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Topic: My Name is Nobody Universal 8 + Marketing

Jean-Marc Toussaint
Film God

Posts: 2392
From: France
Registered: Oct 2004

posted April 13, 2006 07:37 PM

Following the fine example set by fellow members who reconstructed longer film digests using reels from different companies and countries, I decided to give this exercise a try with my recently acquired Goko 8008 editor.

Sure, I do have all 5 reels to splice « Star Wars » and both versions (Ken and Piccolo) to create a longer « Omen » digest, and I will roll up my sleeves someday to put these together, but I thought it would be fun to start with a film that hadn’t been much talked about on this forum.

Therefore, I chose « My Name is Nobody », a great Western produced by Sergio Leone, starring Henry Fonda and Terence Hill…

The available material is a 400ft cut-down from Universal 8 and a two-reeler (330ft + 250ft) from Marketing Film.
Even though both packages feature a lot of common scenes (in – sometimes - different orders), there are enough differences to squeeze a roughly 700ft version on a 600ft spool.

And, here’s how…

We start with the beginning of the first Marketing reel (let’s call it MF1) as it features some of the opening credits from the original film (Fonda/Beauregard observes Hill/Nobody’s strange fishing method) and we let it roll as Nobody is being given a bomb in a basket by a bunch of goons who want to get rid of Beauregard.

For the next scene (Nobody and Beauregard’s discussion in the cantina, with the former enumerating the later’s past actions as a killer while the bomb is ticking) we cut to the US reel (let’s call it U8). It is longer in this version and features the opening, with a young messenger asking for confirmation of Fonda’s booking on a ship that will leave America soon. Very useful hint of the actual ending, available on U8 but missing from Marketing.

The following sequence (the drinkink/sharp-shooting competition in the saloon) requires to make a difficult choice. The beginning is longer in U8 but, as it is the opening scene of the US reel, it features surimposed titles and credits. The ending is longer on the German reel and goes on with two subsequent scenes missing from U8. Not willing to create an overly splicy print, I picked the MF1 that includes the competition until the tiny glass is catched by the tall killer (a French actor named Marc Mazza), the slapping scene, the discussion at the card table between Nobody and the crimelord (played by Jean Martin another French actor).

We let MF1 roll until the end for the odd competition/association (spoof shoot-out in the middle of the street) between Beauregard and Nobody.

We cut right to the opening shot of the second Marketing reel (MF2), with Fonda noticing the cavalcade of the Wild Bunch. Following shots feature surimposed titles, therefore we jump to U8, which shows a longer, more dramatic, treatment of the arrival of the horsemen. As we see Fonda climbing the steps of a porch and a close-up of Hill, we cut back to MF2 for the loading of the dynamite in the horses’ saddlebags and the Wild Bunch galloping out of town.

We let MF2 continue with the carnival scene (where Hill knocks out some guys using a « slapping dummy »), the pool table sequence (with Nobody explaining to Beauregard how a single man can stand against 150 gangsters armed to the teeth), the final confrontation between Fonda and the crimelord, and the final discussion where Nobody convinces Beauregard to wipe the Wild Bunch out in order to be remembered in History books.

The last close-up of Hill, with a fading to the horsemen riding in the horizon and Fonda setting-up for the shooting are the last shots from MF2 to be used. The German reel continues with an edited version of the shoot-out and ends with Beauregard fleeing on the train driven by Nobody.

This is when the final part of U8 becomes very useful. The Wild Bunch scene is longer, features all the freeze-frame effects, Hill keeping the body count and the fleeing on the train. It continues with Nobody explaining to Beauregard how to « disappear », the duel in the street where Beauregard is « killed », and finishes with an edited version of the actual ending (Beauregard, in voice over, writing a letter to Nobody, while we see the later escaping members of the Wild Bunch on a pier. We zoom towards a porthole and we discover that Beauregard, in hiding, has finally caught his boat). We finally freeze frame on a close-up of Hill and have some short end credits.

Both the US and the German version are letterboxed (adapted scope), so transitions between shots are smoother than, for instance, in « The Omen », where you have to deal with a cropped Ken reel and a masked Piccolo one. Quality in colour varies. My U8 hasn’t really faded as opposed to my MF1 & 2 where a slight pink tint has appeared.

But, as Robert Aragon suggested in his Omen article, rerecording the sound really helps in blending these differences together. As the film was mostly shot in English, I used the region 2 dvd. Since it was originally recorded in mono, I transfered both stereo channels to the main track, which deliverss a booming result.

I am planning on recording the French-dubbed version on the balance track, as a tribute to the French speaking actors in the film and, also, in order to appeal to my non-English-speaking audience. Something I have successfully done in the past on other reels, and that proves, despite the small image and the tiny mag track, that super 8 can be both versatile and powerful.

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