Reference LINKS:
A Beginner's Guide to Spaghetti Westerns
What is a Spaghetti Western — History and Legacy Explained
From B Movie to Respected Movie Genre
JAMISON NOTES
-Lead anti-hero has a dark sense of humor and one liners
-Music uses unique sounds like, guns, whistling, whips, etc
-FAST zooms on various
-Extreme Close ups of faces and close ups of faces mixed with extreme long shots and long shots of cowboys traveling, showdowns and still stand offs
-Closeups of hands near holstered gun
-Ending showdown of “For a Few Dollars More” and “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly” includes 3 separate people in a triangle stand off - in “A Few Dollars More” Eastwood only provides a better gun than sits nearby staying out of the showdown in “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly” it is a 3 way shootout
-“A Few Dollars More” Ends with both leads riding into the SUNSET!
-All these films use 2:35:1 bars but were not actually shot in anamorphic as they could not afford to shoot true anamorphic!
-The movies are entirely dubbed
-ENDING ON A HIGH CRANE SHOT AS CHARACTER RIDES OUT INTO THE DISTANCE - BOTH “A Fistful of Dollars” and “For a Few Dollars More” end with THE SAME ENDING CRANE UPWARDS shot!! While the protagonist (Eastwood) rides away into the distance! “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly” ends with a high in the SKY shot of a small Eastwood riding away on horseback!
-Protagonist (Eastwood) often does little things to screw with people and to get one over on them just for his own enjoyment/betterment and it is often very funny too
-Many plot points and twists are based on deception, one character deceiving or tricking another character, meanwhile tricking or surprising the audience (example: the metal that saves Eastwood from bullets in “A Fistful of Dollars” and the ending location of the money in “The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly”
DIRECT DEFINITIONS AND NOTES FROM STUDIO BINDER:
What is a Spaghetti Western?
A Spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films made by Italian filmmakers from the early 1960s to the late ‘70s. Also known (and more respectfully referred to) as "western all’italiana" (Italian-style Western), the genre reached its peak in the late ‘60s, garnering worldwide popularity. Often filmed with low budgets, Spaghetti Westerns featured anti-heroes for protagonists, dastardly villains, desert landscapes, non-traditional music scores, and plenty of violence.
Why are they called Spaghetti Westerns?
Even if film fans know the answer to “What is a Spaghetti Western," they might still ask “Why are they called Spaghetti Westerns?” It’s because these films were pretty much all made in Italy by Italian filmmakers, and spaghetti is a worldwide Italian cultural export. And even though the genre’s style has been adapted and imitated, it was still 99% an Italian phenomenon, so the name stuck.
Spaghetti Western characteristics include:
Anti-heroes with questionable and selfish morals (i.e. doing things for money or revenge).
Despicable villains that represented the worst in people.
Desert landscapes and shanty towns.
Subversion of traditional Western tropes (i.e., identifiable heroes and villains, happy endings, black and white morality).
Commentary on politics and relations among others.
The Spaghetti Western heyday
The exact “start” of the Spaghetti Western is disputed and, ultimately, unknown, since Italy was already making Westerns before the mid-1960s. What no one disputes and what everyone knows is the movie that made these Westerns a household name. A Fistful of Dollars (1964), directed by Sergio Leone, scored by Ennio Morricone, and starring Clint Eastwood. One of the best Spaghetti Westerns, this was the breakthrough that created an industry where nearly half of every Italian film in production was a Western. Followed up by For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), these movies comprised what is known as the Dollars Trilogy. Each one starred Eastwood as the Man with No Name, a drifter who came into town to fight off some bad guys in pursuit of money. Other actors in these films included Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach, all of whom would later star in even more of these Italian Westerns.
The films were often shot on low budgets, making their money back even if there was not much of a box office return. Emulating the CinemaScope look without anamorphic lenses, many of these films used the Techniscope technique. This involved shooting with spherical lenses but using a smaller-but-wider frame within 35mm film strips.
The result was a widescreen image with plenty of noticeable film grain, which can be considered part of the genre’s charm. Outside of the Dollars Trilogy, Leone also directed Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), often regarded as one of the best Spaghetti Westerns of all-time (along with his Dollars Trilogy), making him the preeminent Italian director of Spaghetti Westerns.