Ever since I saw Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) as a child after burrowing into my brother's VHS collection, I've loved spaghetti westerns. It was only in my teenage years that I realised just how many of these films were made - some excellent, some terrible, and some just outright bizarre - and it's been fun tracking down some of the more obscure titles. While not strictly a 'spaghetti' western due to being French (a 'baguette' western as Alex Cox puts it),Cemetery Without Crosses is a stoic curiosity. Clearly influenced by the work of Leone, the film is an existential, near-silent work that is in equal parts hypnotic and plodding.

Humble farmer Ben Caine (Guido Lollobrigida) is chased and gunned down by members of the Rogers family, who are scooping up all the livestock business from the surrounding areas through fear and violence. Ben is gunned down and hanged in front of his wife Maria (Michele Mercier). With her livelihood destroyed and Ben's brothers Thomas (Guido Lollobrigida) and Eli (Michel Lemoine) opting to flee across the border, Maria turns to old friend Manuel (Robert Hossein),a brooding gunslinger residing in a nearby ghost town, for help. Manuel soon infiltrates the Rogers family and joins them on their ranch, where he sets Maria's revenge in motion.

Though more of a homage to spaghetti westerns, Cemetery Without Crosses certainly looks and feels like it was born and reared in Italy. There are a couple of glimpses of brilliance - a familiar scene of intense stare-downs at the dinner table quickly flips into a moment of outright comedy, and the scene in which a character lights a candle to reveal that they are not alone is truly nerve- shredding. But the plot is wafer-thin, so the camera is often left lingering while the characters do little or nothing at all, and the dialogue is especially sparse, even for a spaghetti western. Hossein, who also directed and co- wrote the film with the credited Dario Argento and Claude Desailly (though in reality Argento had no involvement),simply doesn't possess the magnetic presence of Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson. Exhilarating in bursts but meandering in places, Cemetery Without Crosses is still worth checking out.

Listerning to the very good commentary on the Blue Underground edition of Dario Argento's directing debut,I was surprise to learn that Argento had originally started out as a screenwriter..

Attempting "a mix and match" of Argento-written films that I would be able to purchase fairly easily,I was happy to discover,that whilst Argento's most famous screen writing credit is on Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West,I was very pleased to find a forgotten 1969 Spaghetti western that Argento had co-written with Claude Desailly and Robert Hossein (who also directed and starred in the film,along with his dad doing the movies score!)called Cemetery Without Crosses.And with hand holding a cowboy hat,and the other holding a pair of Giallo black gloves,I felt that I had a great opportunity to take a look around the cemetery with no crosses.

The plot:

After being forced to watch her husband get brutally murdered by a gang of outlaws,Marie Caine's day is not made any better when,whilst burring her husband two friends rush to tell her the bad news that almost all of the livestock that she and her husband owned has been killed.

Desperate to show the outlaws that she wont go down without a fight,Marie gets hold of a horse and heads for the nearest town,where she eventually finds a mutual called Manuel. Initially turning down Marie's pleas to help avenge the death of her husband,due to Manuel (who seems to have a strange obsession with wearing black leather gloves)feeling that "You believe in revenge,I don't."

Manuel has a temporally laps from his written in stone rules of staying out of "other peoples business" and takes a quick look around his town,where he discovers all of the outlaws beating the residents up and beginning to act like the "law" of the town.Whilst still fearing about kicking off a cycle of revenge,Manuel begins to feel that if he does not help Marie to avenge the death of her husband and his (former) best friend,then the outlaws are defiantly gonna make sure that their "cycle of terror" never leaves the town,until they have complete control.

View on the film:

The first main thing that I have to say about this wonderful film,is that if you are a fan of dialogue-heavy movies,then prepare yourself to see something completely different,with this movie having only around 30 lines of dialogue for the whole of its 90 minute running time.

Impressively screenwriters Robert Hossein,Dario Argento and Claude Desailly show that sometimes less really is more,with the chosen moments of dialogue being placed at perfect points in the films running time,thanks to it either helping to develop the films plot,or to push the mood of the movie into grimmer territory.

Along with the film being one which can be easily enjoyed in its own right,the movie is also very interesting to look at in seeing the start of some themes that co-screenwriter Argento would expand upon in the future,with Manuel wearing black leather gloves,and the presence of a very prominent female lead character being two of the main things that Dario would carry on with later on.

Although I have read quite a few times in magazines and online people saying that a scene in a film "could be put on a wall as a work of art",this has been one of the few films I have seen where it looks like the camera is filming actually works of art!.

For his stunningly elegant directing,Robert Hossein shows himself to be a master of the wide shot,with the beautiful,wilderness natural locations being allowed to shine to their fullest,As Manuel goes around the increasingly dangerous wilderness of the town to help Marie avenge the death of her husband.Along with the stunning wide shots,Hossein gives the film a great "grim" look,which allows the wonderful performances from himself and the fantastic Michele Mercier (who had both starred in the 1964 film Angelique)to go from an attempt to find hope,to falling into dying despair.

Final view on the film:

A wonderful,elegantly sparse Spaghetti Western with great performances and beautiful directing from actor,co-screenwriter and director Hossein.

I'm certainly the first one not to join the incredible chorus of praises.But seriously folks !Robert Hossein's forte has always been the thriller,the film noir, and several of his efforts are really worthwhile ,particularly " Toi Le Venin" "Le Jeu De La Vérité" and "La Mort D'Un Tueur";westerns are a different matter.

Just before this spaghetti-western (it's rather a French fries western ,by the way) ,he and his star Michèle Mercier hit the big time with the five "Angélique Marquise Des Anges" movies .

"Une Corde Un Colt" is a bad idea gone wrong;in France it got unanimous thumbs down .The cast is essentially French and (for a French),it's impossible to believe in their "characters" .The production is the poorest of all Hossein movies ,being thin and lacking any real positive (or negative) energy.A "visual " western it may be (with a dozen of lines),and they even hire "Angélique"'s cameraman ,Henri Persin,but there's nothing really visually beautiful to film.

André Hossein,Robert's brother ,provides the score,as usual,and it's rather nice,although a bit anachronistic ,sounding late fifties/early sixties