DVD: Cemetery Without Crosses

This must be one of the year’s most remarkable archive exhumations: it may well become the re-release of 2015. A French take on the western released in 1969, Cemetery Without Crosses was explicitly made in the style of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. Leone even directed one scene – a set piece in which the cast gather around a table for dinner. Its director and lead actor Robert Hossein says it was France’s first western.

Hossein was meant to be in Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, but his contract with French company Gaumont prevented him taking the job so he set to creating his own take on the genre. While making it in Spain, his friend Leone pitched in to direct that dinner scene. As a meta-western, Cemetery Without Crosses is closely related in ethos to the film noir-inspired French cinema the Cahiers du Cinéma generation were making. Unlike, say, Alphaville, Cemetery Without Crosses plays its hand straight and reveals its auteur origin in the way it distils Leone’s already exact vision to the barest essentials. When a knowing look is needed, a tiny flicker of the eyes is enough. When a shoot-out occurs, it is hardly telegraphed, and over in as long as it takes to fire four bullets. 

The film is violent and defies convention in how it shocks

A revenge tale, Cemetery Without Crosses is the story of Maria Caine (Michèle Mercier, pictured below) and Manuel (Hossein). Her husband has been lynched by the Rogers gang, so she seeks the help of former flame Manuel, who lives on his own in a ghost town. He agrees, infiltrates the Rogers and wipes them out. The film is violent and defies convention in how it shocks (revealing exactly how would spoil the surprises). The camerawork is amazing: 52 minutes in, a sequence cutting between Maria and Manuel is so arresting it begs to be watched over and over again. The film is supremely tense, with an instantly compelling dark atmosphere.

Although the bleak Cemetery Without Crosses was little known, it was a big deal in France around the time of its release – as attested by the extras which include two contemporaneous shorts: a revealing interview with Hossein and on-set coverage filmed for television news. Mercier was a star, known from the Angélique films, and her appearance in such a gritty picture subverted her image. Hossein was also well known, especially for his role in Rififi. In another extra, a recent interview filmed specially for this release, Hossein says the film wasn’t commercially successful due to France’s sombre post-Mai ’68 mood.

The treats don’t stop with the film itself. The theme tune, “The Rope and the Colt”, is an essential and exclusive song, sung by Scott Walker. The splendid Morricone-style soundtrack music was composed by Hossein’s father André. There are two dialogue options on this smartly restored dual Blu-ray/DVD release: one in English, the other Italian (the entire soundtrack was post-synced). The latter was written by Dario Argento, who also worked on Once Upon a Time in the West. Hossein’s Manuel wears a black glove, a motif used by Argento in his own films. And indeed, Cemetery Without Crosses has the whiff of a giallo. This has to be seen.

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