Literally steps away from the horse duel location used in Day of Anger, is the wide open vista that Corbett and Cuchillo ride across at the very end of The Big Gundown. This scene is only present in the original cut, and not the shortened US version.
Today, the landscape remains much the same, although with the addition of the paved road into San Jose.
start of sequence, panning left to right
pavement and power lines enter the landscape
Lee literally rides into his next movie!
Great work and very interesting. I remember Sergio Sollima saying he scouted out a ways to find some location different than Leone used and remember Big Gundown was shot back to back with Good, Bad and Ugly apparently meaning Lee didn't have a break but I'm sure he was excited to have these opportunities after his career low point he experienced in 1964 and 65.
ReplyDeleteI've always figured the beard Lee was sporting in his latter scenes in Good, Bad and Ugly is the same one we see in the opening scene in Big Gundown. But that scene is on or near a mountain top with lots of trees around. Do you know where that scene was shot? I've often wondered if that is Spain or Italy as Alberto Grimaldi said years ago some of the film was shot in Italy but that may have just been the interior scenes.
Eli Wallach confirmed in an interview the scene where he is being brought in by Clint in the early part of GB&U was a western town/set in Italy north of Rome. That was Eli's first work on the film. But other than that scene and the interior scenes such as when Lee awakes Baker in bed and eventually shoots him as he follows his job through which were shot in Italy, most of GB&U was shot in Spain.
I think El Condor was Lee's first film to be entirely shot in Spain and Captain Apache and Bad's Man's River were too.