Located near Madrid, Manzanares el Real was featured in several LVC westerns; including The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, The Big Gundown, and Captain Apache. Today the location remains mostly unchanged, despite the numerous housing developments surrounding it.
This entry will focus on the location as featured in The Big Gundown, where is appeared as the land the widow's house resided on.
Establishing shot of the house and land
Corbett arrives and is taunted by the Widow's men
Naturally, this will not stand...
...and they are shot.
The Widow arrives
The next scenes alternate between Corbett and the widow inside the house (which no longer exists), and Cuchillo outside, as the remaining widow's men plan an ambush. Corbett and Cuchillo manage to defeat everyone, leaving the widow alone on the land.
After killing everyone, Corbett rides off.
Additional photos of the location below (click to enlarge!)
Excellent Aaron. I have the latest DVD for Big Gundown and Sergio Sollima talks on the extra features on the DVD about the scene, problems they had with Lee's horse when the widow would come out of the house and the delays almost causing him not to finish shooting that day, finally wrapping the last shot with the sun going down which wasn't planned--they almost lost their sunlight for that day and the possibility of having to call Rome to explain why this scene extended into the next day (which didn't happen after all)and how he (Sollima)searched for different locations to use in Spain than Leone had used.
ReplyDeleteTomas Millan talked about shooting here too on his feature interview. About the bull fight and how dangerous that was and how he had to get in the pig pen and those supporting actors pushing his face into the awful pig slop and the challenge of shooting in conditions like that.