During the transformative period of the sixties when cinema got more bold in its depictions of things like violence, some film genres fell by the wayside, like fantasies and musicals. Others got reshaped, like Westerns. And while Westerns may be the most inherently American film genre (going back to The Great Train Robbery in 1903), Italy was the country most responsible for taking the genre in creative new directions that broke the mold and transformed it into something that went far behind John Wayne and the Lone Ranger.
The nickname for these New Age Italian Westerns came to be “spaghetti Westerns.” An initially derogatory term used to paint Italian Westerns as lesser than American Westerns but has since been embraced by spaghetti Western fans. These films were defined by their comically over-the-top action, epic scope and low budget guerilla-style filmmaking. They were mostly shot around Spain and Southern Italy and their commercial and pop cultural peak lasted from about 1964 to 1978. Of course Italy had been making films set in the American West as early as the 1910s with such spaghetti precursors as The Girl of the Golden West (1910) to the forties and fifties with films like The Boy of the West (1943) and The Tired Outlaw (1952). Many post-war European Westerns were actually comedies and musicals, which may also have inadvertently been a subtle influence on the bold and comical spirit of the European Westerns of the late sixties.
In the early sixties, Europeans began taking advantage of Spain’s suitability as a filming location for Westerns. Soon came films like the British-Spanish co-production Savage Guns (1961) directed by Michael Carreras, which is widely credited as the first traditional spaghetti Western. Although despite that historically significant benchmark, it was a box office failure. Which might indicate how little audiences were ready for films like this.
Other spaghetti Westerns include Duello Nel Texas (aka Gunfight in the Red Sands) which was an Italian-Spanish co-production released in 1963 and the first spaghetti Western to feature a music score by Ennio Morricone, whose unique compositions came to be a defining element of the genre. There were also films like Implaceable Three (1963), Three Ruthless Ones (1964) and the animated comedy West and Soda (1965) directed by Bruno Bozzetto. Animation fans may know Bozzetto best for his 1976 Fantasia parody Allegro non troppo and he also claims to have invented the spaghetti Western genre since production on West and Soda began before A Fistful of Dollars was released. However, given how loose the definition of a spaghetti Western can be, it’s impossible to really credit anyone for creating it. Although 1964 was the year Europe really began capitalizing on the genre for its distinction from American Westerns, and the most famous spaghetti Westerns by far were the ones directed by Sergio Leone.
Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964) originated when Leone saw Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 samurai film Yojimbo and thought the story would make a good Western. Leone originally wanted a big name star to play the “Man with No Name” but when Duello Nel Texas star Richard Harrison turned down the role, Harrison recommended Clint Eastwood. Eastwood turned out to be the perfect choice for the part because around this time he was tired of playing a do-gooder on the TV Western Rawhide and was looking to play an antihero. Coincidentally, Clint Eastwood had also intended to make an American Western version of Yojimbo (the fact that Akira Kurosawa was not credited for A Fistful of Dollars is another story, but it ended with Leone settling with Toho out of court).
The film was co-produced by companies in Italy, Spain, West Germany and the United States with Italy leading the production. A Fistful of Dollars was where Sergio Leone’s distinct directing style first gained wide notice, with not only Kurosawa influences but also John Ford, with Leone’s intention being to give a new level of operatic weight to the Western genre, which is apparent with his dramatic use of close-ups and implementation of Ennio Morricone’s score. Clint Eastwood’s scowl of course also helped set the mood perfectly.
Initially unpopular and negatively reviewed, A Fistful of Dollars quickly gained word-of-mouth popularity and eventually cult status. Spaghetti Westerns were seen as schlock by many critics in the era before Bonnie and Clyde helped make violent films feel more classy, and at the time critics did not notice or appreciate the film’s satirical approach and avant-garde style because they were too distracted by the shoddy production value and what they felt was excessive violence. Even Roger Ebert was rough on them! But retrospective reception has been a lot kinder and now the film is regularly acknowledged by film critics and historians as a defining film for Clint Eastwood and the Western genre.
Leone, Eastwood and Morricone reunited for the 1965 sequel For a Few Dollars More, and it similarly received initially negative reviews and a more positive reception over time. Fortunately, also just like the first film, it was very popular commercially and at the time it was the highest-grossing film in the history of Italian cinema. And I personally found it even more entertaining than A Fistful of Dollars, with the addition of Lee Van Cleef as Clint Eastwood’s rival turned reluctant partner a big part of the reason why.
However, the third film in the trilogy is by far the one that has become the most famous and is considered by many to be the best. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), which starred Clint Eastwood (the good), Lee Van Cleef (the bad) and Eli Wallach (the ugly) as three gunslingers hunting for a fortune, was seen even more than A Fistful of Dollars as the definitive spaghetti Western. Ennio Morricone’s unique score similarly left a mark on pop culture, to the point where many people who haven’t seen this movie will probably recognize it. In addition to being entertaining, the film has also earned praise for its deeper themes such as its anti-war message (the film takes place during the U.S. Civil War) and its exploration of greed as Sergio Leone once again used violence and humor to satirize the romance of the Western genre.
The Dollars trilogy (as it came to be known) is highly regarded today, serving as an influence on many modern filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino who has called it the greatest achievement in the history of cinema and who regularly pays homage to spaghetti Westerns in his own films.
Many Westerns that followed of course copied these films, but that didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of other great spaghetti Westerns out there. Sergio Leone directed one of them when he made Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), another beloved Western classic. But there were also popular films like A Pistol for Ringo (1965, Duccio Tessari), Blood for a Silver Dollar (1965, Giorgio Ferroni), Adiós Gringo (1965, Giorgio Stegani), Django (1966, Sergio Corbucci), Seven Guns for the MacGregors (1966, Franco Giraldi), The Big Gundown (1967, Sergio Sollima) and If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death (1968, Gianfranco Parolini) in addition to cult hits like Matalo! (1970, Cesare Canevari) and Blindman (1971, Ferdinando Baldi).
The influence of the box office success of Enzo Barboni’s They Call Me Trinity (1970) took Italian Westerns in a more overtly humorous direction that was more light and less serious, although some critics look down on these as lesser spaghetti Westerns. Subgenres include the American-Mexican heroic team-up films known as Zapata Westerns, while subsequent spaghetti Westerns were naturally even more adventurous in their explorations of political and sexual themes, as was common in the era of new age cinema. Not many Westerns get made today but when the genre does see the occasional resurrection whether in film, television or any medium, more often than not it’s spaghetti Westerns that filmmakers are clearly being inspired by.
