Editing Spaghetti Western (section)

==Context and origins==

===Early European Westerns===
European Westerns are as old as filmmaking itself. The [[Auguste and Louis Lumière|Lumière brothers]] had their first public screening of films in 1895, and already, in 1896, Gabriel Veyre shot ''Repas d'Indien'' (''Indian Banquet'') for them. Joe Hamman starred as Arizona Bill in films made in the French horse country of [[Camargue]] (1911–1912).<ref>Charles Ford: ''Histoire du Western'' (Paris: Ed. Albin Michel, 1976) p. 263ff; George N. Fenin and William K. Everson (New York : Orion Press, 1962), p. 322ff.</ref>

In Italy, the American West as a dramatic setting for spectacles goes back at least as far as [[Giacomo Puccini]]'s 1910 opera ''[[La fanciulla del West]]'' (''The Girl of the West''), which is sometimes considered to be the first spaghetti Western.<ref>{{cite web
 |url         = https://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2011/03/22/131943499/happy-birthday-fanciulla----puccini-s-spaghetti-western-turns-100
 |title       = Happy Birthday 'Fanciulla' — Puccini's Spaghetti Western Turns 100
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 |archive-date = 19 May 2011
}}</ref><ref>{{cite news
|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/27/arts/music-the-first-spaghetti-western.html
|title=MUSIC; The First Spaghetti Western
|last=Tommasini
|first=Anthony
|work=The New York Times
|access-date=14 July 2011
|date=27 June 2004
|archive-date=25 May 2013
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|url-status=live
}}</ref>

The first Western movie made in Italy was ''La voce del sangue'', produced by the Turin film studio [[Itala Film]].<ref>Magrin Haas (2022), p. 167ff.</ref> In 1913, ''La vampira Indiana'' was released; a combination of Western and vampire film. It was directed by [[Vincenzo Leone]], father of [[Sergio Leone]], and starred his mother, [[Bice Valerian]], in the title role as the Indian princess Fatale.<ref>Frayling (2000), p. 29ff.</ref> The Italians also made [[Wild Bill Hickok]] films, while the Germans released backwoods Westerns featuring [[Bela Lugosi]] as [[Uncas]].

Of the Western-related European films before 1964, the one that attracted the most attention is arguably Luis Trenker's ''[[Der Kaiser von Kalifornien]]'' about [[John Sutter]].<ref>Frayling (2006), p. 1ff.</ref> Another Italian Western is ''[[Girl of the Golden West (1942 film)|Girl of the Golden West]]''. The film's title alludes to the opera ''[[La fanciulla del West|The Girl of the Golden West]]'', by [[Giacomo Puccini]], but is not an adaptation of it. It was one of a handful of Westerns to be made during the [[silent film]] and [[Fascist era|Fascist Italy]] eras.<ref name=":0">{{citation |last1=Bondanella |first1=Peter |title=A history of Italian cinema |page=395 |year=2017 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |isbn=9781501307645 |id={{OCLC|1240187787|984512006}} |last2=Pacchioni |first2=Federico |author-link=Peter Bondanella}}.</ref> Forerunners of the genre were also [[Giorgio Ferroni]]'s ''[[Il fanciullo del West]]'' (''The Boy in the West'') and [[Fernando Cerchio]]'s ''[[Il bandolero stanco]]'', starring [[Erminio Macario]] and [[Renato Rascel]], respectively.<ref name="CinemaWarII">{{cite book|first1=Mary Ellen|last1=Higgins|first2=Rita|last2=Keresztesi|first3=Dayna|last3=Oscherwitz|title=The Western in the Global South|date=24 April 2015|publisher=Routledge, 2015|isbn=9781317551065}}</ref><ref name="DicItCin">{{cite book|first1=Gino|last1=Moliterno|title=Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema|date=29 September 2008|publisher=Scarecrow Press, 2008, p. 339|isbn=9780810862548}}</ref>

After World War II, there were scattered European uses of Western settings, mostly for comedy, musical or otherwise. A cycle of Western comedies was initiated in 1959 with ''[[La sceriffa]]'' and ''Il terrore dell'Oklahoma'', followed by other films starring comedy specialists, such as [[Walter Chiari]], [[Ugo Tognazzi]], [[Raimondo Vianello]], and [[Fernandel]]. An Italian critic has compared these comedies to American [[Bob Hope]] vehicles.<ref>Mario Molinari, ''Prima che arrivassero gli 'spaghetti''', Segnocinema 22 (March 1986), Vicenza.</ref>

===Origins of the genre===
[[File:Sergio Leone.jpg|thumb|250px|[[Sergio Leone]], one of the most representative directors of the genre]]
The first American-British Western filmed in Spain was ''[[The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw]]'', directed by [[Raoul Walsh]]. It was followed by ''[[Savage Guns (1961 film)|Savage Guns]]'', a British-Spanish Western, again filmed in Spain. It marked the beginning of Spain as a suitable film-shooting location for any type of European Western. In 1961, an Italian company coproduced the French ''Taste of Violence'', with a [[Mexican Revolution]] theme. In 1963, three non-comedy Italo-Spanish Westerns were produced: ''[[Gunfight at Red Sands]]'', ''[[Implacable Three]]'', and ''[[Gunfight at High Noon]]''.

In 1965, [[Bruno Bozzetto]] released his [[Traditional animation|traditionally animated]] feature film ''[[West and Soda]]'', a Western [[parody]] with a marked spaghetti Western-theme; despite having been released a year after Sergio Leone's seminal spaghetti Western, ''A Fistful of Dollars'', development of ''West and Soda'' actually began a year earlier than ''Fistful'''s, and lasted longer, mainly because of the use of more time-demanding animation over regular acting. For this reason, Bozzetto claims to have invented the spaghetti Western genre.<ref>{{cite news |last=Iondini |first=Massimo |date=3 October 2015 |title=Bozzetto: "Così ho inventato lo spaghetti western" |trans-title=Bozzetto: «So I invented spaghetti western» |url=https://www.avvenire.it/agora/pagine/bozzetto-intervista |language=it |work=[[Avvenire]] |location=Milan |access-date=1 October 2019 |archive-date=30 September 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190930194005/https://www.avvenire.it/agora/pagine/bozzetto-intervista |url-status=live }}</ref>

Because there is no real consensus about where to draw the exact line between spaghetti Westerns and other Eurowesterns (or other Westerns in general), it cannot be said which film is definitively the first spaghetti Western. However, 1964 saw the breakthrough of this genre, with more than twenty productions or coproductions from Italian companies, and more than half a dozen Westerns by Spanish or Spanish-American companies. Furthermore, by far the most commercially successful of this lot was Sergio Leone's ''A Fistful of Dollars''. It was the innovations in cinematic style, music, acting and story of Leone's first Western that decided that spaghetti Westerns became a distinct subgenre and not just a number of films looking like American Westerns.<ref>Fridlund, pp. 80–81.</ref>

===''A Fistful of Dollars'' and its impact===
In this seminal film, Leone used a distinct visual style with large face close ups to tell the story of a hero entering a town that is ruled by two outlaw gangs, and ordinary social relations are nonexistent. The hero betrays and plays the gangs against each other to make money. He uses his cunning and exceptional weapons skill to assist a family threatened by both gangs. His treachery is exposed, and he is severely beaten, but in the end, he defeats the remaining gang. The interactions in this story range between cunning and irony (the tricks, deceits, unexpected actions and sarcasm of the hero), and pathos (terror and brutality against defenseless people and against the hero after his doublecross has been revealed). [[Ennio Morricone|Ennio Morricone's]] innovative score expresses a similar duality between quirky and unusual sounds and instruments, and sacral dramatizing for the big confrontation scenes. Another important novelty was Clint Eastwood's performance as the [[man with no name]]—an unshaven, sarcastic, insolent Western [[antihero]] with personal goals in mind, and with distinct visuals to boot—the squint, the cigarillo, the poncho, etc.<ref>Frayling (2000), pp. 118–65.</ref>

The spaghetti Western was born, flourished and faded in a highly commercial production environment. The Italian "low" popular film production was usually low-budget and low-profit, and the easiest way to success was imitating a proven success.<ref>Frayling (2006), pp. 68–102.</ref> When the typically low-budget production, ''A Fistful of Dollars'', turned into a remarkable box-office success, the industry eagerly lapped up its innovations. Most subsequent spaghetti Westerns tried to get a ragged, laconic hero with superhuman weapon skill, preferably one who looked like Clint Eastwood: [[Franco Nero]], [[Gianni Garko|John Garko]], and [[Terence Hill]] started out that way; [[Anthony Steffen]] and others stayed that way throughout their spaghetti Western careers.

[[File:George Martin - Una pistola per Ringo.jpg|thumb|250px|''[[A Pistol for Ringo]]'' by [[Duccio Tessari]]]]
Whoever the hero was, he would join an outlaw gang to further his own secret agenda, as in ''[[A Pistol for Ringo]]'', ''[[Blood for a Silver Dollar]]'', ''[[Vengeance Is a Dish Served Cold]]'', ''[[Renegade Riders]]'', and others, while ''[[Beyond the Law (1968 Italian film)|Beyond the Law]]'' has a bandit infiltrate society and become a sheriff. There would be a flamboyant Mexican bandit ([[Gian Maria Volonté]] from ''A Fistful of Dollars'', otherwise [[Tomas Milian]], or most often [[Fernando Sancho]]) and a grumpy old man, often an undertaker, to serve as [[sidekick]] for the hero. For the love interest, ranchers' daughters, schoolmarms and barroom maidens were overshadowed by young Latin women desired by dangerous men, for which actresses, such as [[Nicoletta Machiavelli]] or [[Rosalba Neri]], carried on [[Marianne Koch]]'s role of Marisol in the Leone film. The terror of the villains against their defenseless victims became just as ruthless as in ''A Fistful of Dollars'', or more, and their brutalization of the hero when his treachery is disclosed became just as merciless, or more—similar to securing the latter's retribution.<ref>Fridlund, pp. 15–57.</ref>

In the beginning, some films mixed some of these new devices with the borrowed U.S. Western devices typical for most of the 1963–1964 spaghetti Westerns. For example, in [[Sergio Corbucci]]'s ''[[Minnesota Clay]]'', that appeared two months after ''[[A Fistful of Dollars]]'', an American style "tragic gunfighter" hero who confronts two evil gangs, one Mexican and one Anglo, with (as in ''A Fistful of Dollars'') the leader of the latter being the town sheriff.<ref>Fridlund, pp. 66–93.</ref>

In ''[[Johnny Oro]]'', a traditional Western sheriff and a mixed-race bounty killer are forced into an uneasy alliance when Mexican bandits and Native Americans assault the town. In ''A Pistol for Ringo'', a traditional sheriff commissions a money-oriented hero played by [[Giuliano Gemma]] (as deadly but with more pleasing manners than Eastwood's character) to infiltrate a gang of Mexican bandits whose leader is played typically by [[Fernando Sancho]].