"My Name is Nobody" - Movie, Meta + Vid Notes
This post accompanies my vid "Nobody hearts Jack Beauregard" which you can find here.
I wanted to vid "My Name is Nobody" for quite some time now. I even started once, but it wouldn't quite come together the way I had hoped. Recently I tried again and I'm glad I did because it was such a joy to vid this source. I also felt the need to talk about the movie a bit and so I decided to make this post accompanying the vid. There are quite a few pictures because a) they help illustrating what I'm trying to express and b) Terence Hill is very pretty.
I thought I'd talk about the movie and about some meta aspects. There will also be some vid notes.
The Movie
The movie "My Name Is Nobody" is about aging gunfighter and legend of the old west Jack Beauregard (Henry Fonda).
Jack is fed up with being a legend, he doesn't even believe in legends and heroes anymore. Times have changed and he feels too old to change along with them. All he wants is to get on a ship to Europe and leave the USA. However, this proves difficult for a number of reasons. First, there are people who want to see him dead. And then there's also Nobody.
Nobody is Jack Beauregard's biggest fan. He knows everything about Jack. he knows all the events of Jack's life by heart. He has every killing memorised and can recite when, how and how many were killed by his idol. And he has a very specific idea as to what must happen next.
He doesn't want Jack to leave, he wants him to live up to his fanfasy of him. He manipulates many people, including Jack, in order to arrange his dream scenario: Jack alone facing the Wild Bunch. (I will address the connection with the movie of the same title later on.)
the Wild Buch
Nobody while watching the Wild Bunch
Nobody and Jack while watching the Wild Bunch
Jack is not pleased about any of this. On the contrary, he's quite irritated by it. However, he is also intrigued by Nobody's behavior and wants to find out what game he is playing. Suspecting that Nobody just wants to kill him in order to get famous, he tries to provoke him into a gun fight. He shoots the hat of Nobody's head several times while Nobody just keeps coming at him, totally trusting Jack not to kill him. After all, he knows how good a shot Jack is. However, the viewer is made aware of Jack's eyeside having deteriorated quite a bit, something Nobody never finds out, though.
When Nobody doesn't shoot, Jack assumes that he's "the kind that needs an audience" so he can show off. Then Nobody happily presents his hat to Jack.
I love this part so much. I love how Nobody wants to keep his illusions alive and how he also wants Jack to believe it, and I love how Jack is not interested in that in the least. Some aging heroes might enjoy being lied to like that and may even do it to themselves but he has no ambitions to be a hero or a legend because he doesn't believe there even is such a thing.
Nobody tries many approaches to get Jack to face the Wild Bunch. At one point he lets Jack know that Sullivan, a rich business man is responsible for his brother Nevada being killed. Nobody believes that Jack would avenge his brother by killing Sullivan which would than sent the Wild Bunch who are working for Sullivan after Jack, thus forcing Jack to fight them. Jack does confront Sullivan, however, he accepts the money he is offerend for letting the matter rest.
In the end Nobody manages to position Jack right where he wants him, facing the Wild Buch.
He has also figured out a way for Jack to win. Jack finally accepts defeat and does what he is supposed to do. After the fight Nobody's happy but he also points out that one thing is still missing.
Jack: Well, you now got me in the history books. How do I quit?
Nobody: There's only one way.
Jack: How's that?
Nobody: You gotta die.
Jack: Where?
Nobody: Where there's lots of people.
He arranges a duel for him and Jack, making sure it gets photographed and documented, because, after all, Jack has to become a part of history. Nobody shoots Jack but it turns out to be a trick made up by the two of them. Later on Jack is on his trip to Europe and Nobody is happy that his hero had found a suitable end. However, now it is Nobody who has become the hero, the legend and Jack muses that it is only a matter of time until a new Nobody shows up.
To me Nobody is Jack's biggest fan. He admires him and he follows everything that happens to Jack. When Nobody realizes that Jack is not going to continue doing what he has been doing, he takes it upon himself to write the next few (final) chapters of Jack Beauregard by himself, the way he thinks the story should end. (At one point he even recreates one of Jack's previous killings of hired guns that were supposed to assassinete him. Nobody arranges for a situation in which he can kill assailants together with Jack.)
Meta
I have mostly mentioned the main story aspects so far and all of those are pretty straight forward and serious in tone. The movie is, however, more fragmented into other, more lighthearted and sometimes downright silly parts. All parts which feature Henry Fonda are mostly quiet and serious without very much dialogue. All parts featuring Nobody on his own (meaning without Jack but with other people) carry a more funny and ridiculous tone which is also apparent in the different music scores by Ennio Morricone.
The movie can on the hand be seen as the story of two different generations of gunfighters or heroes but on the other hand it can also be seen as a juxtaposition of the "old" Italien western movies and the "new" ones. (This theory is also adressed in the special features of the DVD.) In the 1960s western movies were very popular and they were produced in many countries. There were especially many memorable Italien ones, such as "For a Fistful of Dollars", "For a few Dollars more", "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and "Once upon a Time in the West". All these movies were made by Sergio Leone. "My Name is Nobody" was directed by Tonino Valerii but Leone had much say in the making of the movie. By the end of the sixties people were quite sick of all the serious and violent western movies and so Enzo Barboni was very successful with his comical western movies "They call me Trinity" and "Trinity is still my Name" starring Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. They started a new fad of comical western movies where the bad guys weren't killed but slapped around and made ridiculous.
In "My Name is Nobody" Nobody, played by Terence Hill, stands for the new kind of western hero, the one who uses his wits as well as his guns but doesn't necessarily always kill his oponents. Jack Beauregard, played by Henry Fonda, stands for the "old" serious kind of western movie hero. In the movie the old hero realizes that his time is up and that there is no place for him anymore. Nobody admires Jack and wants people to remember him, he wants to make sure that Jack becomes a legend and he has already the publicity angle included. The photographer actually motions for Nobody to move during the duel so he would be in the frame and the actual shot that "kills" Jack is only seen upside down through the camera. This can be regarded as a reference to the deptiction of western heroes as well, the moments that make them legends being witnessed from odd angles, being distorted and immediately part of history or part of how history is being told.
There are other allusions to the old western genre dying.
Nobody: Sam Peckinpah, that's a beautiful name in Navajo.
Sam Peckinpah, whose name is written on a tombstone here, was also a very well known director of western movies. His most prominent work was "The Wild Bunch", the name of the bad guys in "My Name is Nobody" that Jack is supposed to kill all by himself.
The ultimate distinction between Jack as the old "serious" hero and Nobody as the new "comical" one is made in the very first and the very last scene of the movie. The beginning contains many elements typical for Leone westerns. Sequences of wide shots and landscape intercut with extreme close-ups, the ticking of a clock in the background and very little to non dialogue. A group of thugs bind and gag a barber and his son. One of them then poses as the barber waiting for Jack. Jack appears and the man starts shaving him.
Once he attempts to make his move Jack points his gun at the man's crotch. The man continues shaving Jack and when the other men attack, Jack kills them all. After everything's over the barber's son asks his father if there's another man as fast as Jack to which his father replies "Nobody".
In the very last scene Nobody enters a barber shop to a voice over by Jack in which Jack gives Nobody advice and warns him that other people will try make a name for themselves by taking him out. Nobody does realize that that's not a real barber but instead of using a gun he just uses his fingers making the man believe he's holding a gun, thus giving these two initially very similar scenes completely different tones.
This is actually the last shot of the movie. Well, the camera zooms in first but then there's a freeze frame and the credits roll.
Vid Notes
As I have mentioned before I'm really intrigued by the relationship between Nobody and Jack, especially by how Nobody decides to write the story of his favorite character himself. So much of the movie is about how heroes are created not only by their deeds but by the way other people perceive them. A hero has be seen a certain way, he has to act a certain way and, maybe most importantly, he has to die a certain way. There must be closure, a closure that fits his status as a hero. Jack can't just leave, his "end" in the west must be performed as it would be expected, so that the tale of Jack Beauregard can have a proper ending.
I'm also fascinated by the mutual trust between the two of them which for me is apparent in the scenes in which they shoot the hats of each other's heads. They are concerned about the motives and intentions of the other man but at no point do they fear the other man might accidentally miss.
Basically I tried to put their entire relationship and the course of Nobody's project in a nutshell. I chose the duel scene as a framing device because it is where everything had to end up. I also wanted to tell a story in which the two protagonists appear to be enemies at first, but as the story progresses it becomes apparent that there is more to it. The thing I also love about the duel scene is that it shows that everything concerning heroes is about the orchestration and staging of events.
This was the first time I made a complete vid to exclusively intrumental music. I usually work very much with lyrics and often it is the lyrics that make me have a vid idea in the first place. However, in this case I felt the Ennio Morricone score very fitting and I went with it. I think it gives the vid a certain tone that I'm quite fond of. However, I'd be curious to see how a contemporary pop or rock song might work with this source.
~
Thank you very much for your attention, I hope you enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you have any thoughts, questions or comments, I'd love to read them.
I wanted to vid "My Name is Nobody" for quite some time now. I even started once, but it wouldn't quite come together the way I had hoped. Recently I tried again and I'm glad I did because it was such a joy to vid this source. I also felt the need to talk about the movie a bit and so I decided to make this post accompanying the vid. There are quite a few pictures because a) they help illustrating what I'm trying to express and b) Terence Hill is very pretty.
I thought I'd talk about the movie and about some meta aspects. There will also be some vid notes.
The Movie
The movie "My Name Is Nobody" is about aging gunfighter and legend of the old west Jack Beauregard (Henry Fonda).
Jack is fed up with being a legend, he doesn't even believe in legends and heroes anymore. Times have changed and he feels too old to change along with them. All he wants is to get on a ship to Europe and leave the USA. However, this proves difficult for a number of reasons. First, there are people who want to see him dead. And then there's also Nobody.
Nobody is Jack Beauregard's biggest fan. He knows everything about Jack. he knows all the events of Jack's life by heart. He has every killing memorised and can recite when, how and how many were killed by his idol. And he has a very specific idea as to what must happen next.
He doesn't want Jack to leave, he wants him to live up to his fanfasy of him. He manipulates many people, including Jack, in order to arrange his dream scenario: Jack alone facing the Wild Bunch. (I will address the connection with the movie of the same title later on.)
the Wild Buch
Nobody while watching the Wild Bunch
Nobody and Jack while watching the Wild Bunch
Jack is not pleased about any of this. On the contrary, he's quite irritated by it. However, he is also intrigued by Nobody's behavior and wants to find out what game he is playing. Suspecting that Nobody just wants to kill him in order to get famous, he tries to provoke him into a gun fight. He shoots the hat of Nobody's head several times while Nobody just keeps coming at him, totally trusting Jack not to kill him. After all, he knows how good a shot Jack is. However, the viewer is made aware of Jack's eyeside having deteriorated quite a bit, something Nobody never finds out, though.
When Nobody doesn't shoot, Jack assumes that he's "the kind that needs an audience" so he can show off. Then Nobody happily presents his hat to Jack.
I love this part so much. I love how Nobody wants to keep his illusions alive and how he also wants Jack to believe it, and I love how Jack is not interested in that in the least. Some aging heroes might enjoy being lied to like that and may even do it to themselves but he has no ambitions to be a hero or a legend because he doesn't believe there even is such a thing.
Nobody tries many approaches to get Jack to face the Wild Bunch. At one point he lets Jack know that Sullivan, a rich business man is responsible for his brother Nevada being killed. Nobody believes that Jack would avenge his brother by killing Sullivan which would than sent the Wild Bunch who are working for Sullivan after Jack, thus forcing Jack to fight them. Jack does confront Sullivan, however, he accepts the money he is offerend for letting the matter rest.
In the end Nobody manages to position Jack right where he wants him, facing the Wild Buch.
He has also figured out a way for Jack to win. Jack finally accepts defeat and does what he is supposed to do. After the fight Nobody's happy but he also points out that one thing is still missing.
Jack: Well, you now got me in the history books. How do I quit?
Nobody: There's only one way.
Jack: How's that?
Nobody: You gotta die.
Jack: Where?
Nobody: Where there's lots of people.
He arranges a duel for him and Jack, making sure it gets photographed and documented, because, after all, Jack has to become a part of history. Nobody shoots Jack but it turns out to be a trick made up by the two of them. Later on Jack is on his trip to Europe and Nobody is happy that his hero had found a suitable end. However, now it is Nobody who has become the hero, the legend and Jack muses that it is only a matter of time until a new Nobody shows up.
To me Nobody is Jack's biggest fan. He admires him and he follows everything that happens to Jack. When Nobody realizes that Jack is not going to continue doing what he has been doing, he takes it upon himself to write the next few (final) chapters of Jack Beauregard by himself, the way he thinks the story should end. (At one point he even recreates one of Jack's previous killings of hired guns that were supposed to assassinete him. Nobody arranges for a situation in which he can kill assailants together with Jack.)
Meta
I have mostly mentioned the main story aspects so far and all of those are pretty straight forward and serious in tone. The movie is, however, more fragmented into other, more lighthearted and sometimes downright silly parts. All parts which feature Henry Fonda are mostly quiet and serious without very much dialogue. All parts featuring Nobody on his own (meaning without Jack but with other people) carry a more funny and ridiculous tone which is also apparent in the different music scores by Ennio Morricone.
The movie can on the hand be seen as the story of two different generations of gunfighters or heroes but on the other hand it can also be seen as a juxtaposition of the "old" Italien western movies and the "new" ones. (This theory is also adressed in the special features of the DVD.) In the 1960s western movies were very popular and they were produced in many countries. There were especially many memorable Italien ones, such as "For a Fistful of Dollars", "For a few Dollars more", "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and "Once upon a Time in the West". All these movies were made by Sergio Leone. "My Name is Nobody" was directed by Tonino Valerii but Leone had much say in the making of the movie. By the end of the sixties people were quite sick of all the serious and violent western movies and so Enzo Barboni was very successful with his comical western movies "They call me Trinity" and "Trinity is still my Name" starring Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. They started a new fad of comical western movies where the bad guys weren't killed but slapped around and made ridiculous.
In "My Name is Nobody" Nobody, played by Terence Hill, stands for the new kind of western hero, the one who uses his wits as well as his guns but doesn't necessarily always kill his oponents. Jack Beauregard, played by Henry Fonda, stands for the "old" serious kind of western movie hero. In the movie the old hero realizes that his time is up and that there is no place for him anymore. Nobody admires Jack and wants people to remember him, he wants to make sure that Jack becomes a legend and he has already the publicity angle included. The photographer actually motions for Nobody to move during the duel so he would be in the frame and the actual shot that "kills" Jack is only seen upside down through the camera. This can be regarded as a reference to the deptiction of western heroes as well, the moments that make them legends being witnessed from odd angles, being distorted and immediately part of history or part of how history is being told.
There are other allusions to the old western genre dying.
Nobody: Sam Peckinpah, that's a beautiful name in Navajo.
Sam Peckinpah, whose name is written on a tombstone here, was also a very well known director of western movies. His most prominent work was "The Wild Bunch", the name of the bad guys in "My Name is Nobody" that Jack is supposed to kill all by himself.
The ultimate distinction between Jack as the old "serious" hero and Nobody as the new "comical" one is made in the very first and the very last scene of the movie. The beginning contains many elements typical for Leone westerns. Sequences of wide shots and landscape intercut with extreme close-ups, the ticking of a clock in the background and very little to non dialogue. A group of thugs bind and gag a barber and his son. One of them then poses as the barber waiting for Jack. Jack appears and the man starts shaving him.
Once he attempts to make his move Jack points his gun at the man's crotch. The man continues shaving Jack and when the other men attack, Jack kills them all. After everything's over the barber's son asks his father if there's another man as fast as Jack to which his father replies "Nobody".
In the very last scene Nobody enters a barber shop to a voice over by Jack in which Jack gives Nobody advice and warns him that other people will try make a name for themselves by taking him out. Nobody does realize that that's not a real barber but instead of using a gun he just uses his fingers making the man believe he's holding a gun, thus giving these two initially very similar scenes completely different tones.
This is actually the last shot of the movie. Well, the camera zooms in first but then there's a freeze frame and the credits roll.
Vid Notes
As I have mentioned before I'm really intrigued by the relationship between Nobody and Jack, especially by how Nobody decides to write the story of his favorite character himself. So much of the movie is about how heroes are created not only by their deeds but by the way other people perceive them. A hero has be seen a certain way, he has to act a certain way and, maybe most importantly, he has to die a certain way. There must be closure, a closure that fits his status as a hero. Jack can't just leave, his "end" in the west must be performed as it would be expected, so that the tale of Jack Beauregard can have a proper ending.
I'm also fascinated by the mutual trust between the two of them which for me is apparent in the scenes in which they shoot the hats of each other's heads. They are concerned about the motives and intentions of the other man but at no point do they fear the other man might accidentally miss.
Basically I tried to put their entire relationship and the course of Nobody's project in a nutshell. I chose the duel scene as a framing device because it is where everything had to end up. I also wanted to tell a story in which the two protagonists appear to be enemies at first, but as the story progresses it becomes apparent that there is more to it. The thing I also love about the duel scene is that it shows that everything concerning heroes is about the orchestration and staging of events.
This was the first time I made a complete vid to exclusively intrumental music. I usually work very much with lyrics and often it is the lyrics that make me have a vid idea in the first place. However, in this case I felt the Ennio Morricone score very fitting and I went with it. I think it gives the vid a certain tone that I'm quite fond of. However, I'd be curious to see how a contemporary pop or rock song might work with this source.
~
Thank you very much for your attention, I hope you enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you have any thoughts, questions or comments, I'd love to read them.