Y’all!
I had watched a documentary on the genre last night and had learnt so much!!! I’m excited… 
Somebody in it gave the genre modes throughout its history: the first was characterized by a Take That! at the American western, so the Dollars trilogy, the second being the descent into more offbeat approaches like A Bullet For The General or Shoot The Living and Pray For The Dead, and the third – with Keoma and them – being the genre’s twilight days, when the towns looked more gloomy. Someone said there was something to that: by the time of Keoma and those mid-70s westerns, all them cool western sets was torn down or otherwise abandoned, so they had to work with what was left. The consensus of the genre’s “death” was chalked up to the comedy-western – what Trinity did, because up to that point, audiences couldn’t take the genre serious no more. They said that Leone ain’t get comical westerns… which I thought was typical, lol.
But actually, while I was learning, I actually get Leone now, and all them creators. I loved Duck, You Sucker, it’s my favorite Leone joint, but I always noted that it was more gloomy than the earlier westerns he’d done. OUaTiTW is the same way. And everyone else’s movies, like And God Said To Cain or, something I just watched, The Price of Power. All them folks’ movies got gloomier as time went on, and I chalked all that stuff up to, like, melodrama, deliberate edginess, cringed at it and moved on. But it’s really something I ain’t take into account: 90% of these creators saw the horrors of war, saw the horrors of political unrest, so, it was almost like… “vent art”; they expressed their pain. It’s these folks’ battered, trying-to-heal hearts on a platter. It’s literally like us American creators at that time, what with Vietnam and Civil Rights and all this other stuff. I don’t know how I ain’t take all that into account… anywho, I’ll probably still not like them darker themes of them movies, but I can certainly understand them now. I’m not so confused no more or – better yet – ignorant, hehe.
I saw some familiar, and much older, faces in the documentary. Some old reviews of Corbucci and Leone, Morricone showed up, Sergio Sollima, some producers and screenwriters, they talked about the flood of character actors from America into Italy of all different nationalities and – for some reason – I was pleasantly surprised to see how well Tomas Milian had aged, lol. Three of them analysts showed up too. Alex Cox, that Howard Hughes (not the airplane man – I know that now, LMAO!!) and the Frayling dude… I don’t really jive wit him but I don’t think that opinion is unpopular here, lol.
Anywho, I thought it’d be nice to hear that the newbie is learning. This the documentary I watched.
Sincerest apologies for gushing… I dearly love to learn. 