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After Siegel’s direction of a budget by Budd Boetticher, the movie “Two Mules for Sister Sara” was available for public viewing yesterday in the Cinerama Theatre. From my experience Siegel claims it is. While I’m not quite persuaded that it is the ideal film, it is good enough and like good movies with unique narratives, it blossoms and stays in the concavity of the brain. The film does feature moments rich with charm, comedy, and images of savage like cruelty varying between scary and sad, but I believe this film attained “life” from the combination of events, ideas, images, and people. The point, however is quite simple. Only two core characters embody this piece: Hogan, an American mercenary, who for some reason chose to work alongside french followers of Juarez, the 19th century Mexican patriot, and Sara, a nun that dies in danger from the French.Traveling with a horse and mule (which is the title and I do not approve of it) the two embark on an adventure that is simultaneously an escape from pursuing soldiers and other threats, and a quest to loot and burn down the French garrison at Chihuahua. Eastwood and Miss MacLaine deliver two solid performances as Sara and Hogan, and it becomes obvious that there is a major conflict between them. This tension stems from the difference between a man who has a job as opposed to one who has a calling.
But within Sara, a sister who is most suspicious, there is that tension, and there is in Hogan as well, for he bears an effigy of a nun as a crucifix bears an effigy of a nun right next to her heart. With his little black powder he performs miracles. Moreover, Sara is mystically religious when most emphatically physical (which paradox is deeply reinforced by Ennio Morricone ‘s effortlessly functional score), and everywhere this western adventure movie progresses is along the lines of extremely satisfying flexible and intricate dialectics. In this development of major themes and minor preoccupations” Two Mules for Sister Sara” sounds chiefly like the work of Don Siegel (“Coogan’s Bluff,” “Madigan,” “Hell Is For Heroes,” etc.), and in feeling and narrative shapeliness quite like Budd Boetticher (“The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond,” “Comanche Station,” etc. a fine and somewhat neglected filmmaker). I have no idea that the two men collaborated, but I am very glad that both names are involved. That one named collaboration should be noted-that of the director, and the film editors Robert Shugrue and Juan José Marino, and the renowned Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa.
Figueroa took pictures as well for ‘Los Olvidados,’ ‘Nazarin‘, ‘Exterminating Angel’, and ‘Simon of the Desert,’ yet nothing in his collaboration with Buñuel can compare to such passages as the depicting of the desert predators in the opening titles of ‘Two Mules for Sister Sara’ or, to some extent, as the prologue of the movie’s climax, the stepwise clarity of the pilgrimage to the Juariah mountain stronghold.
CREDITS SISTER SARA, directed by Don Slegel, written by Albert Maltz based on a story by Budd Boetticher, Director of photography Gabriel Figueroa, music score Ennio Morricone, producer Martin Rackin and Carroll Case, distributed by Universal Malpaso in partnership with Sanen Productions. Cinerama Theater, Broadway at 47th Street. Duration: 114 minutes. (MPAA’s Film Rating: GP All Ages. Parents Are Advised to Provide Guidance.)
Sara…Shirley MacLaine Hogan…Clint Eastwood Colonel Beltran…Manolo Fabregas General LeClaire…Alberto Morin
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