10,000 Ways to Die

Alex Cox

Kamera Books (2009)

Reviewer: Bob Estreich

Subtitled “A Director’s Take on the Spaghetti Western”, this book takes us through a genre that was widely regarded as a joke in the film industry but that the public came to love. For some reason the Western as presented by American director John Ford was very popular in Europe. The first Italian western dates back to the silent era. Possibly it was the idea of wide open unclaimed spaces that appealed to overcrowded Europeans, or possibly the idea that there was a place for rugged individualism. After World War 2 it looked like the American western had just about had its day but the potential European market appealed to Italian filmmakers and they kept on producing films. They also got better at them and began to make more use of the opportunities of Spanish and Yugoslav scenery. They had cheap production costs, plenty of low paid extras, good musicians and technicians, and dreadful scriptwriters. What more could you want to make low-budget westerns? A plot, for starters.

The early post-war spaghetti westerns, a derogatory term coined by the U.S. film industry and critics, were widely held to be just cheap knockoffs of basic American plotlines. Alex Cox points out that this was far from the truth. In fact the early inspiration for one plot came from an unlikely source – Japan. Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961) was the inspiration for Sergio Leone’s first major western, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), and a number of other films. “Inspiration” may be the wrong word – he took Kurosawa’s storyline almost action by action and transferred it to a Western environment. The two directors had words about this. Kurosawa in turn probably got his inspiration from an American author, Dashiel Hammett (author of stories like the Maltese Falcon). Leone also claimed Hammett as his inspiration but the stories are too close for this to be plausible.

Sergio Corbucci, who was recognized as the co-creator of the modern spaghetti western genre with Leone, based much of his film Minnesota Clay (also 1964) on a Marlon Brando western, One Eyed Jacks. Other producers, while not so obvious in their plagiarism, followed basic themes like revenge, Mexican bandits and, of course, the showdown. There was an unwritten agreement in the U.S. that in a gunfight the shooter and the victim would not be shown in the same shot. The spaghetti western simply ignored this convention and as a result tended to look more realistic. Scenes of pain and cruelty were not as glossed over, either.

Other features that aided realism included the actors themselves. Not for them the clean, freshly laundered look of a John Ford hero. If an actor had just ridden into town after a few days in the saddle he looked dusty, scruffy, sweaty and unshaved. Leone particularly developed the closeup eyeball-and-nostril shot that showed this to perfection, if that’s the right word. In a showdown, particularly, the measured zooming in added to the tension better than a conventional American long shot could do. Fistful of Dollars featured a number of closeups of Tuco’s nostrils and badly shaven face and somehow it only made him look more evil. With Lee van Cleef it was the closeups of his eyes that made him look menacing

The scenery and sets also seemed more realistic somehow even though they were halfway around the world from the wild west. Paint was used sparingly on a set. This gave a town a dilapidated weatherbeaten look that perfectly suited the dry, dusty Spanish scenery.

The Italian version of the genre worked well with audiences. They did well in Europe and with the release of A Fistful of Dollars even the Americans took notice. The genre arguably reached its worldwide peak with The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and its follow-ups of the late 1960s. Another popular series played more for laughs was the Trinity series, with its heavy reliance on slapstick-style humour.

Cox’s book is more than three quarters taken up by a detailed filmography of the genre. The amount of data is impressive. Many films were issued under different names and many actors used both their Italian or Spanish names or an English-sounding screen name. Even the producers and directors did this. He has tracked down as many of these as possible and most of the alternate titles.

It is a valuable reference for collectors and movie lovers alike.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No.1 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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