My Name Is Nobody [Il mio nome è Nessuno] **** (1973, Henry Fonda, Terence Hill, Jean Martin, R G Armstrong, Steve Kanaly, Geoffrey Lewis) – Classic Movie Review 8401

Sergio Leone had the idea for and executive produces director Tonino Valerii’s 1973 Italian film My Name Is Nobody [Il Mio Nome E Nessuno], a delightfully flamboyant, undervalued spoof of his Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns.

Leone teams up again with Henry Fonda (after Once Upon a Time in the West) as Jack Beauregard, an old gunfighter who just wants a peaceful retirement but is persistently hero-worshipped by a young gunfighter known as Nobody (Terence Hill).

Nobody wants to see Beauregard go out in a blaze of glory and arranges for him to have to face and defeat the 150-strong Wild Bunch, led by Geoffrey Lewis, before he can hang up his guns. We are in 1899, at the very end of the Western era, as the new century looms, and the Western retires, just as the Spaghetti Western was the last blaze of glory before the Western actually retired from the screen.

As usual with a Leone film, My Name Is Nobody is distinguished by intense performances, outstanding action sequences, a Morricone score (spoofing his Leone-helmed Man with No Name music) and ravishing photography in Technicolor (by Giuseppe Ruzzolini and Armando Nannuzzi).

My Name Is Nobody is made mostly in Spain, but also with some considerable filming shot by Nannuzzi in America – in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and New Orleans, Louisiana. The Italian print is 15 minutes longer than the dubbed international version of 116 minutes. The story and screenplay are by Ernesto Gastaldi, with producer Fulvio Morsella also credited for the story. Fonda, in his final western, is the only actor who dubs his own voice in the English-language version.

Also in the cast are Jean Martin, Leo Gordon, R G Armstrong, Steve Kanaly, Geoffrey Lewis as the Leader of the Wild Bunch, Mario Brega, Karl Braun, Neil Summers, Piero Lulli, Marc Mazza, Benito Stefanelli, Alexander Allerson, Rainer Peets and Antoine Saint-John.

In the Odyssey, Odysseus tricks Polyphemus into believing his name is Nobody.

Walking through Boot Hill, Nobody shows Beauregard that one of the names on a gravestone is Sam Peckinpah (1925–1984), director of The Wild Bunch, though Peckinpah was very much alive at the time of filming in 1973 and obviously wasn’t born in 1899.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8401

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