The Price of Power

Like every other art form, Spaghetti Westerns became swept up in the late '60s political ferment. This took most obvious form in the Zapata Westerns, flicks like A Bullet for the General (1967) analogizing the 1910 Mexican Revolution with Che Guevara and the Vietcong. Others took more subtle tracts: Sergio Sollima's The Big Gundown (1966) began as a contemporary story about a crooked strikebreaker, then was retooled for a "safer" genre. Who searches Westerns for political messages?

The Price of Power (1969) stands out, even among such distinguished company. Four years before Executive Action, Tonino Valerii fictionalizes John F. Kennedy's assassination - in the Old West. The result is frustratingly uneven. Valerii mashes a political thriller with familiar Western tropes, resulting in an awkward experience.

Dallas, 1881 seethes with racial bigotry and resentment over the Civil War. President James Garfield (Van Johnson) visits Dallas hoping to heal old wounds, but a cabal of politicians, businessmen and bandits plots his death. Bill Willer (Giuliano Gemma), his father (Antonio Casas) murdered by the same conspirators, foils one assassination attempt and becomes a hero. When Garfield is killed, the local Sheriff (Benito Stefanelli) pins the crime on Jack Donovan (Ray Saunders), an innocent black man. Bill joins the President's assistant McDonald (Warren Vanders) and a newspaper man (Manuel Zarzo) to unravel the conspiracy.

Let's address the obvious first: The Price of Power portrays history as accurately as The Flintstones recalls Neanderthal man. Garfield was shot in a DC railroad station by Charles Guiteau, a lunatic who thought Garfield owed him a diplomatic post. Garfield died after a long, debilitating illness caused by unsanitary medical care. This, along with the backstage rivalry of Garfield's liberal Republicans and Roscoe Conkling's crooked Stalwarts, deserves a film in its own right. But Valerii's interested in evoking a more recent assassination.

The allegory isn't subtle. Garfield's wife (Maria Caudra) wears a pink dress when arriving in Dallas. Roughnecks post "wanted for treason" posters with Garfield's visage throughout the city. The President quotes Kennedy directly, saying "I look at things as they could be and ask, ‘Why not?’” The Texan Vice President (Jose Suarez) meets with the conspirators the night before the assassination. There's a Warren Commission-style judicial panel covering up the murder. Valerii even stages the shooting Zapruder-style, with concealed killers firing from an overpass. Price is surprisingly thorough in its compilation of conspiracy lore.

But Price is more interesting in theory than execution. Valerii and writer Massimo Patrizi show Garfield done in by a cabal of unreconstructed Confederates, angry at his policies of racial reform. Here's where Price breaks down. If evoking Kennedy, the comparison doesn't wash: Lyndon Johnson almost immediately passed the Civil Rights Act, legally abolishing segregation. By contrast, in 1881 Reconstruction was essentially finished; Garfield's liberalism extended more to civil service reform than racial equality. The film doesn't work either as analogy or history.

Price isn't entirely satisfying as a Western either. Valerii's direction mixes expected Almerian vistas with Stelvio Massi's expressive deep focus photography. He stages some good action scenes, as when Bill foils an ambush of the President's train, or how the crippled journalist outwits the Sheriff. Valerii's best trick has Bill duel with the Sheriff in the dark, using a lighted cigar to mark their targets. Spaghetti fans will immediately note the Sweetwater and Flagstone sets from Once Upon a Time in the West. Luis Bacalov also contributes a moody score.

But the second half bogs down in excessive exposition that kills narrative momentum. The conspirators argue and negotiate interminably with the Vice President and McDonald, never putting their threats into action. For that matter, the characters don't really gel. McDonald's role is unnecessarily murky; he goes from loyal bodyguard to possible conspirator to trial prosecutor within a few scenes. The most interesting villain is Wallace (Michael Harvey), a Confederate renegade hoping to restart the Civil War. Yet he's relegated to expendable henchman status.

Giuliano Gemma is well-cast as the straight-arrow Bill, though the material stresses his limitations. When Bill finds his slain father, his reaction's like someone spotting spilled coffee on the kitchen floor. Van Johnson spouts badly dubbed platitudes but Warren Vanders handles his inscrutable character well. Fernando Rey (The French Connection) plays the chief conspirator. Benito Stefanelli, familiar from 100 Spaghetti bit parts, gets an unusually meaty role as the two-timing Sheriff. Other recognizable faces - Antonio Casas, Jose Calvo, Michael Harvey, Lorenzo Robledo, Frank Brana - also appear.

The Price of Power is an interesting failure. As a Western it's slow and pretentious; as a political expose it's minor league compared to Z or All the President's Men. Ultimately it's an awkward attempt to graft contemporary American politics onto the past, by someone evincing little grasp on either.