MovieChat Forums > Il mio nome è Nessuno (1974) Discussion > Jack and Nodody's guns

Jack and Nodody's guns

posted 18 years ago by DHunter987
17 replies | jump to latest

If this movie takes place in the late 1800's to early 1900's why are Jack (fonda) and Nobody (Hill) using old outdated model colt revolvers (1851 navy's I belive, which were made before the civil war). Also, at the end why do the wild bunch explode when jack shoots at them. I admit i havent seen the whole movie so there may be another scene explaining this, but id appreciate it is somebody cleared this up.

two kinds of people in the world,those with loaded guns and those who dig...you dig.

[–] Noel_MarquisDeMaynes 18 years ago

If you saw the whole movie, you would have noticed the dynamite they carried in their saddle bags. Their shiny saddle bags, blinking in the sunlight.

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with questions and those who see the complete movie. ;-)

[–] DHunter987 18 years ago

Thanks, I set the movie to record on Tivo this week sometime.

two kinds of people in the world,those with loaded guns and those who dig...you dig.

[–] kurgan77340 18 years ago

There were a LOT of cap and ball revolvers made for use in the War Between the States. The new (post 1873) cartridge revolvers were better, but they cost more.

[–] mopar-11 18 years ago

With the end of the Civil War in 1865, millions of men inherited Colt Army and Navy revolvers; Remington 1858 Army, etc. By 1873, with the advent of the Colt Peacemaker, that took metal cartridges, a whole new industry opened up converting cap and ball revolvers to centerfire cartridges. The original poster is right, though. By 1899(the year the film takes place) both Jack and Nobody would be using Peacemakers or maybe Smith & Wesson Schofield or Americans, or Remington Frontier .44's. I think the old Colts were used because they looked cool and they also were symbols of the Old West that was about to die and change into the 20th Century.

"One hundred and fifty pure-bred sons of bitches. And they ride like they were thousands."

[–] varmint_hunter223 18 years ago

Just because the guns were old, doesnt mean they still werent good. Take jack for example, he had done pretty well with the 51 navy, why would he give it up? He knows the gun so well he doesnt need to. As for Nobody, maybe hill just liked the gun? Or maybe he knew Jack used that pistol and wanted to be just like him.

[–] krasnegar 18 years ago

Anyone with any sense who had to use the gun a lot would change over to later pieces - the ways a cap-and-ball revolver can fail at a crucial moment - from a fouled nipple to a spent cap jamming the action to simple misfires from damp weather, just to list three that come to mind immediately - alone would argue for the changeover. Add to that the fact that (as Steve Earle says in the song "Devil's Right Hand") "It shoots real fast but it loads a mite slow ... get ya inta troube but it won't get ya out..."

The fact that you couldn't reload percussion revolvers quickly is the real reason some people carried two guns - very seldom did anyone actually do the "two guns at once" bit. OTOH, occasionally, if someone figured he might have to do a lot of shooting, with the models that lacked a top strap, you could preload extra cylinders and switch them in and out.

All that said, however, as someone has pointed out, if you're familiar with a gun and happy with how it shoots, you wouldn't want to change if you didn't have to, and a lot of gunsmiths did conversions to switch percussion guns over to cartridge weapons. Offhand, i can't recall if we ever see Jack or Nobody actually loading their guns in the film, so maybe we can just assume that they are using converted weapons.

[–] shipscat-716-650621 14 years ago

Dude it's just a film, a very brilliant film and certainly in my top 3 of all time spag westerns, yet to decide some of the others but this is just the perfect combination.
Just because things move on doesn't mean the old stuff is still rubbish, if processing film wasn't so hard to get done these days I'd still be using my 1930's Leica!
Enough though, don't question this film, just enjoy it's amazing qualities including "that" soundtrack!

“You’re not the tooth faerie are you?”
“No, she’s real. Don’t be a plank!”

[–] tie-dyed-karma 12 years ago

Wild Bill Hickok carried two 1851 Colt Navy .36s. He was murdered in 1876. He was still carrying these pistols when he died, even though he did own cartridge revolvers.

[–] wav01 18 years ago

Perhaps it was simpler than all this... At the time that this film was made, Italian firms were producing replicas of the old-style pieces for use by reinactors who were just heating up that particular market. These replicas could be had by the truckload for the price of the Peacemakers which, at the time, were not being reproduced. After all, the 1968 U.S. gun had made it difficult to import European cartridge weapons. The European manufacturers turned to the making of black powder replicas to circumvent the US restrictions. Availability of the old-style guns would have been no problem to folks shooting a western in Italy.

Just a thought...

[–] xrongor 17 years ago

nice sig.

"in this world there's two kinds of people ... those with loaded guns, and those who dig."

[–] yamimbi 17 years ago

Or: Jack's old. He probably still uses the same kind of gun he was used to as a young gunslinger.
Nobody's his biggest fan. So he uses the same gun.

It's a stretch, but makes sense imho.

[–] Razzbar 17 years ago

Well, it's not like the movie is a documentary. Heck, Sergio just liked the looks of the guns. A purist might notice, I didn't. Nor do I care. Big deal. There are LOTS and LOTS of petty innacuracies in just about every western movie ever made. Indeed, the whole western mystique began as a contemporary myth. The Old West never was like the Old West, except to the extent that dime novel readers went there to "live it out".

[–] stiles242 16 years ago

there was dynomite in their saddle bags don't remember how it got there beenn a long time since i seen the movie.

[–] alvink 15 years ago

i don't know if this means anything here, but me, growing up in northern ohio in the 60's, my friends had bolt action 22's. hey, one guy even had a semi-auto 22. me, i liked my family's 1930's era stephens 22. it was a single shot break action, v-rear, bead front sight.

whether we were onto blackbirds, ducks, or just plinking, they fired more rounds, but i hit just as much. i loved that old stephens.

i could have bought a more modern arm, i had the bucks, but i chose to keep what i knew, the one i could use to put impactant energy in the faraway place that i wanted to put it in.

if frank wanted to embrace the new stuff, maybe he would not have wanted to quit. (does that make sense? i think so.)

i was good with that antique. others had more modern equipment, but was it really better? i shot as well or better than they did.

oh well. please be well.

42

[–] Traianus 14 years ago

It was actually quite common in the late 1800s for older, popular percussion cap pistols to be modified and refitted so that they could fire cartridges. Some men just liked the look and feel of the old pistols.

For the production of this film, they probably didn't give that much thought. As it turns out, though, it works for the story - at least as far as Jack goes. It makes sense that a guy like Jack would would still use an older kind of gun like that, that that's what he would be comfortable with.

Of course, it could also be noted, too, that the older-style pistols were often quite large and certainly not ideal for quickdraw (of course, with the quickdraw being something that was actually incredibly rare and almost entirely a figment of the mythical West).