21 May 2008
"Get three coffins ready."
Wow. I have to admit, I haven't watched the movie recently: Man With No Name (actually, he's got a name in this one, but print the legend, you know) rides into town, plays rival factions off of each other, pockets cash, stacks bodies. It's an Westernization of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, which in turn riffed on Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest; later iterations include the Coen Brothers' brilliant Miller's Crossing and Walter Hill's less-than-memorable Last Man Standing. Like all of Italian director Sergio Leone's star-making collaborations with Clint Eastwood, it's less revisionist, per se, and more a violent intensification of Western themes and archetypes: righteous certitude has been replaced by a morally-corrosive ambiguity. However, I'm not here to talk about the film but to draw your attention to the above poster, designed by The Heads of State for an upcoming screening of the film as part of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema's Rolling Roadshow tribute to Leone in Barcelona: a gorgeous, brilliant bit of stylish minimalism - mysterious, sleek, seductive. It's of a piece with THOS's '50s and '60s-leaning pop art oeuvre, other representatives of which may be seen here, here, and here (note: I was at this last show, and the poster was way better.)