Return to this famous Clint Eastwood western, broadcast this evening on France 3, and to a sequence in which we can clearly see Gene Hackman using a cheat sheet so as not to forget his text.
Made in 1992, Merciless earned Clint Eastwood his first Academy Award for Best Director. Acclaimed by critics and awarded three other statuettes (including Best Film), the film follows the epic tale of William Munny, a former repentant killer who raises his two children alone on his farm, but agrees to take up arms again in order to avenge a prostitute disfigured by a client, and pocket the promised reward.
In his quest, he will join forces with Ned Logan, a former slave and triggerman played by Morgan Freeman, and will find himself confronted by Sheriff Munny (Gene Hackman), who wants to preserve calm in his small town.
Today still considered one of the greatest westerns ever made, Impitoyable is however not exempt from a few small errors and false connections, as is the case for almost any feature film. , even of this caliber.
Warner Bros.
While it is broadcast this evening on France 3, pay close attention to your television screen at 55 minutes and 30 seconds of the film for a small example. In the sequence in question, Gene Hackman has just locked up the bounty hunter English Bob and his biographer in the city prison. While leafing through the notebook with an amused air supposed to recount the exploits of the man he had no trouble neutralizing, he reads the text aloud.
Furtively, for a brief second, we can then see between the pages of the book a small piece of paper, less discolored than the rest of the work, and displaying a different text font. Our Faux Raccord experts are clear: this is a cheat sheet. Probably a piece of the script intended to help Gene Hackman remember his long text during the scene.
Warner Bros.
A little further on in the film, we can also observe another fairly significant error. Indeed, at 1 hour, 44 minutes and 40 seconds, watch the cowboy who is shot on his toilet. Before falling, he was shot three times in the torso. However, a few seconds later, a close-up clearly shows that he was hit in the head (see above), which never happened on screen.
(Re)discover our special False Fitting dedicated to films from the 90s…