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Iberio Ralda
The spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's filmmaking style and international box-office success.[1] The term was used by foreign critics because most of these Westerns were produced and directed by Italians.[2]
Leone's films and other core spaghetti Westerns are often described as having eschewed, criticized or even "demythologized"[3] many of the conventions of traditional U.S. Westerns. This was partly intentional, and partly the context of a different cultural background.[4]
According to veteran spaghetti Western actor Aldo Sambrell, the phrase "spaghetti Western" was coined by Spanish journalist Alfonso Snchez in reference to the Italian food spaghetti.[5] Spaghetti Westerns are also known as Italian Westerns or, primarily in Japan, Macaroni Westerns.[6] In Italy, the genre is typically referred to as western all'italiana (Italian-style Western). Italo-Western is also used, especially in Germany.[citation needed]
The term Eurowesterns has been used to broadly refer to all non-Italian Western movies from Europe, including the West German Winnetou films and the Eastern Bloc Red Western films. Taking its name from the Spanish rice dish, "Paella Western" has been used to refer to Western films produced in Spain.[7] The Japanese film Tampopo was promoted as a "Ramen Western".[8]
The majority of the films in the spaghetti Western genre were actually international coproductions by Italy and Spain, and sometimes France, West Germany, Britain, Portugal, Greece, Israel, Yugoslavia and the United States. Over six hundred European Westerns were made between 1960 and 1978.[9]
These movies were originally released in Italian or with Italian dubbing, but, as most of the films featured multilingual casts, and sound was post-synched, most "western all'italiana" do not have an official dominant language.[10]
The typical spaghetti Western team was made up of an Italian director, an Italo-Spanish[11] technical staff, and a cast of Italian, Spanish, and (sometimes) West German and American actors.[citation needed]
Most spaghetti Westerns filmed between 1964 and 1978 were made on low budgets, and shot at Cinecitt studios, and at various locations around southern Italy and Spain.[12] Many of the stories take place in the dry landscapes of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico, thus, common filming locations were the Tabernas Desert and the Cabo de Gata-Njar Natural Park, an area of volcanic origin known for its wide sandy beaches, both of which are in the Province of Almera in Southeastern Spain. Some sets and studios built for spaghetti Westerns survived as theme parks, such as Texas Hollywood, Mini Hollywood, and Western Leone, and continue to be used as film sets.[13] Other filming locations used were in central and southern Italy, such as the parks of Valle del Treja (between Rome and Viterbo), the area of Camposecco (next to Camerata Nuova, characterized by a karst topography), the hills around Castelluccio, the area around the Gran Sasso mountain, and the Tivoli's quarries and Sardinia. God's Gun was filmed in Israel.[14]
In Italy, the American West as a dramatic setting for spectacles goes back at least as far as Giacomo Puccini's 1910 opera La fanciulla del West ("The Girl of the West"), which is sometimes considered to be the first spaghetti Western.[16][17]
The first Western movie made in Italy was La voce del sangue, produced by the Turin film studio Itala Film.[18] In 1913, La vampira Indiana was released; a combination of Western and vampire film. It was directed by Vincenzo Leone, father of Sergio Leone, and starred his mother, Bice Valerian, in the title role as the Indian princess Fatale.[19] The Italians also made Wild Bill Hickok films, while the Germans released backwoods Westerns featuring Bela Lugosi as Uncas.
Of the Western-related European films before 1964, the one that attracted the most attention is arguably Luis Trenker's Der Kaiser von Kalifornien about John Sutter.[20] Another Italian Western is Girl of the Golden West. The film's title alludes to the opera The Girl of the Golden West, by Giacomo Puccini, but is not an adaptation of it. It was one of a handful of Westerns to be made during the silent film and Fascist Italy eras.[21] Forerunners of the genre were also Giorgio Ferroni's Il fanciullo del West (The Boy in the West) and Fernando Cerchio's Il bandolero stanco, starring Erminio Macario and Renato Rascel, respectively.[22][23]
The first American-British Western filmed in Spain was The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, directed by Raoul Walsh. It was followed by Savage Guns, a British-Spanish Western, again filmed in Spain. It marked the beginning of Spain as a suitable film-shooting location for any kind of European Western. In 1961, an Italian company coproduced the French Taste of Violence, with a Mexican Revolution theme. In 1963, three non-comedy Italo-Spanish Westerns were produced: Gunfight at Red Sands, Implacable Three and Gunfight at High Noon.[citation needed]
In 1965, Bruno Bozzetto released his traditionally animated feature film West and Soda, a Western parody with a marked spaghetti Western-theme; despite having been released a year after Sergio Leone's seminal spaghetti Western, A Fistful of Dollars, development of West and Soda actually began a year earlier than Fistful's, and lasted longer, mainly because of the use of more time-demanding animation over regular acting. For this reason, Bozzetto claims to have invented the spaghetti Western genre.[25]
Because there is no real consensus about where to draw the exact line between spaghetti Westerns and other Eurowesterns (or other Westerns in general), it cannot be said which film is definitively the first spaghetti Western. However, 1964 saw the breakthrough of this genre, with more than twenty productions or coproductions from Italian companies, and more than half a dozen Westerns by Spanish or Spanish-American companies. Furthermore, by far the most commercially successful of this lot was Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars. It was the innovations in cinematic style, music, acting and story of Leone's first Western that decided that spaghetti Westerns became a distinct subgenre and not just a number of films looking like American Westerns.[26]
The spaghetti Western was born, flourished and faded in a highly commercial production environment. The Italian "low" popular film production was usually low-budget and low-profit, and the easiest way to success was imitating a proven success.[28] When the typically low-budget production, A Fistful of Dollars, turned into a remarkable box-office success, the industry eagerly lapped up its innovations. Most subsequent spaghetti Westerns tried to get a ragged, laconic hero with superhuman weapon skill, preferably one who looked like Clint Eastwood: Franco Nero, John Garko and Terence Hill started out that way; Anthony Steffen and others stayed that way throughout their spaghetti Western careers.[citation needed]
In Johnny Oro, a traditional Western sheriff and a mixed-race bounty killer are forced into an uneasy alliance when Mexican bandits and Native Americans assault the town. In A Pistol for Ringo, a traditional sheriff commissions a money-oriented hero played by Giuliano Gemma (as deadly but with more pleasing manners than Eastwood's character) to infiltrate a gang of Mexican bandits whose leader is played typically by Fernando Sancho.[citation needed]
As with Leone's first Western, the Dollars Trilogy strongly influenced the further developments of the genre, as did Sergio Corbucci's Django and Enzo Barboni's two Trinity films, as well as some other successful spaghetti Westerns.
The theme of age in For a Few Dollars More, in which the younger bounty killer learns valuable lessons from his more experienced colleague and eventually becomes his equal, is taken up in Day of Anger and Death Rides a Horse. In both cases, Lee Van Cleef carries on as the older hero versus Giuliano Gemma and John Phillip Law, respectively.[citation needed]
One variant of the hero pair was a revolutionary Mexican bandit and a mostly money-oriented American from the United States frontier. These films are sometimes called Zapata Westerns.[33] The first was Damiano Damiani's A Bullet for the General and then followed Sergio Sollima's trilogy: The Big Gundown, Face to Face and Run, Man, Run.
Sergio Corbucci's The Mercenary and Compaeros and Tepepa by Giulio Petroni are also considered Zapata Westerns. Many of these films enjoyed both good takes at the box office and attention from critics. They are often interpreted as a leftist critique of the typical Hollywood handling of the Mexican Revolution, and of imperialism in general.[34]
In Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly there is still the scheme of a pair of heroes vs. a villain but it is somewhat relaxed, as here all three parties were driven by a money motive. In subsequent films like Any Gun Can Play (whose Italian title, "Vado... l'ammazzo e torno", is itself a quote from Leone's film), One Dollar Too Many and Kill Them All and Come Back Alone several main characters repeatedly form alliances and betray each other for monetary gain.[35]
Sabata and If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death, directed by Gianfranco Parolini, introduce into similar betrayal environments a kind of hero molded on the Mortimer character from For a Few Dollars More, only without any vengeance motive and with more outrageous trick weapons. Fittingly enough Sabata is portrayed by Lee Van Cleef himself, while John Garko plays the very similar Sartana protagonist. Parolini made some more Sabata movies while Giuliano Carnimeo made a whole series of Sartana films with Garko.[36]
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