The title "My name is Nobody" was, I think, taken from a text in Homer's Odyssey which Odysseus said to Cyclops, the one-eyed giant. And, indeed, if one considers that fact one could better see what this film's message is: While old Jack Beauregard could, after a long voyage, at last go home to Europe, "Nobody" was destined to continue his odyssey far from home in countries that were never his cultural homeland.

Albeit the film itself is a parody of other westerns, of 'C'era una volta il West' and/or 'The wild bunch' for example, and therefore should be (and is in fact) comical and funny, one nevertheless hears a slightly melancholy song sung by/about Odysseus(= Nobody) who had forgotten his homeland. Owing to that (please let me dare say)'depth', 'Il mio nome e nessuno' succeeded in being far more than a simple parody and in appealing not only to 'genre fans' but also to 'general' movie lovers: Fonda's brilliant performance, Fonda and Terence Hill's unique combination, Morricone's perfect score. It's all really tasty.

I still remember that a Japanese film critic at that time has rated this film low, because 'it was a spaghetti western made by an assistant of Sergio Leone'. But when I myself saw the film later, I (please excuse me for being cheeky and cocky) doubted his eye of a film critic: Why hasn't he seen that this film clearly stood out from other Italian westerns? Why has he ignored the fact that Tonino Valerii could make excellent westerns without Leone and without Morricone? (I of course mean 'Il prezzo del potere' and 'I giorni dell'ira'.)

Sergio Leone picked a good director to helm his production of My Name is Nobody, as Tonino Valerii brings a sensibility that wouldn't of been the same had Leone taken the helm. It's not that Valerii steers too far away from certain trademarks of the quintessential spaghetti western director: expansive close-ups, beautiful master-shots showing the sprawling landscapes of the deserts and small towns of the old west, and of course Ennio Morricone. But this time there's a change of the guard in terms of homage- now it's not just going for an epic quality, but full-on comedy stylings.

There's room to compare this to old westerns with Henry Fonda just as much as there's comparison to the Three Stooges. Or Buster Keaton. Because nothing is taken too seriously, it ends up having some strong underlying statements about gunslingers in the old west, the young catching up with the old, and the old 'times they are a changing' logic that comes with the territory.

The tone is light, though at the same time there's still that level of ultra-cool suspense that can be found in Leone's work. Valerii takes it up a notch in the direction of something a little less violent, however (the film is technically rated PG, despite quite a few dozen deaths at one point). Terrence Hill is the title character, a guy who's strikingly handsome but perpetually goofy, who takes on as a big challenge Jack Bouregarde (Fonda, his last western, a good one to go out on, if not as great as his previous role as Frank), who's a hero gunslinger. Nobody has fixed a 'Wild Bunch' to come after him, and to what end? Much of the film focuses on Nobody, until the second half when Nobody keeps prodding on Jack with his vague threats in the guise of 'fairy tales' his grandfather used to tell him.

And all the while it's consistently hilarious material, particularly if you know Leone's stuff well (eg the gag from For a Few Dollars More where shooting a hat holds as much danger as comic timing), and tries at least to plug into the viewer who's in on the joke of not just an homaged western and homaged Leone western (Morricone's score has tones from Once Upon a Time in the West, but comes close to sounding like a coffee commercial at times), but an homage to silent comedies and slapstick.

Where else, for example, will you see a gunslinger such as Nobody fight off a potential assailant in a bar by just continually slapping him around as if Moe Howard possessed him for a full minute? How about the gun being slung up at 16 frames-per-second? Or a montage within an action sequence with Jack versus the 'Wild Bunch' where freeze-frames of reactions from Nobody and pages from 'history' showing Jack killing off the posse pop up? And there's a fun-house/mirror scene that comes about as close to The Lady From Shanghai as the most memorable in all cinema.

Some of it might just be all silly-by-proxy; it's a big belly laugh to see Hill with a serious face hold a stick still in the air waiting for a bug to go underwater to catch a fish. In fact Hill is strangely enough a huge part to the success of the film by sticking to his two-dimensional profile with just the best bits of subversion: looking at his eyes one can't always tell whether he's being serious, crazy, or just plain joking around, like in the saloon. He wouldn't work as the typical bad-ass, stoic Leone anti-hero/villain, but Valerii understands how to handle his abilities. Same goes for Fonda, only he doesn't have to go too far to be effective: all he needs to do is to keep a silence going, a look that says everything that needs to be said (albeit he lays it on heavy in the final letter, something that definitely would not be in a typical Leone film).

And yet even with all of Valerii's kidding moments and high-spirits (watch out little guy on stilts!), there is some genuine artistry at work too, as when the Wild Bunch is seen coming ahead through the desert (the wide-reaching over-head angle is the best shot in the film), and it reveals that there could be some worth in checking out other obscurer efforts of his. As it stands, I could watch it anytime it's on TV, if only as a pick-me-up if it's a soggy day. For fans of the western it is a must-see, if only for the fun of it all, and to get a pure in-joke regarding Sam Peckinpah.

Jack Beauregard (Henry Fonda) is an aging gunslinger who wants to retire. After quickly shooting three gunmen who attempt to ambush him in a barbershop - he has no chance to rest ever, constantly being challenged by people to prove themselves - the barber's son asks if there is anyone in the world faster. The reply? "Faster than him? Nobody!"

There is a man named Nobody (Terence Hill), who dreams of being better than Beauregard. But instead of challenging the gunslinger, he plans on taking out all 150 members of the Wild Bunch - no relation - on his own. They're led by Geoffrey Lewis, who was a character actor par excellence.

While this movie is a comedy, the idea at the end, where Nobody is now as chased and tested as Beauregard, speaks to the violent life of the Italian Western hero, who is continually threatened by not only death, but by the advent of the technological twentieth century, which will end his way of life.

Tonino Valerii, who was Leone's assistant director on A Fistful of Dollars, directed this film. He also wrote The Long Hair of Death and directed films like My Dear Killer and Day of Anger.

There's some dispute that Leone directed much of this film, which was made mostly in the United States. It arose when Henry Ford's costumes were stolen, which would have delayed the movie by more than a week. Leone, who came up with the idea for the film, offered to shoot second unit to keep the movie moving.

Neil Summers, who played Squirrel, and John Landis, who claims to have been an extra, stated that Leone directed most of their scenes, often on horseback. However, screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi (Torso, Almost Human, All the Colors of the Dark, Once Upon A Time In America) told Robert Curti, the writer of Tonino Valerii: The Films, that "Tonino shot the whole film, absolutely ON HIS OWN" and that Leone "organized a second unit crew and shot a couple of sequences, which in my opinion are the weakest in the film...Nothing else."

Sergio Donati expanded on this, stating that some photographers were sent to America and they asked Leone, on his lone set day, to sit behind the camera in a director's pose. Donati said, "Inevitably, from that moment on, everyone, in and outside the movie business started saying "Yeah, actually the real director of the film was Leone, who saved it from the disaster of an incapable director"."

Tobe Hooper and Tonino Valerii would have had a lot to talk about.

For anyone that thinks that Italian Westerns are dumb, I'd just like to raise one point. The title refers to The Odyssey, as Odysseus tricks Polyphemus into believing his name is "nobody."