness in a very good way. The directing by Damiano Damiani is brilliant and so is the cinematography. I would have rated this 10/10 if it wasn't for he one minor flaw: The score by Ennio Morricone and Louis Bavalov is good, but it is no quite as great as it could have been as it can't compete with the brilliance of other Morricone scores. Nevertheless, an excellent film!


A brutal, witty and very political Spaghetti Western, "A Bullet For The General" is an excellent film that genre-fans, and film buffs in general should not miss!




Untouched KOCH Media DVD9. This is the 2007 remastered re-release with yellow cover, Italo-Western Collection No. 1. As far as English dubbed releases go, this is easily the best DVD available. Remastering is very good, but the most important thing is that KOCH DVD has both English dub tracks. First, and in my opinion much better track, is the original dubbing prepared by the Italian production company that was used was used for European and international markes. Second track is the US dub. For some reason North American distributor thought that the original dub prepared by Italians was weak and undramatic and redubbed the whole movie. Some American spaghetti western fans think that their new dub is better while European spaghetti western aficionados I know think it's exaggerated and too comicbook-like. Many changes were made - US dub not only excludes some bad language, but also makes changes to dialogue and completely rewrites the opening narration in both tone and content. Music is also used differently in some scenes and there is music in scenes that were originally silent, and background voices have been added or altered.
Releaser's notes
KOCH release also comes with good extra features, most of which are English friendly.
- Interview with Damiano Damiani (12 minutes, Italian language with optional German subtitles)
- Interview with Lou Castel (22 minutes, English language)
- 3 original theatrical trailers
- Picture gallery


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