SPAGHETTI WESTERNS
The enormous international success of Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars (1964) gave birth not just to the film career of Clint Eastwood, but it also spawned hundreds of other European Westerns, a genre which remained popular around the world well into the 1970s. While the principal talents behind these so-called “Spaghetti Westerns” were typically Italian, the films themselves were usually international co-productions which relied heavily on Spanish locations. These politically engaged post-modern action epics broke into new territories of screen violence and frequently presented viewpoints highly critical of American history. Our selection includes Leone’s classic, plus eye-opening work by his talented contemporaries, including Sergio Sollima and Sergio Corbucci, who counts Quentin Tarantino among his devout acolytes. The series will also expand to include screenings in the 2013 Wisconsin Film Festival.
- Sat., Mar. 2 | 7:00 PM4070 Vilas Hall
A young boy witnesses the brutal slaughter of his parents by bandits. He grows into a vengeful young adult (Law) relentlessly searching for the team of killers with help from an outlaw (Van Cleef) who hides his own dark past. Classically told and positively gripping, this violent European oater features a pounding, percussive score by Ennio Morricone.
- Sat., Mar. 9 | 7:00 PM4070 Vilas Hall
In 1915 Mexico, a group of revolutionaries hire a Polish gun-for-hire (Spaghetti Western superstar Nero), but they are thwarted by a well-dressed and brutal government agent (Palance) in “one of the genre’s most powerful and politically charged achievements.” (Dave Kehr). Director Corbucci, a celebrated master of the Italian western (Django), worked six times with composer Ennio Morricone, whose score for The Mercenary was put to use again in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.
- Sat., Mar. 16 | 7:00 PM4070 Vilas Hall
Heading west for his health, a New England school teacher (Volonté) falls in with an outlaw gang, eventually becoming leader of the bandits. This unusual European western from director Sollima (The Big Gundown) and screenwriter Sergio Donati (Once Upon a Time in the West), features a particularly memorable performance by Volonté as an intellectual who is slowly transformed into a fascistic killer. Ennio Morricone contributes another excellent score.
- Sat., Mar. 23 | 7:00 PM4070 Vilas Hall
A vicious attack on a stagecoach ends with the strongbox in the hands of the dastardly Lasky (Berger) and it’s up to the laconic hero Sartana (Garko) to track down the outlaw and the loot. The first in a popular series of European westerns with equally wonderful titles, this Sartana is oft-cited by fans as the best.
- Sat., Apr. 6 | 7:00 PM4070 Vilas Hall
In his only Spaghetti Western, Reynolds plays an Indian who, armed with a hatchet and bow-and-arrow, relentlessly pursues the outlaw who scalped and killed his woman. The startling score by Ennio Morricone (here credited as ‘Leo Nichols’) features a chorus of shrieking voices and pounding surf guitar. The main theme was later used to great comic effect in Alexander Payne’s Election.
- Sat., Apr. 20 | 7:00 PMChazen
In a story pilfered from Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (which itself was inspired by Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest), an amoral wanderer with no name finds himself on both sides of a war between two families in a Mexican town. This classic created the worldwide craze for European westerns, turned Eastwood into an iconic superhero, and introduced movie lovers to the estimable talents of director Leone and composer Ennio Morricone.
- Sat., Apr. 27 | 7:00 PM4070 Vilas Hall
Clint Eastwood is a nameless bounty hunter who teams with the mysterious Col. Mortimer (Van Cleef) to hunt down the vicious Indio (Volonté). Klaus Kinski appears as a hunchbacked match book cover and Ennio Morricone’s superb score makes excellent use of a musical watch. A quintessential, fully-realized work of art from Leone, this semi-sequel to A Fistful of Dollars is “more elaborate, more imaginatively plotted, better photographed, funnier, more brutal, and more overtly adult and political than the original.” (Danny Peary, Guide for the Film Fanatic)