A Brief(ish) History of the Spaghetti Western
Mention “spaghetti western” to most people—at least in America—and three things come to mind: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Sergio Leone’s epic western The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly, starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach, has become the seminal example of the spaghetti western (or the Eurowestern—for those looking to be more politically correct). For many people this is all they know of a genre that barely existed in the United States, and to these uniformed audiences, spaghetti westerns consist of Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, its two predecessors—A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More—and not much else.
The reality is that spaghetti westerns were an incredibly popular genre of film that spanned more than two decades and spawned more than 600 films. These films redefined the traditional westerns genre, and ultimately impacted cinema in ways that transcended the American cowboy movie, effecting cinema on a global level. European-westerns would transform American television stars and character actors into worldwide superstars, and would bolster the careers of Italian artists like composer Ennio Morricone, director Sergio Corbucci, cinematographer Enzo Barboni, and actor Franco Nero, to name a few. For more than ten years, European casts and crews—mostly, but not exclusively Italian—would crank out the larger-than-life adventures of gunslingers like Django, Sartana, Trinity, and Sabata, which would go on to thrill audiences in Europe and all over the world.
The mythology of the old west and the folklore of the cowboy are among the few things that are uniquely American. Likewise, as an art form, the western is considered by some to be the only genre of film that was totally American, portraying a life style completely foreign to anyone outside North America. Perhaps this is why Europeans became so taken by the adventures of the old west, first in the form the written word, and then in the form of the moving picture. Just as Americans thrilled to the adventures of Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid, so did Europeans.
European filmmakers had tried their hand in crafting westerns as early as the silent era of film. One of the first true spaghetti westerns was The Girl of the Golden West, produced in 1911, and based on Giacommo Puccini’s opera, La fanciulla del West. Joë Hamman, using the name Arizona Bill made several French-produced westerns between 1907 and 1913, including the 1910 film Pendaison à Jefferson City. Yet by and large, the western remained a predominantly American produced film genre for practically sixty years; despite the fact that influential western directors like John Ford and Fritz Lang were actually Europeans.
American films, including westerns, went unseen in Italy under the fascist rule of Benito Mussolini, who was keenly aware of the power of film as propaganda. After Italy’s defeat in World War II, the floodgates opened for American movies. Westerns proved especially popular with Italian audiences, while in America the genre was losing popularity by the mid-1950s, having been replaced by the adventures of cowboys playing out on popular television shows like Gunsmoke and Bonanza. The television western had effectively killed off its older cinematic brother, and by the early 1960s, after thriving for nearly six decades, the western was essentially a dead genre.
Despite the declining popularity of the western in the United States, the genre remained popular in Europe. European producers took it upon themselves to give audiences what was in demand, making their own westerns and Spanish-produced Zorro films. Throughout the mid 1950s and early 60s Spanish, German and Italian filmmakers produced several dozen Eurowesterns, including Savage Guns (1961), The Treasure of Silver Lake (1962), and Gunfight at Red Sands (1963).
Everything changed drastically in 1964, when director Sergio Leone made A Fistful of Dollars, a low budget, re-make of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai film Yojimbo. Leone cast the lead actor of television’s Rawhide, Clint Eastwood, as a mysterious stranger who takes advantage of two feuding families, creating a template for dozens of other films that would soon follow. A Fistful of Dollars was a grim, dirty, violent, and unglamorous look at western mythology, and as such, it was totally revisionary. European audiences responded with favor to this new look at an age-old genre, which for the first time in sixty years seemed completely new. Critics were quick to blast Leone’s twisted view of the traditionally American art form; at best it was an oddity, a cinematic joke, at worst it was blasphemy. And because Leone and many of his partners in cinematic crime were Italian, his film, and those like it were soon labeled “spaghetti westerns,” a derisive term that would eventually be embraced by fans of the stylish genre.
A glimpse at the origin of A Fistful of Dollars also offers a glimpse at the complex origins of the spaghetti western. This is a genre that has roots in two nations that had been at war with the United States during World War II, and in the years following the conflict would embrace the cultural mythology of the American western, reconfiguring that mythology to suit their own cultural needs. In the case of Japan, the American western was adapted and incorporated into the samurai films by Kurosawa, which in turn helped to place Japanese cinema into the global cinematic landscape. In Italy, both the Japanese samurai movie and the American western were then adapted into the new mythology of the spaghetti western, which was less reflective of culture—as was the case with the samurai film—and more reflective of socio-political leanings. As the samurai film used the template of the American western to craft tales of Japanese warriors, the spaghetti western used the template of the American western to craft tales of outlaws and gunslingers that were often infused with leftist, populist, and Marxist ideologies.
The spaghetti western genre was made up largely of low budget films—most shot in a matter of weeks—that catered to working class Italian audiences. These audiences loved plenty of action and violence, were legendary for talking through boring parts of the movie, and known to walk out before a film was over. But despite a target audience that was easy to please and not all that critical, the filmmakers responsible for spaghetti westerns were often working their own socio-political viewpoints into many of these movies. The result would be a genre that was influenced by a generation of writers and directors very critical of oppressive government forces, colonialism, and corrupt law enforcement that were part of the global socio-political revolution that was taking place in the 1960s.
Prior to the emergence of the low-brow westerns coming out of southern Italy, Italian cinema was known for the high-brow contributions of northern Italian filmmakers to the global film market. The political leanings of Marxists filmmakers like Pier Paolo Pasolini and Gillo Pontecorvo, or pioneers of the Italian neorealist movement like Vittorio De Sica and Cesare Zavattini committed to capturing life as it was on film, and not some fantasy of the exceptional, resulted in a powerful cinematic revolution in Italy during the late 1940s and into the 1960s. These filmmakers and their films—who were oppressed under the rule of fascism—went on to define Italian cinema, but were not the exclusive of Italian cinema. Likewise, the same socio-political and creative realities that informed the most revered and well-known Italian directors also impacted Sergio Leone and his spaghetti western brethren—filmmakers like Sergio Corbucci, Sergio Sollima, and Damiano Damiani. Working within a genre already dismissed as lowbrow and working class, and even more derided for not being American, these filmmakers and many others turned out politically-charged tales of outlaw gunslingers that at times were riddled with Marxist influences.
The success and popularity of A Fistful of Dollars led to the production of hundreds of Eurowesterns. Production money came primarily from Italy, Germany, and Spain—where many of the films were shot. The casts were an international ensemble of actors selected to draw in audiences from various countries. American actors in a cast gave a film credibility, while a Polish actor like Klaus Kinski guaranteed audiences in Eastern European counties—leading to Kinski starring in more than twenty films. Casts and crews struggled to communicate with each other over language barriers, and frequently two actors in a scene wouldn’t even know what they were saying to each other, because neither spoke the same language. No dialog was recorded on set, with everything being recorded in postproduction, often times with American voice actors dubbing in new dialog for Italian, German, or Spanish actors—which explains why spaghetti westerns are notorious for their horrible dubbing. As this assembly-line filmmaking process cranked out new movies all the time, the films were released all over the world, in various languages, under as many as ten different titles. Yet despite the global popularity of the genre, only a select few spaghetti westerns made it to America during their heyday.
The era of the spaghetti western would prove to be a prolific time, especially for Italian cinema, as the Eurowestern allowed directors, writers, producers, actors, cinematographers and composers the chance to practice their craft; and expand the boundaries of filmmaking itself. The exciting creative experimentation that was going on under the auspices of the genre are evident in the way many of the films were shot and edited, and especially in the way music was composed and used as accompaniment to the action on screen. This is never more apparent than magical scores of Ennio Morricone, set to the action of some of the genre’s most important films, and the works of some of its most important directors.
Despite all the creative experimentation that was going on under the guise of making westerns, there was also a startling lack of originality. Italian exploitation cinema and its filmmakers have long been known for cannibalizing other films, including their own. The spaghetti western was no different. At times it almost seems as if there was only two or three plot lines making up the majority of all Eurowesterns. Hundreds of variations of the MSSVF (Mysterious Stranger Seeking Vengeance Films) sprang up, all of which were merely re-interpretations of A Fistful of Dollars (which of course was Yojimbo). Sergio Corbucci’s Django alone inspired over 30 “sequels.” Countless other films exploited the HGSPV (Hired Guns Saving Poor Villagers) theme (borrowed from Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai); which gave way to the politically charged leftist messages of the ZRF (Zappata-esque Revolution Film). Characters like the Evil Homosexual In White (EHIW), and the BTR (Bandito Turned Revolutionary) and scenarios like the Gatling Gun Massacre (GGM) became so common place, it’s a wonder audiences didn’t grow weary of seeing the same things done over and over again.
The spaghetti western audience, however, remained faithful, and the genre as a whole grew in popularity. The lack of originality was forgiven by the predominantly working class audience that was looking for escapist entertainment, punctuated with action and violence. And as the popularity of spaghetti westerns grew, so did their influence on American movies. The once uniquely American genre was re-invented by European filmmakers, and the influences soon became increasingly evident. American westerns became more gritty and violent, infused with a moral ambiguity, while the anti-hero replaced the hero. Films like The Professionals, The Wild Bunch, and High Plains Drifter bare so many spaghetti influences that some have mistaken them for actual Eurowesterns. Even non-westerns like Bonnie & Clyde and Easy Rider share similarities with films like Django and The Great Silence, and reflect the growing anti-establishment sentiments of 1960s youth culture.
Today, the legacy of the spaghetti western lives on, not just in the films themselves, but also in the movies that have been influenced by the bombastic exploits of Django, Sartana, Ringo, Trinity, and all the other gunslingers that populated the gritty world of the Eurowestern. Every action film you can think of has either been directly or indirectly influenced by the spaghetti western. And with the release of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained in 2012, the spaghetti western will enjoy renewed interest that will only ensure the continued survival and impact of the genre.