Spaghetti western

Typical picture of a spaghetti western.

The spaghetti western, also known as the European western or eurowestern b>, is a particular subgenre of the western created and developed by Italian directors, which was in fashion in the 1960s and 1970s and is characterized by having European productions, in contrast to the traditional films of the genre that were filmed in the United States. Since most of these projects were financed by Italian or Spanish companies, the genre quickly acquired the name spaghetti western when it came to Italian films or chorizo western when it was made. It was about Spanish movies.

Most of them were shot in Cinecittà (Italy) and in Spain. For example, some famous films of this subgenre were set in the steppe lands of Fraga (Huesca), and many others, such as Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, were shot in the towns of Hoyo de Manzanares (on the outskirts of Madrid), the province of Burgos, La Calahorra, near Guadix (Granada) and the Tabernas desert (Almería).

The subgenre arose in the mid-1960s as a result of Sergio Leone's filmmaking style and international box office success. It has often been claimed that Leone's films and other spaghetti westerns eschewed, criticized, or even "demystologised" many of the conventions of traditional American westerns. This occurred partly on purpose and partly thanks to the context of a different cultural environment.

Terminology

According to veteran spaghetti westerns actor Aldo Sambrell, the phrase "spaghetti western" was coined by Spanish journalist Alfonso Sánchez in reference to the Italian food spaghetti. The spaghetti western is also known as an Italian western or (mainly in Japan) macaroni western. The name of these films in Italy is western all'italiana. The term italo-western is also used, especially in Germany. The term paella western or chorizo western has been used for the many western films produced in Spain. The term eurowesterns can also be used to include films similar westerns that were produced in Europe without Italian involvement, such as the West German Winnetou films or the East German red westerns.

Features

The spaghetti western is characterized by a naturalistic aesthetic (abundance of detailed shots and close-ups) and dirty as well as stylized, and by characters apparently devoid of morals, rude and hard, exempt from from the chivalrous romanticism of the classic American western (The Man with No Name, Django, Sartana, Ringo, Sabata, Garringo). Due to its high doses of violence, and the shady and deceitful nature of its main characters, the American film Veracruz (1954), by Robert Aldrich, is considered one of the forerunners of this new subgenre.

Clint Eastwood at the Trilogy of the dollar.

The characteristic values of the American western are totally relegated giving way to violent stories that revolve around the basic themes of the drama such as revenge, love, friendship, life or death. Its main theme is usually morality. The masterpiece of the genre, Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, makes it very clear from the title to the final duel, where in case, it is not a duel, but rather a trio in which that the three protagonists define their immediate future with the force of a gun and speed, to achieve their personal goals. In any case, it is well defined which of the 3 characters is the least "bad". In this way the anti-hero appears to oppose the strong moral duality of North American westerns (such as Gary Cooper or John Wayne). It is about the appearance of some very particular new myths, where individualism and extreme violence is present in a de-idealization of the archetype presented in the American western. In this way, the archetype of the Mediterranean western protagonist reflects his time, as did other film genres.

Another characteristic of spaghetti westerns was the low budget with which most of them were shot; However, it is necessary to highlight the acceptable artistic level that many reached despite the economic limitation. One formula to save expenses was to reuse the sets to shoot different films; to this was added the fact that most of them were co-productions between Italy, Spain and, occasionally, other European countries such as Germany or France.

For many film critics, the spaghetti western changed the way films were made. Until then, music in movies (with few exceptions) was limited to the understanding of musical artists^{[citation required]}. It is often said ^{[who? ]} that Ennio Morricone, with his soundtracks for this genre, was the one who popularized the genre of film music. From this phenomenon, the original soundtrack became a key element to give strength to the action scenes serving as a vehicle (thanks to an editing game) to turn isolated scenes into climax moments of a movie^{[citation required]}.

History

European Westerns before Spaghetti Westerns

European westerns are as old as cinema itself. The Lumière brothers made their first public screening of films in 1895 and already in 1896 Gabriel Veyre shot for them Repas d'Indien ("Indian Banquet"). Joe Hamman starred as Arizona Bill in films made in the Camargue region of France in 1911 and 1912.

In Italy, the American West as a dramatic setting for performances dates back at least to Giacomo Puccini's 1910 opera La fanciulla del West, which is sometimes considered the first spaghetti western. The first Italian western film was La Vampira Indiana (1913), a combination of a western and a vampire film. It was directed by Vincenzo Leone (Roberto Roberti), Sergio Leone's father, and starred his mother, Bice Waleran, in the title role of the Indian princess Fatale. The Italians also made Wild Bill Hickok films, while the Germans released rustic westerns with Béla Lugosi in the role of Uncas.

Of the European western-themed films prior to 1964, the most attention-grabbing is probably The Emperor of California (Der Kaiser von Kalifornien; 1936), by Luis Trenker, on the life of John Sutter.

Another precursor film of the genre had appeared in 1943 with the premiere of Il fanciullo del West (The Boy from the West), by Giorgio Ferroni.

After World War II, there were scattered uses in Europe of Western settings, mostly for comedy or musical comedy. In 1959 a series of western comedies began with La sceriffa and Il terrore dell'Oklahoma, which were followed by other films starring comedy specialists such as Walter Chiari, Ugo Tognazzi, Raimondo Vianello or Fernandel. An Italian critic has compared these comedies to American Bob Hope films.

The first Spaghetti Westerns

The first American-British western shot in Spain was The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw; 1958), directed by Raoul Walsh. It was followed in 1961 by Brutal Land (1961) by Michael Carreras, a British-Spanish western, also shot in Spain. This marked the beginning of Spain as a suitable filming location for any type of European western.

In 1961, an Italian company co-produced the French film Le goût de la violence (1961; lit. "The taste for violence") by Robert Hossein, set in the Mexican Revolution.

In 1963, three Italian-Spanish westerns were produced that were not comedies: Gringo (by Ricardo Blasco and Mario Caiano), Three Good Men and El sabor of revenge (both by Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent).

In 1965, Bruno Bozzetto released his traditionally animated feature film West and Soda, a parody of westerns with a strong spaghetti western theme; Despite opening a year after Sergio Leone's seminal spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars, development on West and Soda actually began a year before the by By a handful and lasted longer, mainly due to the use of animation that demanded more time than normal acting. For this reason, Bozzetto himself claims to have invented the Spaghetti Western genre.

Since there is no real consensus on where to draw the exact line between spaghetti westerns and other eurowesterns (or other westerns in general) it cannot be said with certainty which of the films mentioned so far was the first spaghetti western. However, in 1964 the irruption of this genre took place, with more than twenty productions or co-productions by Italian companies, and more than half a dozen westerns by Spanish or Spanish/American companies. By far the most commercially successful film was Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars. It was the innovations in film style, music, acting, and story of Leone's early western that determined spaghetti westerns to become a distinct subgenre, rather than just a series of films resembling American Westerns.

For a Fistful of Dollars and Its Impact on the Spaghetti Western Genre

As indicated before, the serial production of Western films in Europe began in 1961, but it was not until 1964 when, thanks to the success of A Fistful of Dollars, by Sergio Leone, became a mass genre. At first, the critics were quite dismissive of these films, but over time I would have to admit that it was a new genre, taking the stereotypes of the American western, but adding new elements, such as greater realism and extreme violence.

In this seminal film, Leone used a distinctive visual style, with extensive close-ups of faces, to tell the story of a hero who enters a town ruled by two bands of outlaws, where ordinary social relationships are nonexistent. The hero betrays and pits the gangs against each other to make money. Next, he uses his cunning and exceptional skill with weapons to help a family threatened by both gangs. His betrayal is exposed and he is severely beaten, but ultimately defeats the remaining bandits. The interactions in this story oscillate between cunning and irony (the hero's tricks, deceit, unexpected actions and sarcasm) on the one hand, and pathos (terror and brutality against defenseless people and against the hero once he has been killed). revealed his double betrayal) by the other. Ennio Morricone's groundbreaking soundtrack expresses a similar duality between quirky and unusual sounds and instruments on the one hand, and hallowed drama for big fight scenes on the other. Another major first was Clint Eastwood's performance as the Man with No Name, an unshaven, sarcastic, sassy Western antihero, and to top it all off with a distinctive visual: the squint-eyed look, the cigarette, and the poncho.

The Spaghetti Western was born, flourished, and faded in a highly commercial production environment. Popular Italian film production was often low-budget and low-profit, and the easiest path to success was to imitate a proven hit. When the typical low-budget production of A Fistful of Dollars became became a notable box office success, the industry eagerly seized on its innovations. Most later spaghetti westerns tried to portray ragged, laconic heroes with superhuman skill with guns, preferably heroes who physically resembled Clint Eastwood: Franco Nero, John Garko, and Terence Hill started out that way; Anthony Steffen and others followed in fact remained this way throughout their entire Spaghetti Western career.

Whoever the hero was, he was joining a band of outlaws to further his own secret agenda, as in A Gun for Ringo, Un dollaro bucato, Revenge is a dish best served cold, Sette winchester per un massacro and others, while Beyond the Law, on the other hand, shows a bandit infiltrated society and turned sheriff. The films included a flamboyant Mexican bandit (Gian María Volonté, from A Fistful of Dollars, or Tomás Milián, or more often Fernando Sancho) and a grumpy old man, often an undertaker, who served as companion to the hero As for the romantic, daughters of ranchers, school teachers and cantina employees were eclipsed by young Latinas desired by dangerous men, where actresses like Nicoletta Machiavelli or Rosalba Neri played the same role as Marisol played by Marianne Koch in the Leone's movie. The terror of the villains against their defenseless victims became as ruthless as in A Fistful of Dollars, or more, and the brutality of the hero when his treachery is caught became just as ruthless. ruthless, or more, like the cunning used to ensure his retribution.

In the beginning, some films mixed some of these innovations with those taken from American Westerns, typical of most 1963-64 Spaghetti Westerns. For example, in Sergio Corbucci's Minnesota Clay (1964), which appeared two months after For a Fistful of Dollars, a "tragic gunslinger," an American-style hero, he takes on two evil gangs, one Mexican and one Anglo, and (as in A Fistful of Dollars) the leader of the latter turns out to be the town sheriff.

In Johnny Oro (1966), by the same director, a traditional western sheriff and a mixed-race bounty hunter are forced into an uneasy alliance when Mexican and Native American bandits raid the town together. In A Gun for Ringo, a traditional sheriff tasks a money-driven hero, played by Giuliano Gemma (just as deadly as Eastwood's character, but with a nicer manner), to infiltrate a a gang of Mexican bandits whose leader is typically played by Fernando Sancho.

Sergio Leone, one of the most representative directors of gender

The evolution of the genre

Django (Franco Nero) by Sergio Corbucci.

Like Leone's first western, the following works in his Dollar Trilogy —Death Had a Price (1965) and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1966)—strongly influenced the subsequent evolution of the genre, as did Sergio Corbucci's Django, and Enzo Barboni's two Trinidad films, as well as like some other successful spaghetti westerns.

Bud Spencer and Terence Hill in Chiamavano Trinità...

Between 1961 and 1976, some 500 spaghetti westerns were produced in Italy and Spain, a figure that demonstrates the existence of significant public demand. The heyday of this subgenre was experienced in the second half of the 1960s, especially with the films of Sergio Leone and, to a lesser extent, Sergio Corbucci, Sergio Sollima or Enzo G. Castellari.

In 1970 the genre was already beginning to decline due to the public's weariness due to the abusive and irrational use of violence; It was then that the Italian director Enzo Barboni reinvented the genre with the film Lo chiamavano Trinità..., where the actors Bud Spencer and Terence Hill endowed it with a comic and picaresque character totally unknown until then. The success of this film was absolute, but in the years to come the excessive recurrence of low-grade humor led the genre to disappear definitively.

By the mid-1970s, spaghetti westerns hardly produced any major films, except perhaps for Keoma, The Valley of Death and California.

Already at the end of the XX century and beginning of the XXI, many American directors have made films inspired by this genre: (Quick and Deadly, Tombstone, The Murder of Jesse James for the cowardly Robert Ford), or they have made fusions of spaghetti with other genres (Kill Bill).

The western in Spain

Of the more than 500 films of the genre that were shot in Europe, more than 200 were located in the Community of Madrid. A figure that exceeds western filming in other regions of Spain to which this phenomenon is traditionally associated, such as the Tabernas desert in Almería.

Thanks to the Anglo-Saxon film shoots that landed in Madrid, and the birth and rise of the western produced in Europe, a unique economic activity developed in the Community of Madrid that led to the construction in Colmenar Viejo of the first set for a town in the west in Europe and the construction in the town of Hoyo de Manzanares of the first stable town in the west of Europe - known as Golden City - where well-known titles such as "For a Fistful of Dollars" would be shot.

It is noteworthy that there were many Spanish directors who embarked on the spaghetti western (or also called paella western or chorizo western in a derogatory by foreign critics), since at that time cinema was an industry in Spain. The Madrid-born Rafael Romero Marchent was perhaps the only Spanish director of the genre to acquire some renown, although it was his brother Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent who introduced it to Spain in the 1950s.

"The most sessed cynphiles always considered it a tiny subgener, a kind of degraded rectum of those great films of the West that were made, there for the forty-fifty years, in the United States. (...) All its growers are dispatched as a patulea de cineastas cochambrosos, orérfanos de originalidad, a sort of casposos stajanovists who do not even deserve the reward of a mention on foot. But the truth is that the spaghetti western constitutes one of the most brilliant episodes of European cinema; and, of course, one of the most vigorous and memorable expressions of Spanish cinema, which –almost always in co-production regime – contributed to the subgener the talent of its filmmakers, technicians and actors and, above all, the calcined landscape of the Almeria Desert, which – with the permission of the Fordiano Monument (...) Based on reobeyed argumental templates, depleted by all sorts of shorts and financial apprehensions, they managed to complete a handful of films in which, at least, the craftsmanship of the best craftsmen shines; and often, also the artistic finding of the true teachers, endowed with a snatching style and exceptional narrative resources." Juan Manuel de Prada

In 2017 it was revealed that, after two decades without productions, western cinema would once again be shot in Spain. Parada en el infierno, by Madrid-based director Víctor Matellano, travels to Colmenar Viejo to bring Spain's Wild West back to the big screen. The set was built 35 kilometers from the city of Madrid, next to Pico de San Pedro, in the Dehesa de Navalvillar, which was already used in the filming of Espartaco.

"Seeing me disguised from the west, getting into that diligence, the horses... like you feel a little bit John Wayne."

Affirms the actor Guillermo Montesinos, who shares a cast with Manuel Bandera and Ramón Langa. Italian director Enzo Castellari also takes part in the film.

''The Three Sergios''

Although the first ''Spaghetti western'' was the film Il Fanciullo del West (1942), those who really popularized the genre throughout the 60s and 70s were the so-called ''three Sergios'': Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Sollima.

The first of these and the most popular was Sergio Leone with his so-called ''dollar trilogy'' whose first film ''A Fistful of Dollars'' was released on September 12, 1964 in Italy, and two months later the film ''Minnesota Clay'' by Sergio Corbucci (although he is best known for directing Django), and on November 29, 1966 Sergio Sollima arrived with his film & # 39; & # 39; The Falcon and the Prey & # 39; & # 39; which was the first appearance (the second was in ''Run, Knife, run) of the character from ''Knife'' which is together with ''the man with no name'' and ''Django'' the three great characters of that genre.

Legacy

The spaghetti westerns have left their mark on popular culture, strongly influencing numerous works produced outside of Italy.

With the passage of time there would be a return to the already known stories, Django 2 with Franco Nero and Botte di natale (1994) with Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. Clint Eastwood's first American western, Hang 'Em High (1968), incorporates significant elements of the spaghetti western.

The 1985 Japanese film Tampopo was advertised as a ramen western.

Quentin Tarantino, Margott Robbie, Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio at the premiere Once in Hollywood.

Japanese director Takashi Miike created Sukiyaki Western Django as a tribute to the genre, a western shot in Japan that draws influence from both Django and the Django Trilogy. dollar by Sergio Leone.

Quentin Tarantino used elements of the spaghetti western in films such as Kill Bill (along with elements of the kung fu films), >Inglorious Basterds (set in Nazi-occupied France), Django Unchained (about the American South during the time of slavery)., The Hateful Eight (set in post-Civil War Wyoming), and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (where Leonardo DiCaprio plays a spaghetti western actor, Rick Dalton).

The animated film Rango (2011) incorporates elements of the spaghetti western, including a character modeled after the Man with No Name from the Dollar Trilogy.

The heavy metal band Metallica have used the composition "The Ecstasy of Gold" of the spaghetti western Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, composed by Ennio Morricone, to open several of his concerts.

Movies

Directors

Actors

Composers

• Luis Bacalov
• Nico Fidenco
• Antón García Abril
• Franco Micalizzi
• Ennio Morricone
• Nora Orlandi
• Riz Ortolani
• Armando Trovaioli