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Seraphim Falls
The rise and fall of the
Hollywood entered the cultural revolution distanced itself from the Western genre, Italian
Western
of the 60s and thus studios lost interest in studios started to fund a more violent, gritty and
By the early 1960s the Western film had begun
budgeting such generic ‘fast-shootin’ and hootin’- stylish kind of Western, light years away from
to evolve rather rapidly. The success of the genre
tootin’ cowboy’s-versus-Indian action’ pieces. the colourful, gung-ho John Ford movie starring
during the 1940s and 50s with such glorious
However, while the Western may have showed the famously patriotic John Wayne. The central
pictures as Red River (1948,) Fort Apache (1948,)
signs of slowing down, obvious traits of the genre figure in this short-lived period was Sergio
began to appear in such important American Leone whose Man With No Name trilogy starring
The Searchers (1956) and Rio Bravo (1959) had
films as Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Easy Clint Eastwood used all sorts of unique filmic
been marginalised by a more politically aware
Rider (1969); the esteemed American film critic techniques that are still imitated today, perhaps
type of American film instigated by the social
Jonathan Rosenbaum referred to those films as most famously in the films of Quentin Tarantino.
and political context of the era; including the
‘acid Westerns.’ American directors expressed Clearly there was still a thirst for the Western;
influence and effects of feminism, civil rights
themselves through different genres which and Italian studios exploited the idea by making
and the Vietnam War. However, up-and-coming
recycled characteristics of the Western, albeit in films very cheaply in Spain and on the American-
US filmmakers were especially inspired by the
disguise. Indeed films like Dennis Hopper’s Easy Mexico boarder which looked similar to the
Nouvelle Vague in France, led by iconic directors
Rider were made by a generation of cinephiles American Wild West.
such as François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, Jean-
raised on a diet of John Ford and John Wayne
Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Jacques
films such as Stagecoach (1939) and She Wore A
The hidden Western
Rivette. The 1960s emphatically proved America’s
Yellow Ribbon (1949).
The non-American Spaghetti Western was
capacity for change and, like the low-budget perhaps the most noticeable Western variation
Science-Fiction films of the post-war years, the The Spaghetti Western to grow out of the 1960s. Yet as cinema moved
Western – once the most successful and revered The Spaghetti Western is important to this quicker than the Starship Enterprise through
of genres – had moved on. article because in the 1960s when Hollywood the 1970s, conventions of the genre began to
english and media centre | February 2008 | MediaMagazine 63
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