Jerodmac's Thoughts on Stuff

Sergio Leone and the Spaghetti Westerns

Last night I happen to catch 'A Fistful of Dollars' for what has to be the 30th time at least. Leone's Man with No Name trilogy is one of my guilty pleasures. I can't help watching these movies over and over again. There is something about those slow time-streching moments before a gunfight and the way that nothing in these movies are really 'bleached white' clean that just draws me in. And I don't know if there has ever been music scores that interacted so much with the on-screen action. Add all of that to the crazy twitching eye close-ups and a cigar-chewing Eastwood, and you have some very interesting movies. Sure, I know that these films will never be high art, but as time goes on, we have seen them challenge and inspire today's action film makers. In the world of blinding speed in action movies, I like the fact that Leone was so slow at times. Sometimes painfully slow. (In The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, how long is he going to keep clipping back and forth between the three characters eyes before the final duel? It is slow by today's standards, but it is a great tension builder.) But when Leone does let the action fly, it is just as fast and raw as new movies. Woo, Rodriguez and maybe even Tarantino owe at least some debt to Sergio Leone for writing the early definition for 'gritty'. Here are a few sites discussing Spaghetti Westerns and Sergio Leone. Check out these sites and the next time these movies run across your tv watch closely.

~UPDATE (12/19)
Last night I watched A Fistful of Dynamite, with James Coburn. Definitely more political and less 'dirty' than the trilogy, but a good show none the less.