Spaghetti Westerns
Which is the cheesiest? The answer is pretty obvious, but let’s take a
close
look. "Spaghetti Westerns," as their called, are a genre of western
films,
that have been created or filmed in Italy and are meant to portray the
"Wild
West" of America. "Macaroni Westerns," as I’ll call them, make up
the
traditional western genre, made in the United States. Let’s take a look
at the
similarities and differences of these genres, and at two films in
particular
that represent each genre; The Good the Bad and the Ugly(1966) and
Rio
Bravo(1959), which most critics will agree, are great examples of
each genre.
Let’s start with the most obvious aspect that differs in the
two genres.
"Macaroni Westerns" are the cheesiest. These films have are
pure cheese. I
can barely sit through one of them. They have the typical
characters; the hero(s),
the bad guy(s), the fair maiden, and the quirky
sidekick(s). These characters
spout out cheesy lines, demonstrating how good
or how bad they are, but they
language always remains basically clean. In the
Spaghetti Westerns, the language
is a lot more diverse(lots of cussing). This
is because each of these genres
play to a different audience. The "Macaroni
Westerns" are family films. They
present right, wrong, and have many morals
played out, such as, "no matter how
many bad people are trying to kill you,
you can take them all on if you wear a
badge and talk like John Wayne." The
"Macaroni Westerns" were typically
family movies, because it was typical
Hollywood(serving to the masses, whatever
sells big). Violence, profanity,
and not having blatantly evil and good
characters, wasn’t selling at the
time, so we got "Macaroni." The
"Spaghetti Westerns," on the other hand,
were not trying to please
everybody.(just the Italian roughnecks) Sure, these
westerns took a lot from the
traditional westerns, but they break away from
the traditional "Macaroni
Westerns" in many ways.(which we shall soon
see) The "Spaghetti Westerns"
play to a more liberal audience. They had a lot
more creative liberty. Let’s
take a look at the aforementioned films in terms
of plot, framing, editing,
sound and cinematography. The plot in Rio Bravo is
your typical American
western. It is a "conflict between civilized order and
the lawless
frontier."(Bordwell/Thompson p.56) We have our heros and bad guys
laid out
before us in black and white. "Colorado" is the typical hero who
tries to
stay out of the conflict and then eventually sides with civilized
order.
"Dude" is another hero who fallows the same path. Our bad guys are
made
obvious from the early moments of the film by means of a murder. There
isn’t
much to wonder about. In The Good the Bad and the Ugly, everything
isn’t laid
out for us from the beginning. Our "good guy" isn’t revealed till
quite a
ways into the film. In this film, we get a pretty good idea who the
worst guy
is, but we are left to constantly wonder where one of the main
characters
stands, or if he will eventually become "good." We are forced to
study each
character more as they develop, to know who they are. In Rio
Bravo, you don’t
give it a second thought. Rio Bravo introduces the plot
motivation at the very
beginning. The bad guy is in jail, and the heros have
to keep him there till the
marshal arrives. In The Good the Bad and the Ugly,
the motivation is revealed as
the 200,000 dollars, but most of the characters
don’t know about it for half
the film. This film seems to stretch things out
like that. Now let’s take a
look at the framing. In Rio Bravo, the framing
seems to be very simple. The main
character is always in the center of the
frame unless another character is
coming into the frame. In The Good the Bad
and the Ugly, there is much more use
of set framing. Many scenes and
sequences are framed through window, alleys and
doorways. This type of
framing seems to pull you into the film much more. It
creates framing in the
same way that we frame things in the real world. Also, in
The Good the
Bad and the Ugly, there are many more close ups than Rio Bravo, as
well as
many extreme close ups that let you catch small eye and facial
movements.
Next let’s discuss editing. The Good the Bad and the Ugly have, in
general,
much longer shots than Rio Bravo does. These extremely long shots are
put
together into extremely long scenes; again, much longer than Rio Bravo.
Both
of these films use great amounts of continuity editing. That’s about as
far as
Rio Bravo goes. The Good the Bad and the Ugly, goes much further
with it’s use
of graphic editing. One sees graphic matches again and again in
this film. One
great use of graphic matching occurs when a character points
his gun towards the
camera, so that we stare down the barrel, then the film
cuts to a cannon’s
barrel facing us and firing directly at us. Another great
example would be the
match between the horses legs on the street and the
thugs legs as they walk down
the hall toward one of our main characters. When
we hear the horses legs stop,
we see the thugs legs stop. This helps the
audience make the connection that the
thugs only move when there is noise to
cover the sound of their steps. Another
piece of editing that we should take
a look at are the fades. Fade in’s and
Fad out’s are very typical in
westerns, and we see them in both of these
western genres, although there are
significantly less fades in The Good the Bad
and The Ugly, than in Rio Bravo.
Sound, and more specifically, music, is very
important for the overall feel
of the film. In Rio Bravo, we have traditional
country cheese music,
including the ol’ sing-a-long cliche’. This is perfect
for the cheese that we
see and hear from the characters. The music in The Good
the Bad and the Ugly
is much different. It is much more dramatic and
orchestrated. It seems like
more timeless music. An exception would be the theme
music that appears when
something "cool" is about to or currently happening.
These eerie
whistle-like sounds cut through everything and let us know when
something
important is happening. Let’s now move to lighting. This is an area
where we
see more major differences between the two films. Rio Bravo uses
the
traditional three light system of character lighting. There is the key
light,
the fill light and the back light. This creates full and soft features
for the
characters. The Good the Bad and The Ugly is a far throw from this
style. In
most of the scenes there is only one major light source.(key light)
There is
usually a strong key light, no back light, and very little, if any,
fill light.
This makes for dark shadows and sharp features. This creates
very dramatic
lighting for the scenes. Everything seems more intense and
powerful. Let’s not
forget Cinematography. How about some generalizations.
Many of the shots from
The Good the Bad and the Ugly have a very deep
depth of focus compared to a much
more shallow depth of focus in Rio Bravo.
There are also much deeper zooms in
The Good the Bad and the Ugly than in
Rio Bravo. There are also many cliches
that we need to discuss. First of all,
let’s talk about the names and
nick-names. In Rio Bravo, all of the heros
have "clever" little names. We
have Chance, Colorado, Dude, and Stumpy. We
see these type of names show up in
The Good the Bad and the Ugly. In this
film we have, Blondie, Angel Eyes, and
Shorty(not present very long).
Another cliche is the "bad guy gets shot and
falls from high above the ground
to his death." In both films we see this play
true as bad guys fall from
rafters and buildings.