What are the "Eras" of the Spaghetti Western Genre?

Town Hall
21

Just my two cents - I don’t think it makes sense to separate Spaghetti Westerns by eras. It’s not really productive, since all sorts of different styles are spread throughout the genre’s lifespan. There’s no single, consistent style tied to any particular period, except for the pre-Leone films, which were basically just American Westerns (and just as bland as the American ones, too).

I’d say there are several key sub-subgenres within the Spaghetti Western subgenre:

1. The Fistful of Dollars likes - A Fistful of Dollars, Django, Day of Anger

2. Revenge Spaghettis - For a Few Dollars More, The Great Silence, Death Rides a Horse, Navajo Joe, etc.

3. War Spaghettis - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Mercenary, A Bullet for the General, etc.

4. Playful Spaghettis (not quite serious, but not full comedies either - Spaghetti Westerns are known for their playfulness in general, but these films focus on that aspect almost exclusively) – Sartana films, Sabata films, etc.

5. Miscellaneous Spaghettis with unique concepts - The Big Gundown, Keoma, Once Upon a Time in the West. (This is the largest subgenre in terms of the number of films, but also the least consistent in quality.)

6. Comedy Spaghettis - They Call Me Trinity, Trinity Is Still My Name, Compañeros, My Name Is Nobody, etc.

5 Likes
22

I would like to add one more important subgenre of Spaghetti Westerns to your list:

7. Zapata (Spaghetti) Westerns - Films that are set in/around the Mexican Revolution. Like The Mercenary, Companeros, Duck You Sucker/Fistful of Dynamite, Texas Adios, and many others.

I would also like to add that the Spaghetti Western boom was started by “A Fistful of Dollars” in 1964, and started to phase out around 1970 (although there still were quite a noteworthy number of them shot/released in 1971). By 1976, the genre was pretty much dead (and only got a very few later additions).
I read that in 1969, 40% of all Italian films made were Spaghetti Westerns, but only a year later, the number had dropped to 10%. This was partially due to the rise of the Poliziotteschi (police film) genre, which led production companies to shift their focus in that direction. I guess the Godfather may be partially to blame for this shift in trends, as I could see why it would have been a particularly massive hit in Italy. The Poliziottesco films were mostly gangster/mob themed.
If you look up the Wikipedia page about the genre, you’ll probably recognize a lot of the names from the list of notable directors of such films (like Sollima, Tessari and Castellari), and Franco Nero & Tomas Milian were among the most notable actors.

1 Like