Doc Holliday was 31 in 1881, he died at 37.
Robards was 45 when he played Holliday but he looked 65!!
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To sum it up I think itâs all indicative of everything that was wrong with bland, middleaged Hollywood in the 60s. The Spaghettis were the rebellion against it, turning the genre upside down etc.
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Not really.
There never was one kind of Hollywood westerns, and there were always dirty looking westerns made before the SWs came to town. And actually, and this is kinda funny, many SWs are also have a kinda clean look. When I started to watch SWs I was back then very often disappointed that many of these films did not look like I was expecting them to look.
And the SW was never a rebellion against US westerns, why should they? I think People like Leone or Corbucci loved westerns. SW directors took from the genre what they liked, and omitted what they not liked, and they strengthen the things they liked so much, that something new arose from this. But the US western was also still transforming at the time and some things the Spags did happened at the same time in US westerns, but still in a different way.
I can say that I have seen nearly every important western which was ever made, and Iâm often wondering about the odd views SW fans have about US westerns. Which does not mean that SW fans need to appreciate US westerns, they need not, and what Aute says is e.g. perfectly understandable for me, but still the views at the genre as a whole are often a bit strange.
I also have to say that I donât have any problems with cleaner looking westerns, as these can also be very atmospheric, but in general I too prefer the more dusty looking westerns. And it is true that enough US color westerns of the 50s have indeed a not so atmospheric general look, but that changed changed by and by.
Dirtyness was definitely nothing the SW invented for the genre.
We talked about Major Dundee (1965) recently, and in that one the soldiers look like savages at the end of the film, or in Man of the West (1958) the hero (Gary Cooper) also looks rather clean, but is then confronted with his past, and the outlaw gang he meets is in contrast a rather dirty animalistic bunch, also in behaviour. When I watched that one as a kid some of the scenes made me feel uncomfortable.
This contrast is a bit similar to the one between Gemma and Sanchoâs gang in A Pistol for Ringo, but for me actually more effective.
Well, to make that clear again, I see a lot of differences between US westerns made at the same time as the Spags, but also a lot of similarities. And I definitely like both types of Westerns, and for me most of the best westerns were made in this comparatively short time span in the late 60s and early 70s. And for US westerns alone I generally prefer these westerns to the older ones of the 40s and 50s, prefer Peckinpah, Penn, Leone and Corbucci (but only at his best) to Ford, Hawks, Mann or Boetticher, which are meanwhile the most valued of the older ones.
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I have never seen Major Dundee so I canât comment on it Stanton. I would love to see Man of the West again. I was really young the last time I saw it.
Christopher Frayling said a lot of the Leone hero was his way of saying that he didnât âbuyâ the traditional western hero stuff anymore and the west could not have been like that. Although he certainly did love them no arguments there!
I think the rebellion, was the style or presentation rather than explicitly the content. I would include Peckinpah in this although I donât think his films are Spaghettis!
A good film - one of my favourites, with a stand-out performances from Gary Cooper, Lee J Cobb, Julie London, and John DehnerâŚ
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SW directors took from the genre what they liked, and omitted what they not liked, and they strengthen the things they liked so much, that something new arose from this. - This is very true Stanton.
The grimey look was something I never thought of before. Because like you said there are plenty of dirty American westerns.
I am in agreement with you on the period of the 60s and 70s produced the best, well my favourites and a few of my least favourites were produced then. I think it is the revisionist period. Could be wrong though.
Focusing on Hour of the Gun, I think it would have benefitted from some younger talents of the time involved like oh⌠Jack Nicholson being supported by a few name veterans.
Cleaner looking westerns can be dirty down to behaviour or the plot. Mccabe & Mrs Miller is a very dirty movie!!
For the 70s I often got the impression everyone wanted to outdo the others in ugliness. Sometimes it was too much then.
But John Sturges, the director of Hour of the Gun, was one who mostly preferred the cleaner looking type of costumes. Pretty disappointing in Mag 7, in which all the poor Mexican peons are wearing snow-white shirts. Especially as Kurosawaâs 7 Samurai was an extremely dirty looking film.
But earlier a director like William A. Wellman was one who made several more dirty looking westerns with unshaved men in worn out clothes, like The Ox-Bow Incident 1943), Yellow Sky (1948), Westward the Women (1951) and Across the Wide Missouri (1951).
2 images from Wellman westerns:
http://www.belcourt.org/events/william-wellman-double-feature-the-ox-bow-incident-yellow-sky.3187539
I do enjoy some of these nastier westerns (Five Savage Men AKA The Animals comes to mind) but I agree with you that the spaghetti western wasnât responsible for the visual realism that came about. I am also quite fond of the American westerns and I donât think that the cleaner looking ones are somehow less realistic. There was more to the West than the âwildâ characters. Westerns also became more political during the Vietnam War era and while they may have been more realistic from a visual point of view, they were seriously lacking in other departments. Either way, I tend to appreciate all kinds of westerns, the same as you.
70s were pretty ugly as in Dirty Harry, Death Wish etc. And I too think that it could be way too exploitative.
And donât get me wrong I do like American westerns.
Yes, even if realism is a problematic term in westerns. I think westerns are rarely realistic, they rarely are films for historians.
FoD and Django are not for a second realistic movies, are set also in a fantasy west, and their violence was just a new sort of escapism.
I think underlying political messages in the period was (to me) best presented in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. During the charge at the bridge Blondie utters âIâve never seen so many men wasted so badly".
I agree, that escapism is what keeps me watching. Westerns were action movies before the era of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Van Damme.
I certainly do not have a problem with realism in westerns as in their accurate portrayals of history. I watch westerns primarily for the mythological west, and especially the one that was refined with Leone.
But, that said, I do have a problem with pristine looking costumes and characters that are too clean & neat because it simply doesnât fit the setting. It looks totally out of place, not in a good way, in a way that removes me from the film. While I donât really care about historical accuracy so much, this kind of thing does bother me. Iâm totally cool with fantasy, but I like my characters to look like real people that fit into the situation they are in.
I also donât like a lot of spaghs that have the same problems. Its largely why I didnât like some spags like Gemmaâs Ringo, and probably also why it took me a long time to come around to Garkoâs Sartana.
And my problems I mentioned with westerns in general apply to spags as well. Iâve mentioned before that TGTBTU is my least favorite Leone, and even sits below non-Leone spags because of its lingering on the civil war and the way its âepicâ in a manner which I find a bore.
Iâll have to add the mentioned westerns to my list of ones to watch.
The other aspect Iâll add in regards to my love of spags is the kinds of camerawork which you rarely see in the American stuff. This is a huge factor for me, and one of my big loves for the genre.
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Well I suppose clean costumes or dirty ones should apply to the given western settings. Django would not have worked if it was âcleanâ and forgotten years ago. No apocalyptic muddy ghost town no movie!
Clean cosmopolitan Town and everyone covered in mud? It would look silly. It would look even sillier if everyone was in the middle of the desert on horseback in a three piece suit. So I also took
time to warm to Sartana. I view him as the 007 Gunslinger. Always well dressed, never perspires, always with gadgets.
Even in a typical western town, people shouldnât really be super clean⌠not saying covered in mud, but certainly not brand new, totally clean looking outfits and totally clean & perfectly groomedâŚ
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Exactly!
Itâs down to the director ultimately, if he approves the look of his cast, including the extras, and they look to me like people attending a fancy dress party, then itâs poor direction, or lack of interest in making the story believable.
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No not super clean, I admit that. Unless they were leaving the tailors.
I suppose it is making the fantasy world looked lived in(?) if you get my meaning.