And for a Roof a Sky Full of Stars /...e per tetto un cielo di stelle (1968)

This is a spaghetti western that is genuinely funny, but it also has its share of serious action which keeps it from being just another run-of-the-mill light-weight comedy.

Director: Giulio Petroni
Cast: Giuliano Gemma, Mario Adorf, Magda Konopka, Federico Boido, Cris Huerta, Julie Menard, Anthony Dawson, Sandro Dori, Franco Balducci, Peter Branco, Franco Lantieri, Giovanni Ivan Scratuglia, Angiolino Rizzieri, John Bartha, Alfonso de la Vega, Maria Gustafsson, Victor Israel, Paolo Magalotti, Benito Stefanelli, Luciano Bonanni, Alberto Dell'Acqua, Renato Pinciroli, Riccardo Pizzuti, Mimmo Poli



Adorf and Gemma are great as the protagonists of this film, and I find them much more believable than Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. Federico Boido and Anthony Dawson are even better as the over-the-top father-and-son villains who are hunting for Gemma. They are very entertaining to watch. Boido's character is especially funny, and both are marvelously ruthless. The showdown at the end of the film is classic.

The music score by Ennio Morricone is great, as always, even though its far from being one of his best.

This is definitely a movie worth watching, especially for Euro-western fans.

Extras:
- Featurette: " Ein Mann der Tat" with moviehistorian Antonio Tentori" (09:18 Min.)
- "Und als Dach ein besternter Himmel" with Giulio Petroni and Antonio Tentori (12:04 Min.)
only italian with german subbs

German Trailer (3:03 Min.)
English Trailer (2:37 Min.)
Italian Trailer (3:06 Min.)
Movieintro in german (4:47 Min.)
Movieintro in english (4:48 Min.)
Picturegallery




IMDb

The film's rambling narrative revolves yet again around the buddy-buddy formula in an obviously broader vein; even so, the film has its serious side since it opens with a stagecoach massacre and a similar fate befalls a couple of traveling circus performers towards the end - the perpetrators are a gang of criminals hotly in pursuit of ex-comrade and sharpshooter Giuliano Gemma who wants out (he doesn't even carry a gun anymore), preferring to make his living as a confidence-trickster (which, as it turns out, is no less precarious or law-abiding than being a bandit!).

His companion, more often dupe, is Mario Adorf turning in an inspired performance as the gullible and gruff yet amiable would-be rancher (whom Gemma embroils in many a scheme - fake telegraph service, circus acts involving a siren and Adorf himself fitted with a loincloth and breathing fire - to fleece the unsuspecting townsfolk). At one point, Adorf himself is made to invest all his savings in an inexistent bank and, later, falls for his partner's ruse that a funeral procession they meet up with is for a famous bandit who has a fortune buried in his back-yard (only to learn, after having dug a hole "all the way down to Hell", that he had been wheelchair-bound since childhood) just so Gemma could make out with the deceased's luscious young wife - the dinner-table scene between Gemma and Magda Konopka here is highly reminiscent of the celebrated one featured in TOM JONES (1963). Forsaking Gemma for a visionary drunk, Adorf manages to rob a gold shipment by posing as a Wells Fargo employee - though his partner in this venture turns out to be a bloodthirsty maniac who mows down an entire Army platoon which sets out in pursuit of them!

Anthony Dawson turns up at the climax as the sadistic chief villain; having taken refuge in Adorf's dilapidated ranch (which they leisurely restore), our heroes then see their dreamhouse literally go up in smoke when they are forced to blow the place up with Dawson's gang still inside! The tireless Ennio Morricone provides yet another exemplary score; the wistful main theme is especially striking.
~ MARIO GAUCI

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