Misplaced Pages

#783216

93-554: 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. The term was used by foreign critics because most of these Westerns were produced and directed by Italians . The majority of the films in the spaghetti Western genre were international co-productions by Italy and Spain, and sometimes France, West Germany, Britain, Portugal, Greece, Yugoslavia, and

186-676: A Dish Served Cold , Renegade Riders , and others, while Beyond the Law has a bandit infiltrate society and become a sheriff. There would be a flamboyant Mexican bandit ( Gian Maria Volonté from A Fistful of Dollars , otherwise Tomas Milian , or most often Fernando Sancho ) and a grumpy old man, often an undertaker, to serve as sidekick for the hero. For the love interest, ranchers' daughters, schoolmarms and barroom maidens were overshadowed by young Latin women desired by dangerous men, for which actresses, such as Nicoletta Machiavelli or Rosalba Neri , carried on Marianne Koch 's role of Marisol in

279-509: A Few Dollars More , brought a larger box-office success, the profession of bounty hunter became the choice of occupation of spaghetti Western heroes in films, such as Arizona Colt , Vengeance Is Mine , Ten Thousand Dollars for a Massacre , The Ugly Ones , Dead Men Don't Count , and Any Gun Can Play . In The Great Silence and A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die , the heroes instead fight bounty killers. During this era, many heroes and villains in spaghetti Westerns began carrying

372-438: 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. Because there

465-542: A cast of Italian, Spanish, and (sometimes) West German and American actors. Most spaghetti Westerns filmed between 1964 and 1978 were made on low budgets, and shot at Cinecittà Studios and various locations around southern Italy and Spain. 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

558-760: A certain importance, being on the way (the Via Tiburtina , extended as the Via Valeria ) that Romans had to follow to cross the mountain regions of the Apennines towards the Abruzzo , the region where lived some of its fiercest enemies such as Volsci , Sabines , and Samnites . At first an independent ally of Rome , Tibur allied itself with the Gauls in 361 BC. Vestiges remain of its defensive walls of this period, in opus quadratum . In 338 BC, however, Tibur

651-537: A con-man ( The Dirty Outlaws ), an outlaw posing as a sheriff and a bounty hunter ( Man With the Golden Pistol aka Doc, Hands of Steel ), and an outlaw posing as his twin and a bounty hunter posing as a sheriff ( A Few Dollars for Django ). 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,

744-454: A departure from the 1985 original (a sci-fi) and the 1989 sequel (an action adventure), Part III has been regarded by others as a fitting end to the series. At the turn of the 21st century, Westerns have once again seen an ongoing revival in popularity. Largely influenced by the recapturing of Americana mythology , appreciation for the vaquero folklore within Mexican culture and

837-464: A musical watch, after its ingenious use in For a Few Dollars More . Spaghetti Westerns also began featuring a pair of different heroes. In Leone's film, Eastwood's character is an unshaven bounty hunter, dressed similarly to his character in A Fistful of Dollars , who enters an unstable partnership with Colonel Mortimer ( Lee Van Cleef ), an older bounty killer who uses more sophisticated weaponry and wears

930-657: A mythic vision of the plains and deserts of the American West, embodied most memorably in Monument Valley, with its buttes and mesas that tower above the men on horseback, whether they be settlers, soldiers, or Native Americans". Tivoli, Italy Tivoli ( / ˈ t ɪ v əl i / TIV -ə-lee ; Italian: [ˈtiːvoli] ; Latin : Tibur ) is a town and comune in Lazio , central Italy , 30 kilometres (19 miles) north-east of Rome , at

1023-544: A pair of heroes in three earlier spaghetti Westerns, God Forgives... I Don't! , Boot Hill and Ace High , directed by Giuseppe Colizzi . The humor started in those movies, with scenes with comedy fighting, but the Barboni films became burlesque comedies. They feature the quick but lazy Trinity (Hill) and his big, strong and irritable brother, Bambino (Spencer). The stories lampoon stereotypical Western characters, such as diligent farmers, lawmen and bounty hunters. There

SECTION 10

#1732780391784

1116-483: A post-Trinity Western, My Name Is Nobody , with Henry Fonda, and a caper-story Western, A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe . The following year, Franco Nero achieved a similar draw as a Django-style hero in Keoma . However, by the end of the 1970s, the different types of spaghetti Westerns had lost their following among mainstream cinema audiences, and the production ground to a virtual halt. Belated attempts to revive

1209-421: 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. Whoever the hero was, he would join an outlaw gang to further his own secret agenda, as in A Pistol for Ringo , Blood for a Silver Dollar , Vengeance Is

1302-549: A suit, and, in the end, turns out to also be an avenger. In the following years, there was a deluge of spaghetti Westerns with a pair of heroes with (most often) conflicting motives. Examples include a lawman and an outlaw ( And the Crows Will Dig Your Grave ), an army officer and an outlaw ( Bury Them Deep ), an avenger and a (covert) army officer ( The Hills Run Red ), an avenger and a (covert) guilty party ( Viva! Django aka W Django! ), an avenger and

1395-463: A type 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. Beside

1488-573: A villain in Blindman and French rock 'n' roll veteran Johnny Hallyday as the gunfighter and avenger hero in Sergio Corbucci 's The Specialists . The story of A Fistful of Dollars was closely based on Akira Kurosawa 's Yojimbo . Kurosawa sued Sergio Leone for plagiarism, and was compensated with the exclusive distribution rights to the movie in Japan, where its hero, Clint Eastwood,

1581-548: Is Giorgio Capitani 's The Ruthless Four (in effect a gay version of John Huston 's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre ), in which the explicit homosexual relation between two of its male main characters and some gay cueing scenes are embedded with other forms of man-to-man relations through the story. In the 1960s, critics recognized that the American genres were rapidly changing. The genre most identifiably American,

1674-460: Is Giulio Questi 's Django Kill . Other "cult" items are Cesare Canevari 's Matalo! , Tony Anthony 's Blindman , and Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent 's Cut-Throats Nine (the latter among gore film audiences). The few spaghetti Westerns containing historical characters such as Buffalo Bill , Wyatt Earp , Billy the Kid , etc., appear mainly before A Fistful of Dollars had put its mark on

1767-411: Is a priest who espouses Liberation theology . The film concerns oppression of poor Mexicans by rich Anglos, and ends on a call for arms, but it does not fit easily as a Zapata Western , for it lacks the typical hero pair of a flamboyant Latin revolutionary and an Anglo specialist. The Price of Power serves a political allegory about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and racism. The movie concerns

1860-434: 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

1953-521: Is often erroneously cited as the first Western, though George N. Fenin and William K. Everson point out that the "Edison company had played with Western material for several years prior to The Great Train Robbery ". Nonetheless, they concur that Porter's film "set the pattern—of crime, pursuit, and retribution—for the Western film as a genre". The film's popularity opened the door for Anderson to become

SECTION 20

#1732780391784

2046-521: 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. 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. The first was Damiano Damiani 's A Bullet for

2139-460: Is the Villa d'Este , a World Heritage Site , whose construction was started in 1550 by Pirro Ligorio for Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este and which was richly decorated with an ambitious program of frescoes by painters of late Roman Mannerism, such Girolamo Muziano, Livio Agresti (a member of the " Forlì painting school ") or Federico Zuccari . In 1527 Tivoli was sacked by bands of the supporters of

2232-600: The Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park , an area of volcanic origin known for its wide sandy beaches, both of which are in the Province of Almería 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. Other filming locations used were in central and southern Italy , such as

2325-565: The Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm (Germany) is a replica of the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. Tivoli has a Mediterranean climate with warm and dry summers and cool and wet winters. [REDACTED]  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain :  Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). " Tivoli ". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company. [REDACTED] Tivoli .,

2418-536: The Grand Canyon , Yosemite , and the giant redwoods , due in part to exhibitors' inability to switch over to widescreen during the Great Depression . After the renewed commercial successes of the Western in the late 1930s, their popularity continued to rise until the 1950s, when the number of Western films produced outnumbered all other genres combined. The period from 1940 to 1960 has been called

2511-462: The Patrimony of St. Peter . After Italy was conquered by Charlemagne , Tivoli was under the authority of a count, representing the emperor. From the tenth century onwards, Tivoli, as an independent commune governed by its elected consuls, was the fiercest rival of Rome in the struggle for the control over the impoverished central Lazio. Emperor Otto III conquered it in 1001, and Tivoli fell under

2604-562: The Siculi from the Aniene plateau and founded a city they named Tibur in honor of Tiburtus. According to another account, Tibur was a colony of Alba Longa . Historical traces of settlement in the area date back to the thirteenth century BC. Tibur may share a common root with the river Tiber and the Latin praenomen Tiberius . From Etruscan times Tibur, a Sabine city, was the seat of

2697-636: The Tiburtine Sibyl . There are two small temples above the falls, the rotunda traditionally associated with Vesta and the rectangular one with the Sibyl of Tibur, whom Varro calls Albunea , the water nymph who was worshipped on the banks of the Aniene as a tenth Sibyl added to the nine mentioned by the Greek writers. In the nearby woods, Faunus had a sacred grove. During the Roman age Tibur maintained

2790-714: 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. The Japanese film Tampopo was promoted as a " Ramen Western". The majority of the films in the spaghetti Western genre were international coproductions by Italy and Spain, and sometimes France, West Germany, Britain, Portugal, Greece, Yugoslavia, and

2883-515: The Wild West shows that began in the 1870s. These shows, which included stage plays and outdoor exhibitions, culminated in Buffalo Bill's Wild West , a touring performance that ran from 1883 to 1913. Wild West shows, which were intended for urban audiences, established many of the elements that came to define Western films, such as the blending of fact and fiction and the romanticization of

Spaghetti Western - Misplaced Pages Continue

2976-693: The emperor and the Colonna , important archives being destroyed during the attack. In 1547 it was again occupied, by the Duke of Alba in a war against Paul IV , and in 1744 by the Austrians . In 1835 Pope Gregory XVI added the Villa Gregoriana , a villa complex pivoting around the Aniene's falls. The "Great Waterfall" was created through a tunnel in the Monte Catillo, to give an outlet to

3069-663: The papal control. Tivoli however managed to keep a level of independence until the 15th century: symbols of the city's strength were the Palace of Arengo, the Torre del Comune and the church of St. Michael, all built in this period, as well as the new line of walls (authorized in 1155), needed to house the increasing population. Reminders of the internal turbulence of communal life are the tower houses that may be seen in Vicolo dei Ferri, Via di Postera, Via del Seminario and Via del Colle. In

3162-402: The "Golden Age of the Western". It is epitomized by the work of several prominent directors including: There have been several instances of resurgence for the Western genre. According to Netflix , the popularity of the genre is due to its malleability: "As America has evolved, so too have Westerns." During the 1960s and 1970s, Spaghetti Westerns from Italy became popular worldwide; this

3255-408: The (supposedly) Navajo village is wiped out by bandits during the first minutes, and the avenger hero spends the rest of the film dealing mostly with Anglos and Mexicans until the final showdown at a Native American burial ground. Several spaghetti Westerns are inspired by classical myths and dramas. Titles, such as Fedra West (also called Ballad of a Bounty Hunter ) and Johnny Hamlet , signify

3348-456: The 13th century Rome imposed a tribute on the city, and gave itself the right to appoint a count to govern it in conjunction with the local consuls. In the fourteenth century, Tivoli sided with the Guelphs and strongly supported Urban VI against Antipope Clement VII . King Ladislaus of Naples was twice repulsed from the city, as was the condottiero Braccio da Montone . In the city there

3441-545: The 1930s. By the late 1930s, the Western film was widely regarded as a "pulp" genre in Hollywood, but its popularity was dramatically revived in 1939 by major studio productions such as Dodge City starring Errol Flynn , Jesse James with Tyrone Power , Union Pacific with Joel McCrea , Destry Rides Again featuring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich , and especially John Ford's landmark Western adventure Stagecoach starring John Wayne , which became one of

3534-498: The 1963–1964 spaghetti Westerns. For example, in Sergio Corbucci 's Minnesota Clay , that appeared two months after A Fistful of Dollars , an American style "tragic gunfighter" hero who confronts two evil gangs, one Mexican and one Anglo, with (as in A Fistful of Dollars ) the leader of the latter being the town sheriff. 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

3627-529: The American West that [embody] the spirit, the struggle, and the demise of the new frontier ". The term "Western", used to describe a narrative film genre, appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World magazine. Most of the characteristics of Western films were part of 19th-century popular Western fiction , and were firmly in place before film became a popular art form. Film critic Philip French has said that

3720-602: The Black , Johnny Hamlet and also Seven Dollars on the Red . Another type of wronged hero is set up and must clear himself from accusations. Giuliano Gemma starred in a series of successful films carrying this theme— Adiós gringo , For a Few Extra Dollars , Long Days of Vengeance , Wanted and, to some extent, Blood for a Silver Dollar —in which his character is most often called "Gary". The wronged hero who becomes an avenger appears in many spaghetti Westerns. Among

3813-665: The East and A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe ), Spencer ( It Can Be Done Amigo ) and a pair of Hill-Spencer lookalikes in Carambola . A spaghetti Western old hand, Franco Nero , also worked in this subgenre with Cipolla Colt , and Tomas Milian plays an outrageous "quick" bounty hunter modeled on Charlie Chaplin 's Little Tramp in Sometimes Life Is Hard, Eh Providence? and Here We Go Again, Eh, Providence? . Terence Hill could still draw large audiences in

Spaghetti Western - Misplaced Pages Continue

3906-646: The French horse country of Camargue (1911–1912). 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. The first Western movie made in Italy was La voce del sangue , produced by the Turin film studio Itala Film . In 1913, La vampira Indiana

3999-483: 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 Compañeros 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

4092-461: The Leone film. The terror of the villains against their defenseless victims became just as ruthless as in A Fistful of Dollars , or more, and their brutalization of the hero when his treachery is disclosed became just as merciless, or more—similar to securing the latter's retribution. In the beginning, some films mixed some of these new devices with the borrowed U.S. Western devices typical for most of

4185-856: The Mexican Revolution, and of imperialism in general. 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 such as 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. Sabata and If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death , directed by Gianfranco Parolini , introduce into similar betrayal environments

4278-567: The Native Americans as dishonorable villains, the later and more culturally neutral Westerns gave Native Americans a more sympathetic treatment. Other recurring themes of Westerns include treks (e.g. The Big Trail ) or perilous journeys (e.g. Stagecoach ) or groups of bandits terrorizing small towns such as in The Magnificent Seven . The Western goes beyond simply a cinematic genre, and extends into defining

4371-707: The Old West – they included Annie Oakley (shooting) and members of the Sioux (dancing). Western films were enormously popular in the silent-film era (1894–1927). The earliest known Western narrative film is the British short Kidnapping by Indians , made by Mitchell and Kenyon in Blackburn , England, in 1899. The Great Train Robbery (1903, based on the earlier British film A Daring Daylight Burglary ), Edwin S. Porter 's film starring Broncho Billy Anderson ,

4464-755: The US Southwest , interest in the Western lifestyle 's music and clothing , along with popular videos games series such as Red Dead . Screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identifies Western films as one of eleven super-genres in his screenwriters' taxonomy , claiming that all feature length narrative films can be classified by these super-genres. The other ten super-genres are action , crime , fantasy , horror , romance , science fiction , slice of life , sports , thriller , and war . Western films often depict conflicts with Native Americans . While early Eurocentric Westerns frequently portray

4557-484: The United States. Over six hundred European Westerns were made between 1960 and 1978. 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. The typical spaghetti Western team was made up of an Italian director, an Italo-Spanish technical staff, and

4650-437: The United States. Over six hundred European Westerns were made between 1960 and 1978. Most spaghetti Westerns filmed between 1964 and 1978 were made on low budgets, and shot at Cinecittà Studios and various locations around southern Italy and Spain. Leone's films and other core spaghetti Westerns are often described as having eschewed, criticized or even "demythologized" many of the conventions of traditional U.S. Westerns. This

4743-608: The West ) and Fernando Cerchio 's Il bandolero stanco , starring Erminio Macario and Renato Rascel , respectively. After World War II, there were scattered European uses of Western settings, mostly for comedy, musical or otherwise. A cycle of Western comedies was initiated in 1959 with La sceriffa and Il terrore dell’Oklahoma , followed by other films starring comedy specialists, such as Walter Chiari , Ugo Tognazzi , Raimondo Vianello , and Fernandel . An Italian critic has compared these comedies to American Bob Hope vehicles. The first American-British Western filmed in Spain

SECTION 50

#1732780391784

4836-601: The Western is "a commercial formula with rules as fixed and immutable as the Kabuki Theater." Western films commonly feature protagonists such as sheriffs, cowboys, gunslingers, and bounty hunters, who are often depicted as seminomadic wanderers who wear Stetson hats, bandannas , spurs, and buckskins , use revolvers or rifles as everyday tools of survival and as a means to settle disputes using "frontier justice". Protagonists ride between dusty towns and cattle ranches on their trusty steeds. Film Westerns derive from

4929-521: The Western, seemed to be evolving into a new, rougher form. For many critics, Sergio Leone 's films were part of the problem. Leone's Dollars Trilogy (1964–1966) was not the beginning of the "spaghetti Western" cycle in Italy, but for some Americans, Leone's films represented the true beginning of the Italian invasion of an American genre. Christopher Frayling , in his noted book on the Italian Western, describes American critical reception of

5022-468: The assassination of an American president in Dallas, Texas, by a group of Southern white supremacists who frame an innocent African-American. They are opposed by an unstable partnership between a whistleblower ( Giuliano Gemma ) and a political aide. Although it is intimated in some films, such as Django Kill and Requiescant , open homosexuality plays a marginal part in spaghetti Westerns. An exception

5115-418: The biggest hits of the year. Released through United Artists, Stagecoach made John Wayne a mainstream screen star in the wake of a decade of headlining B Westerns. Wayne had been introduced to the screen 10 years earlier as the leading man in director Raoul Walsh 's spectacular widescreen The Big Trail , which failed at the box office in spite of being shot on location across the American West, including

5208-667: The captive queen of Palmyra , was assigned a residence here by the Emperor Aurelian . The second-century temple of Hercules Victor is being excavated. The present Piazza del Duomo occupies the Roman forum. In 547, in the course of the Gothic War , the city was fortified by the Byzantine general Belisarius , but was later destroyed by Totila 's army. After the end of the war it became a Byzantine duchy, later absorbed into

5301-438: The change to a lighter and more sentimental mood. The Trinity-inspired films also adopted this less serious and often-maligned style. Some critics deplore these post-Trinity films and their soundtracks as a degeneration of the "real" spaghetti Westerns. Indeed, Hill's and Spencer's skillful use of body language was a hard act to follow, and it is significant that the most successful of the post-Trinity films featured Hill ( Man of

5394-484: The cigarillo, the poncho, etc. 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. 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

5487-453: The connection to Greek myth , the plays by Euripides and Racine , and the play by William Shakespeare , respectively. The latter also inspired 1972's Dust in the Sun , which follows the original more closely than Johnny Hamlet, in which the hero survives. The Forgotten Pistolero is based on the vengeance of Orestes . There are similarities between the story of The Return of Ringo and

5580-498: The end of the decade, studios had mostly ceased to make Westerns. Despite their dwindling popularity during this decade, the 1960s gave rise to the revisionist Western , several examples of which became vital entries in the canon. Since the 1960s, new Western films have only appeared sporadically. Despite their decreased prominence, Western films remain an integral part of American culture and national mythology . The American Film Institute defines Western films as those "set in

5673-710: The falls of the Aniene river where it issues from the Sabine Hills . The city offers a wide view over the Roman Campagna . Gaius Julius Solinus cites Cato the Elder 's lost Origines for the story that the city of Tibur was founded by Catillus the Arcadian, a son of Amphiaraus , who came there having escaped the slaughter at Thebes, Greece . Catillus and his three sons Tiburtus, Coras, and Catillus drove out

SECTION 60

#1732780391784

5766-618: The films, performed by Eastern actors—for example, Chen Lee in My Name Is Shanghai Joe , or Lo Lieh teaming up with Lee Van Cleef in The Stranger and the Gunfighter . Some spaghetti Westerns incorporate political overtones, particularly from the political left . An example is Requiescant , featuring Italian author and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini as a major supporting character. Pasolini's character

5859-400: The first three spaghetti Westerns by Leone, a most influential film was Sergio Corbucci 's Django starring Franco Nero . Django was one of the most violent spaghetti Westerns. The titular character is torn between several motives—money or revenge—and his choices bring misery to him and to a woman close to him. Indicative of this film's influence on the spaghetti Western style, "Django" is

5952-539: The frontier. These early films were originally referred to as "Wild West dramas", the term "Western" came to describe the genre. The use of this shortened term appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World magazine. The first films that belong to the Western genre are a series of short single reel silents made in 1894 by Edison Studios at their Black Maria studio in West Orange, New Jersey . These featured veterans of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show exhibiting skills acquired by living in

6045-429: The genre included the comedy film Buddy Goes West and a Spanish-American coproduction, Comin' at Ya! , which was shot in 3D , and Django Strikes Again . Some movies that were not very successful at the box office still earn a "cult" status in some segment of the audience because of certain extraordinary features in story and/or presentation. One "cult" spaghetti Western that has also drawn attention from critics

6138-504: The genre. Although other Western films were made earlier, The Great Train Robbery (1903) is often considered to mark the beginning of the genre. Westerns were a major genre during the silent era (1894–1929) and continued to grow in popularity during the sound era (post–1929). The genre reached its pinnacle between 1945 and 1965 when it comprised roughly a quarter of studio output. The advent of color and widescreen during this era opened up new possibilities for directors to portray

6231-407: The genre. Likewise, and in contrast to the contemporary German Westerns, few films feature Native Americans . When they appear, they are more often portrayed as victims of discrimination than as dangerous foes. The only fairly successful spaghetti Western with a Native American main character (played by Burt Reynolds in his only European Western outing) is Sergio Corbucci 's Navajo Joe , in which

6324-414: The hero's name in a plenitude of subsequent Westerns. Although his character is not named Django, Franco Nero brings a similar ambience to Texas, Adios and Massacre Time , in which the hero must confront surprising and dangerous family relations. Similar "prodigal son" stories followed, including Chuck Moll , Keoma , The Return of Ringo , The Forgotten Pistolero , One Thousand Dollars on

6417-518: The hero), and pathos (terror and brutality against defenseless people and against the hero after his doublecross has been revealed). Ennio Morricone's innovative score expresses a similar duality between quirky and unusual sounds and instruments, and sacral dramatizing for the big confrontation scenes. Another important novelty was Clint Eastwood's performance as the man with no name —an unshaven, sarcastic, insolent Western antihero with personal goals in mind, and with distinct visuals to boot—the squint,

6510-427: The last canto of Homer 's Odyssey . Fury of Johnny Kid follows Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet , but (again) with a different ending; the loving couple leave together while their families annihilate each other. Some Italian Western films were made as vehicles for musical stars, such as Ferdinando Baldi 's Rita of the West , featuring Rita Pavone and Terence Hill . In non-singing roles were Ringo Starr as

6603-415: The more commercially successful films with a hero dedicated to vengeance— For a Few Dollars More , Once Upon a Time in the West , Today We Kill... Tomorrow We Die! , A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die , Death Rides a Horse , Django, Prepare a Coffin , The Deserter , Hate for Hate , and Halleluja for Django — those with whom he cooperates typically have conflicting motivations. In 1968,

6696-530: The most attention is arguably Luis Trenker's Der Kaiser von Kalifornien about John Sutter . 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. Forerunners of the genre were also Giorgio Ferroni 's Il fanciullo del West ( The Boy in

6789-399: 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. In this seminal film, Leone used a distinct visual style with large face close ups to tell

6882-538: The myth of the West in American culture. Early Westerns were mostly filmed in the studio, as in other early Hollywood films, but when location shooting became more common from the 1930s, producers of Westerns used desolate corners of Arizona , California , Colorado , Kansas , Montana , Nevada , New Mexico , Oklahoma , Texas , Utah , or Wyoming . These settings gave filmmakers the ability to depict vast plains, looming mountains, and epic canyons. Productions were also filmed on location at movie ranches . Often,

6975-600: The neighbouring hills are covered with olives, vineyards and gardens; the most important local industry is the manufacture of paper. Tivoli's reputation as a stylish resort and the fame of the gardens of the Villa d'Este have inspired the naming of other sites after Tivoli: for example, the Jardin de Tivoli, Paris (France) and the Tivoli Gardens amusement park in Copenhagen (Denmark). The Wörlitz Synagogue in

7068-760: 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 town of Wuustwezel and the area around the Gran Sasso mountain, and the Tivoli 's quarries and Sardinia . God's Gun was filmed in Israel. European Westerns are as old as filmmaking itself. The Lumière brothers had their first public screening of films in 1895, and already, in 1896, Gabriel Veyre shot Repas d'Indien ( Indian Banquet ) for them. Joe Hamman starred as Arizona Bill in films made in

7161-546: The phrase spaghetti Western was coined by Spanish journalist Alfonso Sánchez in reference to the Italian food spaghetti . Spaghetti Westerns are also known as Italian Westerns or, primarily in Japan, Macaroni Westerns . In Italy, the genre is typically referred to as western all'italiana (Italian-style Western). Italo-Western is also used, especially in Germany. The term Eurowesterns has been used to broadly refer to all non-Italian Western movies from Europe, including

7254-405: The screen's first Western star; he made several hundred Western film shorts. So popular was the genre that he soon faced competition from Tom Mix and William S. Hart . With the advent of sound in 1927–28, the major Hollywood studios rapidly abandoned Westerns, leaving the genre to smaller studios and producers. These smaller organizations churned out countless low-budget features and serials in

7347-524: The spaghetti Western cycle as, to "a large extent, confined to a sterile debate about the 'cultural roots' of the American/Hollywood Western". He remarked that few critics dared admit that they were, in fact, "bored with an exhausted Hollywood genre". Western film Western films derive from the Wild West shows that began in the 1870s. Originally referred to as "Wild West dramas", the shortened term "Western" came to describe

7440-502: The story of a hero entering a town that is ruled by two outlaw gangs, and ordinary social relations are nonexistent. The hero betrays and plays the gangs against each other to make money. He uses his cunning and exceptional weapons skill to assist a family threatened by both gangs. His treachery is exposed, and he is severely beaten, but in the end, he defeats the remaining gang. The interactions in this story range between cunning and irony (the tricks, deceits, unexpected actions and sarcasm of

7533-633: 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 . 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. After 1965, when Leone's second Western, For

7626-414: The vast landscape becomes more than a vivid backdrop; it becomes a character in the film. After the early 1950s, various widescreen formats such as Cinemascope (1953) and VistaVision used the expanded width of the screen to display spectacular western landscapes. John Ford's use of Monument Valley as an expressive landscape in his films from Stagecoach to Cheyenne Autumn (1965), "present us with

7719-424: The vastness of the American landscape. This era also produced the genre's most iconic figures, including John Wayne and Randolph Scott , who developed personae that they maintained across most of their films. Director John Ford is often considered one of the genre's greatest filmmakers. With the proliferation of television in the 1960s, television Westerns began to supersede film Westerns in popularity. By

7812-504: The waters of the Aniene sufficient to preserve the city from inundations like the devastating flood of 1826. In 1944, Tivoli suffered heavy damage under an Allied bombing, which destroyed the Jesuit Church of Jesus. Tivoli's quarries produce travertine , a particular white calcium-carbonate rock used in building most Roman monuments. The water power of the falls supplies some of the electricity that lights Rome. The slopes of

7905-437: The wave of spaghetti Westerns reached its crest, comprising one-third of the Italian film production, only to collapse to one-tenth in 1969. However, the considerable box-office success of Enzo Barboni 's They Call Me Trinity and its pyramidal follow-up, Trinity Is Still My Name , gave Italian filmmakers a new model to emulate. The main characters were played by Terence Hill and Bud Spencer , who had already cooperated as

7998-663: 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 type 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 . In 1965, Bruno Bozzetto released his traditionally animated feature film West and Soda ,

8091-516: Was a wave of Trinity-inspired films with quick and strong heroes, the former often called "Trinity", or coming from "a place called Trinity", and with few or no killings. Because the two model stories contained religious pacifists to account for the absence of gunplay, all of the successors contained religious groups, or, at least, priests, sometimes as one of the heroes. The music for the two Trinity Westerns (composed by Franco Micalizzi and Guido & Maurizio De Angelis , respectively) also reflected

8184-635: Was already a huge star due to the popularity of the TV series, Rawhide . Leone would have done far better financially by obtaining Kurosawa's advance permission to use Yojimbo' s script. Requiem for a Gringo shows many traces from another well-known Japanese film, Masaki Kobayashi 's Harakiri . When Asian martial arts films started to draw crowds in European cinema houses, the producers of spaghetti Westerns tried to hang on, this time not by adapting storylines, but rather by directly including martial arts in

8277-538: Was also a Jewish community . During the Renaissance , popes and cardinals did not limit their embellishment program to Rome; they also erected buildings in Tivoli. In 1461 Pope Pius II built the massive Rocca Pia to control the always restive population, and as a symbol of the permanence of papal temporal power here. From the sixteenth century the city saw further construction of villas. The most famous of these

8370-579: Was defeated and absorbed by the Romans. The city acquired Roman citizenship in 90 BC and became a resort area famed for its beauty and its good water, and was enriched by many Roman villas . The most famous one, of which the ruins remain, is the Villa Adriana ( Hadrian's Villa ). Maecenas and Augustus also had villas at Tibur, and the poet Horace had a modest villa: he and Catullus and Statius all mention Tibur in their poems. In 273, Zenobia ,

8463-481: Was due to the success of Sergio Leone 's storytelling method. Although experiencing waning popularity during the 1980s, the success of films such as Dances with Wolves (1990) and Unforgiven (1992) brought the genre back into the mainstream. Back to the Future Part III (1990) was "a full-blown Western" set in 1885; although the least commercially successful of the trilogy and according to some

8556-427: Was partly intentional, and partly the context of a different cultural background. In 1968, the wave of spaghetti Westerns reached its crest, comprising one-third of the Italian film production, only to collapse to one-tenth in 1969. Spaghetti Westerns have left their mark on popular culture, strongly influencing numerous works produced in and outside of Italy. According to veteran spaghetti Western actor Aldo Sambrell ,

8649-601: 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. 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

#783216