Reflections on 100 Spaghetti Westerns

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Whilst being a fan of Leone for a very long time I hadn’t seen many Spaghetti Westerns from other directors until a couple of years ago. I saw Django on Amazon Prime and it rekindled my interest and caused me to delve into the genre further.

I’ve seen such classics as The Great Silence and Face to Face for the very first time this year!

I have now passed 100 Spaghetti Westerns, from 50 different directors, and I wanted to capture and share my reflections.

Reflection One: The genre has greater depth than I expected.

When I commenced my deeper exploration, a couple of the first films I watched were A Bullet for the General and Day of Anger. Numbers 13 and 14 on the Essential list respectively. Whilst both are good movies, they didn’t grab me or engage me in the way that the Leone movies, Django or even Death Rides a Horse had. This led me to believe that I might only find about 20 films that I would enjoy and that the quality would really tail off beyond that point.

How wrong could I be? I’ve discovered over 50 good movies and around 90 of the 100 I’ve seen were well worth a watch.

The breadth of the genre has also been a pleasant surprise. From tense, psychological thrillers (Cut-Throats Nine) to surreal films (Matalo!) to gritty and violent films (Django) to caper / heist movies (Five Man Army) to slapstick comedies (Trinity/Hallelujah). There is real variety within the genre.

Reflection Two: It has been a refreshing change from Hollywood’s output.

Without even realising it, I had obviously become tired of the formulaic, sanitised and predictable nature of the big budget Hollywood movies I had been consuming. The directors being unwilling to upset the big production companies who pay their salary. The companies, in turn, highly conscious of their audience’s reaction and its impact on the economic success or failure of the picture. The Spaghetti Westerns I’ve watched have thus been refreshing. The directors being willing to explore themes Hollywood would shy away from, and deliver endings more in keeping with the story than in trying to appease the audience (The Great Silence being a classic example). The directors, despite operating under a much more limited budget, actually seem more in control of their art.

Reflection Three: There are at least two Sergio Corbucci’s.

Okay, I confess, I am being deliberately provocative. But still…

Of the 100 films I’ve seen 10 are from the master film-maker. Or rather 5 are from the master film-maker and five are from an imposter. I can rationalise that in his early films like Massacre at Grand Canyon he was learning is trade – and that film, in particular, does reflect exactly that. I can also rationalise that by the time he made his last three Spaghetti Westerns he had a) lost a bit of interest, b) passed his prime, or c) both of the above. However, I struggle to rationalise that the same director, in the same year, made Django and Ringo and his Golden Pistol. Django is a piece of art, from the opening scene of Django dragging a coffin through the mud to the closing scene of the pistol coated in blood on the cross. By comparison Ringo and his Golden Pistol is fluff (again I’m being deliberately provocative). Was he trying to parody the John Wayne movies like Rio Bravo? Irrespective of his ambition I still find Corbucci’s films inconsistent.

Reflection Four: I clearly prefer harder hitting Spaghetti Westerns to the comedic ones

This didn’t really come as a surprise to me – I have exactly the same viewpoint in respect of Bond films – but other than a few exceptions, I am not a fan of Comedy Westerns.

I think the problem here is that what makes you laugh is a deeply personal thing, and it is very different for every individual. I prefer humour that Is more subtle rather than overt or slapstick. A good example of humour that appeals to me would be Eastwood and Van Cleef shooting one another’s hats in For a Few Dollars More and also from the same film the “Having a little trouble with my adding” scene. A good example of humour that doesn’t appeal to me would be Bud Spencer hitting a man on the top of his head and him being knocked out cold. That kind of slapstick humour just leaves me cold. So, Leone creates funny moments in a hard-hitting film like For a Few Dollars More that is more memorable to me than any of the humour in any of the Trinity films. They are immensely popular movies so I suspect I am alone in this.

Reflection Five: A strong storyline trumps everything

Some Spaghetti Westerns do suffer from being a collection of great scenes with a distinct lack of a storyline / structure holding the film together. I like these ones less. The directors who have a real skill for storytelling (Leone and Sollima in particular) make films that I love more with each rewatch. Whereas those that rely on innovative set pieces / scenes, with a weak storyline, I’m less likely to revisit, and more likely to down rate the movie, should I do so.

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Absolutely not…we all have different opinions…which is what makes ‘SWDB’ so interesting. :wink:

Some very good, and well thought out points, raised in your five reflections, amigo…I hope you continue to discover new delights amongst the bullets, cigars, and dynamite!

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interesting thoughts and reflections, amigo, thanks for sharing!

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I have now watched close to 200 European westerns over the past 2.5 years, mostly chronological now up to mid 1972. They Call Him Holy Ghost is next on my list with Man of the East and A Reason to Live, A reason to Die to follow.

Of these I had probably seen about 60 before.

Like the original poster, I was surprised at how varied they were and that generally the average quality exceeded my expectations which I put down to seeing many of them on decent prints rather than unwatchable VHS dupes. Although I have only watched 1 Fidani film there are probably less than 10 out of 200 that I thought were absolute dross. Like the original poster I prefer the serious films to the comedy ones but I could sit through films such as It Can Be Done Amigo without getting too bored. 1971 exposed me to the likes of They Call Me Hallelujah and Dead Men Ride (having previously seen the Leone film) and I thought Trinity Is Still My Name was better than the original.

So I’ve been most impressed overall.

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I think most people will agree with this. I think Corbucci was conflicted between financial interests and artistic expression, so he pursued both simultaneously. He made everything from slop to masterpieces, and everything in between.

Corbucci originally wanted to be a businessman after all, he even got a degree in economics, which was a significant achievement in his time. I believe his best films critique capitalism and greed in a way that is distinct and uniquely his own, likely shaped by his real-world experiences and worldview. In the 1980s, he also seemed to made films solely for financial gain.

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The so called political spaghettis made a fortune for their capitalist producers whilst preaching revolution to the masses. They weren’t really political, but just had a populist theme.

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Damiano Damiani’s politics are idiotic yes, A Bullet for the General is a good movie, but its politics are infantile. But where does Corbucci preach revolution? In his Zapata Westerns, he portrays everyone who isn’t motivated by financial gain as an incompetent fool, including the revolutionaries. The only character depicted as intelligent, and the only one who wins, in The Mercenary is Polack. They aren’t anti-capitalist films, they reflect on and critique capitalism but that isn’t inherently anti-capitalist.

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Don’t you mean, Sergei Kowalski ?

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I disagree completely regarding the politics of Damiani, which were serious and intelligent. A Bullet for the General is rare amongst political spaghettis in that its politics are genuinely radical. At the climax, Volonte calls for dynamite to be bought and not bread i.e. a call to arms.

A Professional Gun has a lot of revolutionary rhetoric and Companeros preaches revolution and pacifism in between the massacres. There are undeniable anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and pro-revolutionary themes in Corbucci’s Zapata westerns, but these are populist and rather superficial. The real emphasis was on action and gadgetry.

Face to Face was also a genuinely political film, but not about the Mexican revolution. It was an allegory on Fascist Italy’s involvement and oppression by Nazi Germany.

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Agreed. Seems more likely that the politics is just a backdrop. If these are supposed to be sending messages about glorifying revolutions, it is muddied by the fact that the protagonists are usually portrayed as quite foolish as they go about trying to achieve their revolution.

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I agree that they are serious, but also incredibly immature and myopic - ultimately a result of ignorance. It’s the typical “capitalism bad” ideology, lacking any real understanding of how capitalism actually functions or how human nature works, all while promoting an alternative that is arguably far worse. It’s the kind of ideology you might expect from a naive college student, but not a grown man.

You’re wrong about Corbucci’s Zapata westerns. I think you’re interpreting them on a very surface level. You see them as superficial because he presents these characters and their ideologies “as is,” in a neutral way - neither endorsing nor condemning them. In The Mercenary, it’s the side of money, the capitalist, that ultimately wins. The revolutionaries are consistently portrayed as corrupt or foolish, no different from the governments they’re fighting against. The core message of TM is that the only real winner in these conflicts is the capitalist profiting from the chaos.

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Right… forgot he was given an actual name lol

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It is you that is wrong and that is trying to impose your blinkered ideology on to action films, which had some mildly populist and leftist themes.

In The Mercenary, the capitalist mine owner played by Eduardo Fajardo is killed. In Companeros, the revolutionary leader played by Fernando Rey refuses to sell Mexico’s oil rights to American interests, and by the end, Nero’s conversion from mercenary to revolutionary is complete. Tell me, how is this capitalism succeeding?

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LOL says the one calling ABFTGs politics intelligent.

The Mercenary neither promotes nor condemns revolutionary actions - it presents them as they are, with a certain indifference. Naturally, revolutionaries will kill those who enslave them. Depicting such characters is not the same as endorsing them, especially when they are often portrayed as foolish. The revolutionaries the protagonist profits from are depicted as naive, while the government is shown as authoritarian and corrupt. The only character depicted positively is the protagonist, who is portrayed as intelligent and cool, with purely financial motivations. TM is anti-authoritarian, but not at all anti-capitalist.

Companeros is another story, but that one is more of a comedy, not a film to take too seriously. It does romanticize revolutionaries more, but at the same time depicts them as foolish, and their leader, the pacifist professor, is depicted as outright stupid. I don’t thing it’s pro or anti anything, it’s just an action comedy that makes a joke out of everything.