THE SPAGHETTI WEST
Dir: David Gregory
With (in order of appearance): Sergio Donati, Sir Christopher Frayling,
Howard Hughes, Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood, Franco Giraldi, Enzo G.
Castellari, Sergio Martino, Ferdinando Baldi, Manolo Bolognini, Alex Cox, Franco
Nero, Sergio Corbucci, Sergio Sollima, Ennio Morricone, Alessandro
Alessandroni, Damiano Damiani, and Tomás Milian
Docurama/IFC, 2005
NTSC/Region 1/56 mins.
$26.95
Review by John Exshaw
Once upon a time in a film class, a lecturer was heard to
bemoan the presence in video stores of an abundance of “cheap Spaghetti
Westerns†in a tone which indicated, quite unambiguously, that he was not just
complaining about the prices. Nor, it is safe to assume, was he merely venting
his displeasure at the films’ paucity of production values. No, what was
agitating this sage of celluloid was the complete and utter lack of
authenticity inherent in Spaghetti Westerns; they were, by place of birth,
ethnicity, definition, and any other criteria one might care to apply, most
definitely not the real thing.
Spaghetti Westerns did not show a true picture of the Old
West – unlike, say, the Hopalong Cassidy films or those of Gene Autry. They
were not historically accurate – unlike, say, They Died With Their Boots On
or My Darling Clementine. They were not made by American directors –
unlike, say, Rancho Notorious or High Noon. They did not star
American actors – except when they did. They were not shot on genuine Western
locations – such as the legendary Columbia backlot. And they were cheap,
goddammit, quite unlike the big-budget, super-productions synonymous with
studios such as Republic and Monogram. Yes, folks, down with “cheap†Italian
Westerns, and hooray for Hollywood, the home of authenticity!
Outside Italy, Spaghetti Westerns have now achieved a
modicum of respectability, and even critical approbation (due in large part to
the groundbreaking work of Sir Christopher Frayling), and the term itself is
generally employed as one of affection. In Italy, however, the expression
remained (and remains?) contentious, guaranteed to send otherwise thick-skinned
Cinecittà professionals into paroxysms of resentment to such an extent that a
new and more acceptable term, Western all’italiana, was coined to soothe
their delicate sensibilities. Their resentment, of course, was not unjustified,
and traces of it can be discerned in some of the interviews included in the
documentary, The Spaghetti West, released as a Region 1 DVD on the
Docurama label. Sergio Sollima, director of The Big Gundown, confesses
to finding the term “horrendousâ€, though he later qualifies this when deploring
the deluge of cash-in-quick Spaghettis which ultimately caused the genre
to go the way of its predecessors, the peplum and the swashbuckler – ‘. . .
everybody went for it with a few bucks and a couple of horses. In the end this
is the “Spaghetti Western†that I hate.’ Enzo G. Castellari, by contrast,
offers a more pragmatic view, saying, “Initially I thought the term was
disparaging because it sounded like Italians were copying an American style of
movie, but it became an important brand name.â€
The Spaghetti West provides a straightforward account
of the Italian Western phenomenon, moving chronologically through its three
principal phases: Sergio Leone, and the subsequent boom in tales of
dollar-hungry bounty hunters, and Sergio Corbucci, whose Django inspired
a similar explosion of films featuring revenge-obsessed loners; the “politicalâ€
Westerns, set in Mexico and usually focusing on an emblematic peón who,
through contact with a cynical Anglo, becomes radicalised and joins the
Revolution; and the parodic phase as exemplified by Enzo Barboni’s Trinity
films with Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. The narration of the documentary,
lugubriously delivered by Robert Forster, is uninspired, leaving Sir
Christopher Frayling to supply the historical spine of the film, which he does
in his usual informed and engaging manner. Alex Cox, who introduced British TV
audiences to the joys of Django and Django, Kill! through his
much-missed Moviedrome series, is his usual loquacious and enthusiastic
self, while Howard Hughes, author of the impressive Once Upon a Time in the
Italian West (I.B. Tauris, London, 2004) is rather underused throughout,
though he does manage to get in a few words on Castellari’s masterly Keoma
and Sergio Martino’s Mannaja: A Man Called Blade towards the end.
While the DVD packaging of The Spaghetti West boldly
proclaims it to be “An IFC Original Documentaryâ€, the credits reveal it to be
essentially a Blue Underground production, and therein lies a problem for the
dedicated Spaghetti fan pondering the not inconsiderable fistful of dollars
being asked for it. Much of the interview material will be familiar from the
excellent extras’ packages of earlier Blue Underground releases and there is a
preponderance of fairly lengthy clips from films such as Django, Django,
Kill!, and Run, Man, Run, all released on that label. Footage of
Sergio Corbucci on the set of The Great Silence is lifted from Patrick
Morin’s 1968 documentary, Western, Italian Style, which is itself
included in full as an extra on Run, Man, Run. Clint Eastwood’s
interview takes place on the set of Unforgiven, so can hardly be
considered new or exclusive, while the Maestro himself is seen and heard from
only once, making one wish, and not for the first time, that some enterprising company would issue
The Collected Leone Interviews on DVD.
Furthermore, the paltry running time of 56 minutes has the
unfortunate effect of reducing the film to something like a Spaghetti Western
Greatest Hits package, as well as giving a rather skewed impression of some of
the interviewees. Sollima, a splendidly sharp and imperious old bird, comes
across much less coherently than he does on the interviews included on the DVD
releases of Run, Man, Run, Violent City, and Revolver,
while Tomás Milian, elsewhere revealed as one of the most intelligent and
perceptive protagonists of the Italian Western, ends up sounding like little
more than a self-obsessed Actors’ Studio crank: “As a man, Tomás Milian, in
life, acts. And in the movies, try to live. So my life, my real life, is
represented in the movies.†Yes . . . well, maybe they caught him on a bad day.
. . . All in all then, The Spaghetti West provides an enjoyable ride
over old territory, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it would have
given better value as a DVD extra rather than as a stand-alone release, and
that it should certainly have been made available for a few dollars less. But,
if you’re a Spaghetti Western fan, the chances are you’ll probably want to own
it anyway . . . Vamos a matar, compañeros!
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