The first American-British Western filmed in Spain was The Sheriff of Fractured
Jaw, directed by Raoul Walsh. It was followed by 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 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.[27]
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.[28]
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'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.[29]
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.[30] 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, John Garko, and Terence Hill started out that way; Anthony Steffen and others
stayed that way throughout their spaghetti Western careers.
