Until someone releases a letterboxed, uncut version of "A Fistful of Dynamite/ Duck, You Sucker," seeing Tonino Valerii's "My Name is Nobody" is the next best thing to watching another Sergio Leone spaghetti Western. Leone not only served as producer on this late, 1973 (?) addition to the genre he helped create, he also directed several scenes, though which it is not completely clear. According to Christopher Frayling's informative biography Something to Do with Death, he tended to vary what scenes he would take credit for depending on whom he was speaking to. But regardless of what Leone actually directed, his imprint is all over the film. By the time this movie came out, in 1973, even the somewhat tongue-in-cheek tone of such early spaghetti Westerns as "Fistful of Dollars" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" had given way in popularity to overt parodies like "They Call Me Trinity." With "My Name is Nobody" Leone seems to be trying to strike a balance between this new trend and the more serious tone of his movies. Henry Fonda, returning to spaghettis with a far more sympathetic role than Frank in "Once Upon a Time in the West," plays Beauregard, a legendary but aging gunfighter looking to leave his old life behind. Terence Hill, a star in Europe for his comic, buffoonish roles in these movies, plays the "title" character, a trickster-type who worships Beauregard and wants to replace him in fame. Nobody spends most of the movie following around the older gunman and trying to convince him to go out in a blaze of glory against the 150-man Wild Bunch. Beauregard and the Bunch are also mixed up somehow in a murky fraud scheme involving a gold mine. The main problem with "My Name Is Nobody," other than that Sergio Leone didn't direct (much of) it, is that it comes off as two separate movies, each starring one of the two stars. Fonda's story is an elegiac farewell to the old West and the old Western that self-consciously comments on the transition from reality to legend. Hill's movie is a "zany" comedy filled with slapstick, sleight-of-hand, and humor based on bodily functions. Nobody never kills his enemies; instead he just plays supposedly amusing tricks on them, usually for the benefit of an audience. But what European audiences apparently found amusing thirty years ago has not fared well in the transition across continents and over three decades. Hill's labored, unfunny brand of humor is almost painful at times to watch. Like the movie as a whole, Ennio Morricone's score is very uneven. Much of the music is wonderful, including a self-parody of his "Frank and Harmonica" theme from "Once Upon a Time in the West," but he also contributes a truly annoying "Europop" tune for Nobody that only adds to the irritating qualities of Hills' scenes. At its best, "My Name is Nobody" can basically be taken as a sort of companion piece to Leone's Westerns, with similar visuals and music, and even one of the same actors. It doesn't really stand on its own as a movie, and I'll be interested to see if I ever find a non-Leone Western that does.
Review of My Name Is Nobody
