‘Dead For A Dollar’: Walter Hill Talks Evolution Of The Western – Venice

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Ahead of accepting the Venice Film Festival’s Glory to the Filmmaker Award this evening, legendary filmmaker Walter Hill met with the press corps here on the Lido to talk about his new western, Dead For A Dollar.Screening out of competition at Venice, Dead for a Dollar follows a famed bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) who, while on a mission to find and return the wife (Rachel Brosnahan) of a successful businessman, runs into his sworn enemy (Willem Dafoe), a professional gambler and outlaw whom he had sent to prison years before.

Standing in the way is an infamous gangster (Benjamin Bratt) who gets a piece of any action that happens along the Mexican border.Asked about his fondness for the genre, the Long Riders, Geronimo and Wild Bill director offered, “I’m tempted to say I don’t know.

You have to know yourself, and does anybody ever? I’m fond of the period, I like making the films, I like going out there with the cast and the horses.” It also comes down to “nostalgia for a certain period in American history that we all share, the world shares, there’s a mythopoetic idea about the western.”On the evolution of the western, Hill said, “Clearly the attitudes about the feminine position in society and racial attitudes are different than the traditional tropes of the western.

At the same time, the movie tries to valorize the tradition of the western.” But he didn’t want to make a film that was “frozen in amber just like the 1950s or 1930s.