Editing Spaghetti Western (section)

==="Trinity" films and the triumph of comedy===
[[File:Lo chiamavano Trinità.png|thumb|250px|[[Bud Spencer]] and [[Terence Hill]] in ''[[They Call Me Trinity]]'' by [[Enzo Barboni]]]]
In 1968, the wave of spaghetti Westerns reached its crest, comprising one-third of the Italian film production, only to collapse to one-tenth in 1969. However, the considerable box-office success of [[Enzo Barboni]]'s ''[[They Call Me Trinity]]'' and its pyramidal follow-up, ''[[Trinity Is Still My Name]]'', gave Italian filmmakers a new model to emulate. The main characters were played by [[Terence Hill]] and [[Bud Spencer]], who had already cooperated as a pair of heroes in three earlier spaghetti Westerns, ''[[God Forgives... I Don't!]]'', ''[[Boot Hill (film)|Boot Hill]]'' and ''[[Ace High (1968 film)|Ace High]]'', directed by [[Giuseppe Colizzi]]. The humor started in those movies, with scenes with comedy fighting, but the Barboni films became burlesque comedies. They feature the quick but lazy Trinity (Hill) and his big, strong and irritable brother, Bambino (Spencer).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://salvatoreracconta.com/3-bud-spencer-e-terence-hill/|title=Bud Spencer e Terence Hill|date=18 April 2022 |access-date=25 March 2024|language=it}}</ref>

The stories lampoon stereotypical Western characters, such as diligent farmers, lawmen and bounty hunters. There was a wave of Trinity-inspired films with quick and strong heroes, the former often called "Trinity", or coming from "a place called Trinity", and with few or no killings. Because the two model stories contained religious pacifists to account for the absence of gunplay, all of the successors contained religious groups, or, at least, priests, sometimes as one of the heroes.<ref>Fridlund (2006), pp. 231–56.</ref>

The music for the two Trinity Westerns (composed by [[Franco Micalizzi]] and [[Guido & Maurizio De Angelis]], respectively) also reflected the change to a lighter and more sentimental mood. The Trinity-inspired films also adopted this less serious and often-maligned style.<ref>Fridlund (2006), pp. 237, 245.</ref>

Some critics deplore these post-Trinity films and their soundtracks as a degeneration of the "real" spaghetti Westerns. Indeed, Hill's and Spencer's skillful use of body language was a hard act to follow, and it is significant that the most successful of the post-Trinity films featured Hill (''[[Man of the East]]'' and ''[[A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe]]''), Spencer (''[[It Can Be Done Amigo]]'') and a pair of Hill-Spencer lookalikes in ''Carambola''. A spaghetti Western old hand, [[Franco Nero]], also worked in this subgenre with ''[[Cipolla Colt]]'', and [[Tomas Milian]] plays an outrageous "quick" bounty hunter modeled on [[Charlie Chaplin]]'s [[The Tramp|Little Tramp]] in ''[[Life Is Tough, Eh Providence?|Sometimes Life Is Hard, Eh Providence?]]'' and ''Here We Go Again, Eh, Providence?''.<ref>Fridlund (2006), pp. 237, 248–51.</ref>