About the scene of the rape

Rating: 2/10 (15 April 2009)

Leone had some flair for melodrama; a lot for the action. And none for the comedy; his comedy looks peculiarly sloppy and shallow the way Pasolini's orgy named SALO looked sloppy. This one is the only European western (i.e., western made by the European connection) that truly and decidedly bored me.
That's the western that starts abruptly with Steiger pissing and worrying about the weather; Steiger plays a dingy bandit who works with his family. Coburn, almost more simian that ever. The movie is generally sloppy and unsatisfying, the satire seems gross, ostentatious and too heavy—handed.
The good Steiger looked like Sancho Panza. He's too neurotic to cheer a scene; Coburn is not, yet he's mysteriously unlikable in Leone's movie. When Coburn chides him, Steiger looks like a Doug Heffernan impersonator. I believe Steiger was a good actor; but here both the script and the directing were too downright silly to begin with.
Leone was a decadent who enjoyed to depict sexual abuses; he does it in several movies. Remember De Niro being asked—'Are you coming?'. De Niro is twice a violator in that very movie; Volonté is a violator in the 'Monco' installment of Leone's trilogy, and Steiger is a sordid rapist in this film. This was part of the westerns' real world—yet Leone visibly liked to film such games.
The only well—made scene is the rape, and the symptoms of attraction and sexual chemistry between Steiger and the arrogant lady—his victim. The theme is pretty common in this genre of socially aware forays into the interaction of classes; the lady, depicted as repressed and sex—hungry, is obviously turned on by Steiger's presence since he gets in the diligence.
Their dirty, scandalous game, their interaction is interesting. He shows her the penis, she stares .
'The lady and the brute' pattern asks that the haughty and repressed, spiteful and hypocrite lady be intensely attracted by Neanderthalian men. Well, Leone knew how to film this.
After the rape scene, Coburn enters and the movie goes revisionist, like in Peckinpah, Altman or Huston .