Moving Pieces: by Matthias Stork

Frames Cinema Journal
Moving Pieces
http://framescinemajournal.com
By Matthias Stork
Moving Pieces – Sergio Leone’s Duel from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.
The above video essay was borne out of a lifelong affection for Sergio
Leone’s renowned Dollars trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars [1964], For A Few
Dollars More [1965], and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly [1966]). It is
also my personal attempt to define, in audiovisual terms, one of the
crucial components of its iconography: the duel.
As a fledgling video essayist, the piece constitutes a departure for me. My

previous work was, by design, fairly analytical.[1] The first two parts of
“Chaos Cinema” were essentially conceptualized as the illustration of a
thesis, employing a linear structure that addresses specific, interrelated
points of an overarching argument. Part three, though a tad more laissez-
faire in its structure, equally aims for coherence, by virtue of a point-by-
point checklist formula. Consequently, the essays rely largely upon voice-
over narration which served as a constant reference point, indeed the
guiding principle, for the aesthetic form. In other words, the selected
scenes were put in service of a written text.
With “Moving Pieces” I aspired to engage with another approach to the

video essay. I thus deliberately opted against a voice over. The idea was
to use only few textual inserts and primarily focus on the editing, to get in
touch with the film object. Written and vocalized comments turned into
purely audiovisual ones. This conceptual shift posed quite a challenge for
me because it required a re-conceptualization of the video essay, not as a
vehicle for a written argument, but an argument in itself.
The resulting poetic design of the video essay completely reconfigured

the standard I had previously cultivated for myself. Instead of a linear
structure, “Moving Pieces” is informed by an associative editing schema.
Instead of explicit words and inter-titles, it uses match cuts and dissolves,
music cues, and text fragments to construct – what I hope is – a more
cinematic discourse. And it does not flaunt its core argument at the very
beginning and subsequently provide examples to corroborate it, but
gradually builds towards a distinctively personal vision of the duel
aesthetic in Leone’s seminal Western films. This personal element
accounts for the choice of the Ennio Morricone soundtrack from A Few
Dollars More (1965), the quintessence of Leone’s vision of the (Spaghetti)
Western, a – partially – deeply melancholic and tragic film that critically
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the personal ramifications of violence, much more than Fistful of
Dollars (1964) and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Morricone’s
nostalgic, wistful tune sets the overriding atmosphere for the video essay.
My intra- and intertextual commentary on Leone’s films is complemented

by a further link with Clint Eastwood’s iconic ‘Man with No Name’
character and Eastwood’s own meta-textual treatise on his career and the
Western genre, Unforgiven (1992). The oft-quoted line, voiced by
Eastwood’s William Munny — “It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. You
take away all he’s got and all he’s ever going to have” — puts Leone’s
approach to the duel in perspective. The Dollars films seem to not engage
with Eastwood’s sermon, as popular discourse frames their use of
violence as glorifying. While this cliché is true, to a certain extent at
least, the related claim that violence itself is glorified, to me, is
problematic. I propose that the violence of the duel is just one of many
elements in Leone’s stylized action cinema. The structure of the duel, the
manner in which it is ritualistically staged and executed, marks it as a
deeply human action, one that goes beyond pure spectacle.
Eastwood’s quote opens the essay, and instigates my own search for more
meaning. The essay concludes with a further quotation, one from Sir
Christopher Frayling’s book Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans
from Karl May to Sergio Leone.[2] Frayling characterizes Leone’s duel as
a ballet of death, ascribing it a poetic elegance and beauty that clash with
the brutality of death. It is in between Unforgiven’s foundational critique
and Frayling’s astute observation that I attempt to locate and crystallize
my own assumptions about the duel, as a series of moving pieces,
grandiose, exuberant, and invariably poignant.
Endnotes:
[1] I am referring to Christian Keathley’s distinction between “analytical”

and “poetic” video essays. See Keathley, Christian, “La Caméra-Stylo:
Notes on Video Criticism and Cinephilia.” The Language and Style of Film
Criticism. Eds. Clayton, Alex and Klevan, Andrew. London: Routledge,
2011.
[2] Frayling, Christopher. Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans

from Karl May to Sergio Leone. London, Boston: Routledge & Kegan,
Paul, 1981.
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Frames Cinema Journal

Moving Pieces – Sergio Leone’s Duel from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.

As a fledgling video essayist, the piece constitutes a departure for me. My

With “Moving Pieces” I aspired to engage with another approach to the

The resulting poetic design of the video essay completely reconfigured

My intra- and intertextual commentary on Leone’s films is complemented

[1] I am referring to Christian Keathley’s distinction between “analytical”

[2] Frayling, Christopher. Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans

Frames #1Film and Moving Image Studies Re-Born Digital? 2012-07-02,

Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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