The best Italian westerns revolve around revenge. And, as the old Confucian saying goes, “He who seeks revenge digs two graves.”

Robert Hossein’s Cemetery Without Crosses (Une corde, un colt) is a revenge tale so sparse the characters needn’t speak of it. They simply act. Or maybe it’s not acting. Maybe it’s convention, and they’re just following their prescribed paths to the end of the line.

Hossein plays Manuel, a hired killer who telegraphs his intentions by producing a black leather glove from his vest pocket. No one but the camera seems to notice as he slides it slowly onto his right hand and then proceeds to draw with his left. Manuel’s fast. So fast that in the final shootout, the edits of men dropping dead can barely keep up. The whole movie is shot through with silent artistry, but the combination of shock cuts and gunshot audio elevates Manuel to mythic status. In any other film, Manuel’s white steed and tendency to hang out in a deserted ghost town might seem ridiculous. Here, it makes perfect sense.

The story is pretty simple. Cattle baron Larry Rodgers (Serge Marquand) has a fellow farmer, Ben Caine (Benito Stefanelli), hanged, makes his wife Maria (Michèle Mercier) watch, and then burns Ben and Maria’s ranch to the ground. Maria then finds Manuel lounging in his ghost town and begs him for revenge. Manuel says no, then yes, rides off, and takes the Sanjuro route by embedding himself with the Rodgers gang, gains their trust, and then kidnaps Diana (Anne-Marie Balin), Rodgers’ daughter. Manuel takes her back to the ghost town as bait, and Rodgers’ men come. Maria’s brothers-in-law prove to be as reprehensible as any of Rodgers’ men, and a final shootout leaves all but one dead in the dust. The sole survivor leaves to either start a new life or begin the cycle again.

Short on dialogue but long on atmosphere, Cemetery Without Crosses has a similar vibe to Werner Herzog’s Heart of Glass, the movie where he had the actors hypnotized prior to calling “Action!” All the characters in Cemetery, but particularly Manuel, move as if some music we can’t hear is motivating their steps. That, combined with the desolated sand-beaten sets of the ghost town, creates an equally hypnotic effect.

In his 10,000 Ways to Die: A Director’s Take on the Italian Western, Alex Cox compares Cemetery to Once Upon a Time in the West, El Topo, One-Eyed Jacks, and The Last Movie—art films all, and damn good ones at that. It’s as if Hossein, working with screenwriters Claude Desailly and Dario Argento, took one look at the form of the Italian western and saw ample opportunities to play. He also saw a few less savory aspects of the Italian western he could not resist.

Cemetery Without Crosses / Une corde, un colt (1969)
Directed by Robert Hossein
Screenplay by Robert Hossein, Claude Desailly, Dario Argento
Produced by Jean-Pierre Labatut, Jean-Charles Raffini, Toussaint Torre
Starring: Robert Hossein, Michèle Mercier, Serge Marquand, Daniele Vargas, Anne-Marie Balin, Benito Stefanelli
Movietime, Not rated, Running time 90 minutes, Released Jan. 25, 1969

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