Spaghetti Westerns at the Crossroads
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What links Italian neorealism to Django Unchained, French comic books to Third-World insurgency, and Bollywood song-and-dance to Eastern Bloc film distribution? As this volume illustrates, the answers lie in the Spaghetti Western genre.
As the reference points of American popular culture became ever more prominent in post-war Europe, the hundreds of films that make up the Italian (or ‘Spaghetti’) Western documented profound shifts in their home country’s cultural outlook, while at the same time denying specifically national discourses. An object of fascination and great affection for fans, filmmakers and academics alike, the Western all¹italiana arose from a diverse confluence of cultural strands, and would become a pivotal moment in cinematic history.
Reappraising a diverse selection of films, from the internationally famed works of Sergio Leone to the cult cachet of Sergio Corbucci and the more obscure outputs of such directors as Giuseppe Colizzi and Ferdinando Baldi, this comprehensive study brings together leading international scholars in a variety of disciplines to both revisit the genre’s cultural significance and consider its on-going influence on international film industries.
Austin Fisher is Associate Professor of Popular Culture at Bournemouth University. He is the author of Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western, editor of Spaghetti Westerns at the Crossroads and Grindhouse: Cultural Exchange on 42nd Street, and Beyond, and founding co-editor of the ‘Global Exploitation Cinemas’ book series. His main area of expertise concerns popular Italian cinema’s relationship with political movements of the 1960s and 1970s.