madhuban
(1/16/06 6:05 am)

Lemonade Joe or The Horse Opera - Oldrich Lipsky (1964)

Lemonade Joe is a rollicking parody of the wild western, shot in black and white, using colour filters - sepia, red, blue and green - to emotionally code the sequences. The story takes place in an imaginary place called Stetson City and has stock characters like the untainted hero (he drinks only lemonade and campaigns for it) who is the best marksman around, the lecherous, scheming, villain who is "wanted" by the law in four states, the angelic woman who the hero falls for, and the "fallen" woman who has a golden heart, and saves the hero's life a number of times (even though she is attracted to him and he wards her off). The hero wears white throughout (except when, by his own admission, he changes to black to exact vengeance, because black is more suited to that mood) while the villain wears black. What lends this breezy spoof a certain complexity is the strong undercurrent of irony around the actual identity of the marksman hero (gradually revealed) and his obsession with kolaloka lemonade (one cannot avoid the anagram of cocacola). He turns out to be the son of the founder of the brand, who lovingly coerces people to give up other alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages in favour of kolaloka! Therefore, his apparently noble efforts to rid the citizenry of whisky does take on a macabre turn. Trust Oldrich to sneak in this tantalising bit of capitalist critique into what is otherwise an innocent-looking, musical parody of the early western. I loved this film.