Spaghetti western, also known as Italo-western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western film that emerged in the mid-1960s, so named because most were produced and directed by Italians, usually in co-production with a Spanish partner.
The typical team was made up of an Italian director, Italo-Spanish technical staff, and a cast of Italian and Spanish actors, sometimes a fading Hollywood star and sometimes a rising one like the young Clint Eastwood in three of Sergio Leone's films. The films were typically shot in inexpensive locales resembling the American Southwest, primarily the Andalusia region of Spain, Sardinia, and Abruzzo.
Because of the desert setting and the readily available low-cost southern Spanish or southern Italian extras, typical themes in Spaghetti Westerns include the Mexican Revolution, Mexican bandits, and the border region shared by Mexico and the U.S.
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Originally, spaghetti westerns were characterized by their production in the Italian language, low budgets, and a recognizable highly fluid and minimalist cinematography which eschewed (even "demythologized"[1]) many of the conventions of earlier Westerns. This was partly intentional and partly the context of a different cultural background.[citation needed]
A favorite locale in Andalusia was the Tabernas Desert of Almería, with production at three main studios, Texas Hollywood, Mini Hollywood, and Western Leone.[citation needed]
The movie that qualifies as the first spaghetti western, Tierra brutal (1961), showed no Italian involvement at all, being a British-Spanish coproduction, but was shot in Almería and featured the very heterogeneous cast typical of later movies in the genre (in this instance combining American actors Richard Basehart and Alex Nicol with the Spanish folclóricas Paquita Rico and María Granada), and directed by English horror films specialist, Michael Carreras.[citation needed]
The best-known and perhaps archetypal films were the "Man with No Name" trilogy (or "Dollars Trilogy") directed by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood and with the musical scores of Ennio Morricone: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). Atypically for the genre, the last had a relatively high budget, over a million United States dollars.[citation needed] Leone's next film after the "trilogy" was Once Upon a Time in the West, which is often lumped in with the previous three for its similar style and accompanying score by Morricone, though Eastwood was not involved.[citation needed]
Spaghetti Western (plural Spaghetti Westerns)
Spaghetti Westerns were a name given to low-budget Western films, which were made by Italian movie companies in the 1960s. They were different from the American western movies, usually filmed in Italian, had limited budgets, filmed on location in Spain and Italy with minimal sets, and many close-ups and artistic shots. Perhaps the most well-known of these films is "The Man with No Name" trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). All three of these films were directed by Sergio Leone, featured music by Ennio Morricone, and starred American actor Clint Eastwood as the main character.
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