Supposedly the last western Sergio Leone worked on, 1975’s A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe (aka Un genio, due compari, un pollo) has a ramshackle spaghetti western charm and an opening section which strongly recalls the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West – it’s operatic, dramatic, largely silent and at the end of it there’s a plot reversal designed to shock and delight. It’s this section that was supposedly directed by Leone himself. With spanking wide vistas of Monument Valley and close-ups so vivid you can see sweat droplets forming, that must almost certainly be true.
Damiano Damiani did the rest of it, poor guy, and the story here is that Damiano’s film ran into trouble when a good chunk of finished footage was stolen and held for ransom. He wouldn’t pay up and never got the footage back. So he had to use discarded shots and hastily prepped reshoots when putting his film together. Which is the reason for the scrappy, not entirely coherent structure and variations in image quality (though there is a ring of the dog-ate-my-homework excuse about all this).
As the title faintly suggests, the plot is a variation on the one from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, three compadres banding together in the cause of chasing down some loot. Terence Hill, the French actress Miou-Miou and Robert Charlebois play Joe, Lucy and Steam Engine Bill, the threesome thrown together by circumstance who set out to relieve the Indian-hating Major Cabot (Patrick McGoohan) of a vast stash of dollars.
Klaus Kinski turns up early on, in the best sequence of the film, as a card sharp and quick draw who, it turns out, is no match for Joe when it comes to speed and guile. But Kinski is soon dispensed with, leaving McGoohan to twirl the metaphorical moustache alone, which he does with relish and a strangulated accent that keeps slipping.
Ennio Morricone does the music and he gives it the Fistful treatment – male choirs, a bugle, bells, drums – shifting into comedy oompah when required. He helps give the film its glossy surface sheen, as does Giuseppe Ruzzolini’s rich and bright cinematography.
Money has been spent, on the sets, action sequences and special effects, which you cannot always say about spaghetti westerns. That really is Monument Valley in Utah (though much of the movie was also shot in Almeria, Spain) and it’s presumably a chunk of this American footage that went missing.
Beneath the scrappy continuity and larking about emphasised by haphazard dubbing, there is a serious point being made about the colonial Americans’ fondness for the idea of Manifest Destiny (we deserve this land because god said so) and the disastrous impact this had on Native Americans.
They make a good trio, Hill, Miou-Miou and Charlebois. Hill, handsome, blue-eyed and a dab hand at playing a kind of comedy Clint Eastwood (or funny Franco Nero, if you prefer). Miou-Miou the glamour element as a breathy blonde and Charlebois the earthy one who’s the butt of much of the comedy.
Which one’s the Genius though? Joe has an obvious claim. But Lucy also has her moments of intellectual glory and Steam Engine Bill’s ability to play both sides of the race game – he’s meant to be half Indian – suggests he’s wily at the very least. There’s a conceptual slipperiness here, as there was in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Talking of titles, this movie was sometimes shown as Trinity Is Back Again, to suggest it was part of the Trinity series starring Terence Hill and Bud Spencer (it isn’t) and Nobody’s the Greatest, to suggest it’s a sequel to My Name Is Nobody, which starred Terence Hill (it isn’t).
Put another way, while the good bits are very good indeed, A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe is a bit all over the place.
A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
