If you shoot me down, they will have to change all the maps

Rating: 10/10 (31 July 2014)

Bridges are linked with death in Sergio Leone's filmography: the "flyspeck on Headquarters' maps" contended between Union and Confederacy in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; the arc-like structure from which the brother is hanged in Once Upon a Time in the West; the bridge from which Bugsy emerges armed with a gun in Once Upon a Time in America.
Leone's best bridge sequence, however, happens in Giù la Testa (also known as Duck, You Sucker!, Once Upon a Time the Revolution, A Fistful of Dynamite): an exhilarating set-piece in which Mexican bandit Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger, chewing scenery with glee) and Irish revolutionary John Mallory (a magnificent, melancholic James Coburn) face a whole army and blow up a bridge in the most cathartic explosion ever committed to celluloid.
Leone's most nakedly political movie, in which the director's obvious sympathy for the revolutionaries clashes against his pessimism and distrust of revolutions as social movements (see the memorable moment where Mallory tosses Bakunin's essay in the mud after Juan's shockingly eloquent tirade), Giù la Testa features one of the Italian master's best scenes, rivalled only by the graveyard sequence in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Under a pouring rain, Mallory spies a mass execution; when he witnesses the forced betrayal of broken doctor Villega (a great Romolo Valli), a flashback finally reveals a defining event of his past. It's a gorgeous moment, enriched by Morricone's haunting score: cinema doesn't get any better than this.
10/10