Spag Western Essay #3: Coffin Dancing
So. I think we’ve established that Spaghetti Western is a genre limited partially to a time and place, much like Noir. Like Noir, it continues to influence, to inspire and to resonate. And like Noir, it sometimes resurfaces. There isn’t a neat and easy label for post-70s Spag Westerns like “Neo Noir”, but they pop up every so often just the same. Leone himself argued that Silverado was an American Western- done in the style of the Italian Westerns.
Huh. Maybe? An American filmmaking style and sensibility re-directing the Italian sensibility which came from an American genre? Ow my head!
But there are more obvious influences. Not counting Revisionist Westerns or Acid Westerns, or the rarely accurate Biopic Western- all of which bear the stamp of “Post-Spag Influence” -to think about the look of El Topo or the Monte Hellman westerns, Walter Hill’s The Long Riders or even the overly adored Tombstone is to see the influence of not just John Ford and Anthony Mann, but certainly Leone if not Corbucci and Sollima…
For the Western (whatever it’s sub-genre) is, above all else a director’s genre.
For me, beyond the visual grandiosity, and the music (2nd to director’s influence is the composer: for many, it’s the most important aspect of the Spag Western), there is a strange duality that keeps bringing me back to the genre…
In the previously discussed Il Mercenario there is the climactic battle in the Arena between Tony Musante and Jack Palance while Franco Nero officiates… not only is it a frankly brilliant bit of pacing, framing, action and score- but go back and watch it again. No really, go ahead.
So it’s a pretty heightened, ridiculous concept. Two guys with rifles, one bullet each, turned back at forty paces or so, while a third man rings a bell three times to signal the commencement of shootin’- and sorry about the lack of subtitles or a dubbed version, the best cut of the scene I could find on youtube is that one.
One of the guys is in a clown’s costume, fer christsake. And when the bad guy gets it, it’s signified by the white carnation on his black suit turning red with his blood- that’s so over-the-top as to be positively stratospheric!!
But look at Palance during the build up to the firing- he’s scared, he’s nervous, he’s elated: he knows he can take this guy, this foolish Mexican peasant that he’s caught working as a clown. And the look on his face when he realizes he hasn’t.
It’s this duality, the hyper-stylized meets honest emotion, that keeps me captivated by the Spag Westerns of Sergio Corbucci.
But sometimes there isn’t much duality, it’s just flat-out fun and games and weird west- because long before Pinnacle Entertainment made the fantastic Deadlands rpg, the Italian filmmakers were populating a strange and twisted western landscape, somewhere between the atmospheric horror and the pseudo-steampunk gadgets, the Spag Western had it.
And why not? Italy was simultaneously creating masters of atmospheric horror, as well as gadgetry filled spy-thrillers.
Return of Sabata was sort of like an Italian Wild Wild West, a tonally weird balance of intentional camp and atmospheric gunfights (in a coffin factory, natch)… the opening sequence is truly bizarre, all green and red filters and sharp angles while Lee Van Cleef, armed with a 4 barreled Derringer (w/ a few tricks, somehow, hidden in it) is hunted by six men in said coffin factory…
Mannaja, a late entry into the genre (’77) opens up with a Giallo-esq horror sequence as a man with a hatchet stalks a trapper through a mist-filled swamp- and the guy with the axe is our hero! The rest of the movie, set in the traditional arid west, never quite steps up to the chaotic energy that makes the opening three minutes so memorably creepy, which is a shame. A swamp-bound vengeful western has potential, and director Sergio Martino had done a number of bloody horror pics…
In ‘74, East met West in The Stranger and The Gunfighter. Lee Van Cleef and Lo Lieh take on a shitload of people, while piecing together a map drawn on the backsides of various concubines- tough job, looking at voluptuous 1970s hineys.
It ain’t Van Cleef, but they still call him Sabata: Adios, Sabata has Yul Brynner stepping into the name- the character is totally different, but the weird-ass sidekicks with gimmicks cross over.
Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer. You might not know these names, but you should. They Call Me Trinity and Trinity is Still My Name are often considered the death knell of the Spag Western- self parody. Which doesn’t mean that these two aren’t worth a look. The chemistry of Hill and Spencer works, and the tongue-in-cheek & fisticuffs good humor of these films is far more friendly and accessible than the bloody nihilism of some of the earlier Spag Westerns…