Claudio Fragasso Challenge Pt. 2: White Apache
[My apologies for having this come so late after the last one, I’ve been sick recently - no, not the swine flu; I’m pretty much sicker of people asking if it’s swine flu than being sick...]
The Claudio Fragasso Challenge, for me, isn't really about having the strength to sit down and watch a handful of bad movies. Anybody can do that. No, at it's heart, the goal of the challenge is to come to an understanding - what lead Fragasso to make such a bizarrely fascinating film like Troll 2 - where did it come from? Was he always making strange films and only Troll 2 took off in popularity? Was Troll 2 the movie that he always wanted to make, but kept pent up inside of him, waiting to burst free in a moment of what some would call pure artistic expression? There's been a lot of research and thousands, if not millions, of words written about the development of the greats like Bergman, Fellini, Godard, etc. I've got a book on my shelf chronicling the development of Woody Allen and his opinions on various subjects over the years.
But not every filmmaker is of that caliber.
Perhaps there's something to learn in the development (Or devolution) of a lesser filmmaker. We study the greats to in striving to be like them, but maybe we should be learning from the mistakes of those who failed to avoid their pitfalls. Maybe we should study the mediocre to see what the genius idols could have been if the right circumstances didn't pop up.
White Apache
This barebones and mechanical description of the film implies a movie about understanding differences, overcoming racial boundaries, and finding your place in the world. Sadly, none of these things actually describe the content in White Apache.
To put things in perspective, this film comes early in Fragasso's career (Troll 2 actually serves as a mid-point), he's directed on his own before, but still continues to partner with Italian trash king Bruno Mattei. Fragasso's involvement on this film is a bit hard to decipher, as it's a film that he co-directed/assistant directed.
Even more confusing is trying to figure out what exactly an Italian Assistant Director does, exactly. In America, the term AD is a bit of a misnomer, it's not a position that traditionally leads to directing, instead it's more about keeping the production on-time/organized. Looking at a bit of Italian film history (Bertolucci was AD to Pasolini, Leone AD'd for De Sica) the title seems to be more of what's referred to in the states as a Second Unit Director - the guy who shoots establishing shots, time-lapse sequences, anything that either needs to be done concurrently or that the primary director doesn't want to bother with. That said, I can't find any source that details explicitly what the position does in Italy, particularly in the assembly-line film houses. (If anybody has an expertise and wants to chime in, I'd be grateful).
So, all of that said, White Apache feels like it has split-brain disease - that different parts were handled by different people. The vast majority of the film seems to be directed by somebody who just didn't really care, as long as the scene's purpose was achieved (or close enough). Then there's some parts that seem to be a little more bizarre... which I can only hope are the early manifestations of the Fragasso style.
The film begins oddly, with an Indian, Crazy Bull, looking into the camera, breaking the fourth wall, telling the audience that the story they're about to watch is one of great importance to the Apache people, however, in order to make the story more palatable, "The Apaches in our story will be speaking our language". If the film was made under more masterful hands, it'd be upheld as a great avant-garde moment in Italian westerns, both in putting the narration in the hands of the Indians whom speaking directly to the audience, and having the Indians call English "our" language... but under Mattei/Fragasso it can only be described as sloppy, it’s a mistake that nobody cared enough to correct. The character of Crazy Bull is an interesting one - he serves as a post-modern narrator, often telling you exactly that, "this is where our story takes a turn" and whatnot. He serves as a reliable narrator to the audience, when inside the narrative, he's regarded as a joke and a loon. Usually if a narrator character is placed inside a story, it's a bit role, or that of a wise or caring elder... in this film he takes the narrator's omniscience to whole new level - at one point Shining Sky, the titular White Apache, is hanged from a tree. Crazy Bull just walks up to him and cuts him down - there's not even a "lucky for you I was just passing by" or "I heard all the commotion and came to check things out"... No, he just walks up to him and cuts him down. If the writers (who weren’t Mattei and Fragasso, but typical Italian film industry workers at the time – they have dozens of credits in a slew of positions) were more clever or playful with the character and this dynamic, it could have been a really interesting experiment in storytelling, instead, it's just simply bad storytelling.
Soon after the introduction of Crazy Bull comes the killing of the fur hunters - a sequence so mind boggling that everything in me wants to be able to credit it to Fragasso. I had to watch it a couple times to piece what I could together - Somehow the fur hunters are made up of both pioneers and Indians (which completely contradicts the themes in the movie past this segment) who are attacked when this guy just appears in their camp. He just shows up, they panic and they start getting shot and slashed with machetes. The bandits are a rag-tag bunch and there's no way to discriminate them from the pioneers - when I first watched it, I thought it was about a group of settlers being attacked by Indians - you can't tell anybody apart. What makes the segment even more confusing is that is has no sort of sense of reality - a gun pointed right in the foreground shot off would cause a person in the background to keel over, even though there is absolutely no way that the person could have been shot with that weapon. To say that it's poorly directed is only the beginning.
The split-brainness of the film continues, as it moves from this oddball fight, to boring exposition where the films inconsistencies deepen - Shining Sky, the son of white settlers being raised by Apaches, is told (as a grown man) that he's a white man, after everybody jokes about him being white. Then he goes around screaming "I am a white man!" which causes him to land the prettiest maiden in the tribe. However, the rest of the time his whiteness is a source of shame for him. He's discriminated against because of it. The Indians generally hate the white people, and vice versa, but Crazy Bull's sage advice to Shining Sky is, "Learn from the white man, they do not kill"... This comes late into the movie after white people have killed off 90% of the Indians in the film.
As Shining Sky is exodused into white society for accidently killing his brother, it leads to another oddball sequence - his first visit to town. Sky is told to remain mute and try to blend in with white society and keep his Apache identity a secret. Shining Sky then walks into a bar (stop me if you've heard this one), and gets a shot of whiskey, which he downs, and then begins choking as he's never encountered booze before. He's then promptly arrested for not paying the drink. The sheriff roughs him up and takes him outside where a lady asks Shining Sky, while in police custody, if he can help break her horse. Sky does and is hired by the lady to be her stableboy. It happens in about as much time as it took to read that. While not as completely bonkers as anything in Troll 2, it certainly shows some roots that would grow into what would become legend.
Unfortunately, the film does not have many notable points - it's a very, very sprawling film. Poorly structured as well - it pretty much goes from Shining Sky being captured by evil whites and him having to escape, to Rising Sun (his girlfriend) being captured by evil whites and her needing rescue... over and over and over again. Every time you think that he's learned his lesson, the whites get a hold of somebody and the cycle begins again. It's downright tedious at times. The final sequence where Shining Sky faces off against the last of the whites lasts about 15 minutes... of mostly crawling and grunting. No, White Apache doesn't feature some of that "so bad it's good", it features a lot of the "It's so bad, it's painful to watch".
Watching the ending of the film (which I won't spoil even though I never really cared at all and just wanted it to end) is, however, made worth it to watch one sequence that comes out of nowhere. Shining Sky escapes into the woods with a pregnant Rising Sun and the film just cuts to stock footage. A lot of stock footage. Wolves, time lapse clouds over the desert, birds, and, of all things, the ocean. A lot of the ocean in fact. What is it supposed to mean? I have no idea.
Where it fits
When I'm writing about these movies, I'm not trying to be a film critic, or be cooler than the movies or anything like that, but I just gotta say that this is one lousy movie. Where Monster Dog was offensive in being just plain boring and an aggressively mediocre entry into a saturated genre, White Apache suffers from a lot of bad storytelling devices, bad directing, bad acting, but at least has seeds of the insanity that we'd see in the crown gem of the Fragasso collection.
As White Apache comes early in Fragasso's career and early in his tutelage under Mattei, we have to assume that Mattei did most of the heavy lifting here. Which is fine because most of the film is really dull and frankly uninteresting. And while I'd love to attribute most of the crazy bits to Fragasso and claim that this is him starting to peek out of his shell, it would mostly a jump to wishful conclusions. No, this is Mattei's film through and through, but Fragasso was training under Mattei during this time, so while Fragasso may not be responsible for the whole going into town sequence, it definitely seems like, at the very least, a large part of it rubbed off on him.
What’s truly frustrating about this film, and films like it, is that it seems to be made without any care. While it’s understandable to have the mode of production so regimented that the film is basically made as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible, and as close-to-a-hit as possible, there are many films out there that had somebody simply give a damn and they turned out much better, some are amazing. When taking a film like this apart and trying to assign blame, the place where it truly falls on is the apathy of the production. Was either Mattei or Fragasso really thinking about this movie while making it? No – they were concerned about delivering the film on time and getting the next piece of work into production as soon as possible. So, was there a film that made Fragasso ever really care about what he did, made him refine his craft and make something that he really believed in?
I don’t know. I’m looking – maybe I’ll find it.
Maybe I won’t.
The Claudio Fragasso Challenge, for me, isn't really about having the strength to sit down and watch a handful of bad movies. Anybody can do that. No, at it's heart, the goal of the challenge is to come to an understanding - what lead Fragasso to make such a bizarrely fascinating film like Troll 2 - where did it come from? Was he always making strange films and only Troll 2 took off in popularity? Was Troll 2 the movie that he always wanted to make, but kept pent up inside of him, waiting to burst free in a moment of what some would call pure artistic expression? There's been a lot of research and thousands, if not millions, of words written about the development of the greats like Bergman, Fellini, Godard, etc. I've got a book on my shelf chronicling the development of Woody Allen and his opinions on various subjects over the years.
But not every filmmaker is of that caliber.
Perhaps there's something to learn in the development (Or devolution) of a lesser filmmaker. We study the greats to in striving to be like them, but maybe we should be learning from the mistakes of those who failed to avoid their pitfalls. Maybe we should study the mediocre to see what the genius idols could have been if the right circumstances didn't pop up.
White Apache
A wagon train of unsuspecting fur hunters is attacked by a horde of merciless outlaws, killing all except a pregnant woman. Miraculously, with the assistance of an Apache Chief, she gives birth to a child before dying. The boy is adopted and raised by the Chief and becomes part of the tribe until a tragic twist of fate causes him to accidently kill his Indian brother.Distraught, he leaves the tribe and ventures into the world of the white man. There is no place for a "White Apache" in a society where deception is commonplace, and being different only prompts violence and undeserved prejudice. - The back of the VHS (Typographical errors intact)
This barebones and mechanical description of the film implies a movie about understanding differences, overcoming racial boundaries, and finding your place in the world. Sadly, none of these things actually describe the content in White Apache.
To put things in perspective, this film comes early in Fragasso's career (Troll 2 actually serves as a mid-point), he's directed on his own before, but still continues to partner with Italian trash king Bruno Mattei. Fragasso's involvement on this film is a bit hard to decipher, as it's a film that he co-directed/assistant directed.
Even more confusing is trying to figure out what exactly an Italian Assistant Director does, exactly. In America, the term AD is a bit of a misnomer, it's not a position that traditionally leads to directing, instead it's more about keeping the production on-time/organized. Looking at a bit of Italian film history (Bertolucci was AD to Pasolini, Leone AD'd for De Sica) the title seems to be more of what's referred to in the states as a Second Unit Director - the guy who shoots establishing shots, time-lapse sequences, anything that either needs to be done concurrently or that the primary director doesn't want to bother with. That said, I can't find any source that details explicitly what the position does in Italy, particularly in the assembly-line film houses. (If anybody has an expertise and wants to chime in, I'd be grateful).
So, all of that said, White Apache feels like it has split-brain disease - that different parts were handled by different people. The vast majority of the film seems to be directed by somebody who just didn't really care, as long as the scene's purpose was achieved (or close enough). Then there's some parts that seem to be a little more bizarre... which I can only hope are the early manifestations of the Fragasso style.
The film begins oddly, with an Indian, Crazy Bull, looking into the camera, breaking the fourth wall, telling the audience that the story they're about to watch is one of great importance to the Apache people, however, in order to make the story more palatable, "The Apaches in our story will be speaking our language". If the film was made under more masterful hands, it'd be upheld as a great avant-garde moment in Italian westerns, both in putting the narration in the hands of the Indians whom speaking directly to the audience, and having the Indians call English "our" language... but under Mattei/Fragasso it can only be described as sloppy, it’s a mistake that nobody cared enough to correct. The character of Crazy Bull is an interesting one - he serves as a post-modern narrator, often telling you exactly that, "this is where our story takes a turn" and whatnot. He serves as a reliable narrator to the audience, when inside the narrative, he's regarded as a joke and a loon. Usually if a narrator character is placed inside a story, it's a bit role, or that of a wise or caring elder... in this film he takes the narrator's omniscience to whole new level - at one point Shining Sky, the titular White Apache, is hanged from a tree. Crazy Bull just walks up to him and cuts him down - there's not even a "lucky for you I was just passing by" or "I heard all the commotion and came to check things out"... No, he just walks up to him and cuts him down. If the writers (who weren’t Mattei and Fragasso, but typical Italian film industry workers at the time – they have dozens of credits in a slew of positions) were more clever or playful with the character and this dynamic, it could have been a really interesting experiment in storytelling, instead, it's just simply bad storytelling.
Soon after the introduction of Crazy Bull comes the killing of the fur hunters - a sequence so mind boggling that everything in me wants to be able to credit it to Fragasso. I had to watch it a couple times to piece what I could together - Somehow the fur hunters are made up of both pioneers and Indians (which completely contradicts the themes in the movie past this segment) who are attacked when this guy just appears in their camp. He just shows up, they panic and they start getting shot and slashed with machetes. The bandits are a rag-tag bunch and there's no way to discriminate them from the pioneers - when I first watched it, I thought it was about a group of settlers being attacked by Indians - you can't tell anybody apart. What makes the segment even more confusing is that is has no sort of sense of reality - a gun pointed right in the foreground shot off would cause a person in the background to keel over, even though there is absolutely no way that the person could have been shot with that weapon. To say that it's poorly directed is only the beginning.
The split-brainness of the film continues, as it moves from this oddball fight, to boring exposition where the films inconsistencies deepen - Shining Sky, the son of white settlers being raised by Apaches, is told (as a grown man) that he's a white man, after everybody jokes about him being white. Then he goes around screaming "I am a white man!" which causes him to land the prettiest maiden in the tribe. However, the rest of the time his whiteness is a source of shame for him. He's discriminated against because of it. The Indians generally hate the white people, and vice versa, but Crazy Bull's sage advice to Shining Sky is, "Learn from the white man, they do not kill"... This comes late into the movie after white people have killed off 90% of the Indians in the film.
As Shining Sky is exodused into white society for accidently killing his brother, it leads to another oddball sequence - his first visit to town. Sky is told to remain mute and try to blend in with white society and keep his Apache identity a secret. Shining Sky then walks into a bar (stop me if you've heard this one), and gets a shot of whiskey, which he downs, and then begins choking as he's never encountered booze before. He's then promptly arrested for not paying the drink. The sheriff roughs him up and takes him outside where a lady asks Shining Sky, while in police custody, if he can help break her horse. Sky does and is hired by the lady to be her stableboy. It happens in about as much time as it took to read that. While not as completely bonkers as anything in Troll 2, it certainly shows some roots that would grow into what would become legend.
Unfortunately, the film does not have many notable points - it's a very, very sprawling film. Poorly structured as well - it pretty much goes from Shining Sky being captured by evil whites and him having to escape, to Rising Sun (his girlfriend) being captured by evil whites and her needing rescue... over and over and over again. Every time you think that he's learned his lesson, the whites get a hold of somebody and the cycle begins again. It's downright tedious at times. The final sequence where Shining Sky faces off against the last of the whites lasts about 15 minutes... of mostly crawling and grunting. No, White Apache doesn't feature some of that "so bad it's good", it features a lot of the "It's so bad, it's painful to watch".
Watching the ending of the film (which I won't spoil even though I never really cared at all and just wanted it to end) is, however, made worth it to watch one sequence that comes out of nowhere. Shining Sky escapes into the woods with a pregnant Rising Sun and the film just cuts to stock footage. A lot of stock footage. Wolves, time lapse clouds over the desert, birds, and, of all things, the ocean. A lot of the ocean in fact. What is it supposed to mean? I have no idea.
Where it fits
When I'm writing about these movies, I'm not trying to be a film critic, or be cooler than the movies or anything like that, but I just gotta say that this is one lousy movie. Where Monster Dog was offensive in being just plain boring and an aggressively mediocre entry into a saturated genre, White Apache suffers from a lot of bad storytelling devices, bad directing, bad acting, but at least has seeds of the insanity that we'd see in the crown gem of the Fragasso collection.
As White Apache comes early in Fragasso's career and early in his tutelage under Mattei, we have to assume that Mattei did most of the heavy lifting here. Which is fine because most of the film is really dull and frankly uninteresting. And while I'd love to attribute most of the crazy bits to Fragasso and claim that this is him starting to peek out of his shell, it would mostly a jump to wishful conclusions. No, this is Mattei's film through and through, but Fragasso was training under Mattei during this time, so while Fragasso may not be responsible for the whole going into town sequence, it definitely seems like, at the very least, a large part of it rubbed off on him.
What’s truly frustrating about this film, and films like it, is that it seems to be made without any care. While it’s understandable to have the mode of production so regimented that the film is basically made as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible, and as close-to-a-hit as possible, there are many films out there that had somebody simply give a damn and they turned out much better, some are amazing. When taking a film like this apart and trying to assign blame, the place where it truly falls on is the apathy of the production. Was either Mattei or Fragasso really thinking about this movie while making it? No – they were concerned about delivering the film on time and getting the next piece of work into production as soon as possible. So, was there a film that made Fragasso ever really care about what he did, made him refine his craft and make something that he really believed in?
I don’t know. I’m looking – maybe I’ll find it.
Maybe I won’t.