Looking At A Leone Flashback

I watched Duck, You Sucker a month ago, but I've been holding off reviewing it until I watched it again. I did want to ask about the flashbacks John (James Coburn) has. If you haven't seen it, come back when you have. There'll be spoilers.

I understand that he and his friend Sean were involved the Irish struggle for independence against the English. I'm pretty sure Sean was captured, interrogated, broke, and brought the authorities to a pub where he pointed out several other members of the resistance. When he pointed to John, John killed the two men, and Sean.

There are other flashbacks, of John, Sean, and a woman, traveling together and having fun. Everybody's laughing all the time, John and the young woman seem to be in love. Then in the last flashback, Sean pulls her away from John and starts kissing her himself, and John's smile gradually fades away.

This left me terribly confused, because the way they all spent time together, I had thought she was Sean's sister, and he was remarkably cool about being around while she and his best friends were being affectionate. Now that doesn't seem to be the case (unless it's a really close family).

It does cast some doubt on why John shot Sean. At the time we saw that flashback, the way the story is going suggests he shot him for being a traitor, without regard for what Sean may have been through to make him talk. Now there's a possibility that he shot Sean for stealing away the love of John's life. Can't confirm that, but it's in play.

Frankly, before I looked up the credits and saw Vivienne Chandler listed as "John's girlfriend", I was leaning towards the idea she was a symbolic representation. Maybe for independence, maybe for happier days before the bloodshed, whatever it was, she wasn't an actual physical presence. In which case, the final flashback is about how John killing Sean, for whatever reason, cost him both his best friend, and his hopes and dreams. In the scene, the camera stays on him and we only see his reaction to the two. The big smile that was on his face gradually fades, perhaps as the realization set in that killing his best friend for a cause ruined his faith in the cause. What's the point if his best friend isn't there to enjoy the good times with him? At one point in the film John says he's not judging another man who turned on his comrades. He judged a man once, and never again since then. He also says after that, he believed only in dynamite. The cost of John's casting judgment was high.

However, since she's listed as his girlfriend, it may simply be designed to raise the question of whether John actually killed Sean to protect their cause, or if he had personal reasons.