SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: Week 105: Django

[europe1]

NOTE to NON-MEMBERS: Interested in joining the SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB? Shoot me a PM for more info.

Here's a quick list of all movies watched by the SMC.

Week 105... alright folks... let's discuss another one of europe1's favorite films. Let's try to remain civil about this.

Our Director​

Sergio Corbucci

​

Corbucci was born in Rome.

He started his career by directing mostly low-budget sword and sandal movies. Among his first spaghetti westerns were the films Grand Canyon Massacre (1964) (which he co-directed under the pseudonym, Stanley Corbett with Albert Band), as well as Minnesota Clay (1965), his first solo directed spaghetti western. Corbucci's first commercial success was with the cult spaghetti western Django, starring Franco Nero, the leading man in many of his movies.[2]He would later collaborate with Franco Nero on two other spaghetti westerns, Il Mercenario or The Mercenary (a.k.a. A Professional Gun) (1968) - where Nero played Sergei Kowalski, a Polish mercenary and the film also starring Tony Musante, Jack Palance and Giovanna Ralli - as well as Compañeros (1970) a.k.a. Vamos a matar, Companeros, which also starred Tomas Milian and Jack Palance. The last film of the "Mexican Revolution" trilogy - The Mercenary and Compañeros being the first two in the installment - was What Am I Doing in the Middle of the Revolution? (1972).

After Django, Corbucci made many other spaghetti westerns, which made him the most successful Italian western director after Sergio Leone and one of Italy's most productive and prolific directors. His most famous of these pictures was The Great Silence (Il Grande Silenzio), a dark and gruesome western starring a mute action hero and a psychopathic bad guy. The film was banned in some countries for its excessive display of violence.

Corbucci also directed Navajo Joe (1966), starring Burt Reynolds as the title character, a Navajo Indian opposing a group of bandits that killed his tribe, as well as The Hellbenders (1966), and Johnny Oro (1966) a.k.a. Ringo and his Golden Pistol starring Mark Damon. Other spaghetti westerns he directed include Gli specialisti (Drop Them or I'll Shoot, 1969), La Banda J.S.: Cronaca criminale del Far West (Sonny and Jed, 1972), with Tomas Milian and The White the Yellow and the Black (1975), with Tomas Milian and Eli Wallach.

Our Star

​

Blue-eyed and well-built Italian actor in international cinema, Franco Nero, was a painting photographer when he was discovered as an actor by director John Huston. He has since appeared in more than 200 movies around the world, working with Europe's top directors, such as Luis Buñuel, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Claude Chabrol, Sergey Bondarchuk, Mihalis Kakogiannis, Elio Petri, Marco Bellocchio, Enzo G. Castellari, among many others.

Nero was born in Parma (Northern Italy), in the family of a strict police sergeant. His inclination for acting had already become obvious in his teenage years, when he began organizing and participating in student plays. After a short stint at a leading theater school, he moved to Rome, where he joined a small group of friends for the purpose of making documentaries. Still unsure of his ultimate vocation, he worked various jobs on the crew. He studied economics and trade in Milan University, and appeared in popular Italian photo-novels. This gave him a chance to gain a little role in Carlo Lizzani's La Celestina P... R... (1965).

A year later, the handsome face of Nero was noticed by Huston, who chose him for the role of "Abel" in "The Bible: In the Beginning..." (1966) (aka La Bibbia). But success came after he got the role of the lonely gunfighter, dragging a coffin, in one of the best spaghetti-westerns; Sergio Corbucci's Django (1966). Nero then filmed a few other westerns of that style as Ferdinando Baldi's Texas adios (1966) and Lucio Fulci's Massacre Time (1966).
​

Film Overview


Premise: A coffin-dragging gunslinger and a half-breed prostitute become embroiled in a bitter feud between a Klan of Southern racists and a band of Mexican Revolutionaries.




Budget: ? (an unknown, paltry sum)
Box Office: ₤1.026 billion (Italy Only)

​

Trivia
(courtesy of IMDB)
​

* The title "Django" is a reference to renowned jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, who had a crippled hand. Viewers at the time would have been aware of this allusion.​

​

* The film spawned hundreds of unofficial sequels. Some incorrectly--and unauthorized--had "Django" in the title, so as to cash in on the original. The film was so popular in Germany that almost every Franco Nero western there, bears the "Django" name.


* The graphic violent content of the film led to its being banned in several countries, and it was rejected by the UK until 1993. It was not rated in the US.


* The Major's men wear red scarves over their faces to hide the fact that, because so many extras were otherwise employed on other pictures in the area at the time, they were left with only the "ugliest" ones, who were deemed not menacing enough.


* Body Count: 180, including 79 kills from Franco Nero, seven from Eduardo Fajardo, five from José Bódalo and two from Loredana Nusciak.



Members: @shadow_priest_x @europe1 @MusterX @Scott Parker 27 @the muntjac @Cubo de Sangre @sickc0d3r @chickenluver @FrontNakedChoke @AndersonsFoot @Tufts

 

[europe1]

Alright... time to start talking about one of my favorite movies. I'll do this in the appropriate form... mega-posts covering various themes and subjects. I have 2 pre-written so we'll see how lazy I am about authoring the other two.

Visuals and Design

(Fun Fact: when they were filming this scene, the Director Sergio Corbucci told Franco Nero to "continue walking until I say stop". After Nero disappeared behind the low hill, Corbucci told the crew to pack up and drive off. They later went back to pick up Nero. Corbucci was a big fan of practical jokes)

This could perhaps be my favorite opening to any movie ever. You see a lone soldier hauling a coffin across a mud-matted hellscape, all alone while that awesome and melodramatic music is playing, giving us hints about his backstory. It's sets a mysterious and evocative tone that permeates through the rest of the movie. You really wonder what's in that coffin. I was quite gobsmacked when I first saw it and found out.

If there is one movie that could be called iconic, then it's Django

I just love the look of this film. It's striking in the extreme. The visuals and the designs are just at the pinnacle of the genre. Everything is coated in mud, it's practically a hellscape. The town looks like something out of a ghost story instead of a western! All the trees are gangly and dead. It's almost apocalyptic in it's desolation. This synergizes excellently with the really callous, downright sadistic violence that dominates this film (more on that in the following post). The almost ghostly visuals highlights and accentuates the ghastly violence and cruel skullduggery that goes on in the film, enchanting it through the atmosphere. Eastwood's Dollars Trilogy had a glint in it's eye -- this movie doesn't.

On a cinemographic level there is a ton of stuff lended from Sergio Leone. Corbucci especially adopted the use of extreme close-ups, but he uses long-shots more sparringly (one examples being when the Southeners attack the town). But otherwise there's an almost painting level of composition going on here.

To give an example of where I think Django's design works wonders -- look at the Southern gang. They all wear red scarfs or masks or other regalia. It gives them an almost cult-like invocation. Especially with the burning crosses and burning of race-traitors that they do almost like a ritual (borrowed from the KKK, obviously). Instead of being just a reguarly dressed band of cowboys, the have a menecing uniform like all good bad guys. It's really simple but it works (especially with the lack of red in other contexts of the film).

Fun fact: The decision to dress the Southeners in red came about because the production was so impoverished that they couldn't hire good-looking extra. They hired old people or bland-looking people and covered them in red masks. Then they figured out that this desicion would be evocative of the KKK, so they added all the lynching and burning-crosses elements to highlight this. Corbucci said that he picked the colour red to also invoke the specter of the inquisition (but this may be just re-rememberance on his part). Most of the decisions in Django was decided upon on the spot. It's really a shooting-from-the-hip kind of film. They didn't even start shooting with a script ready!

Django begins with a great visual -- and ends with a great visual. You have the bloodstained gun and withered crosses propped up in the foreground. Django is silouted against a blue sky, giving him an almost ethereal appearance. The music that was there in the begnining as well is now almsot cathartic in mood instead of mystifying as it was in the beginning.

 

[europe1]

Violence and Sadism

Django was an extremely violent film upon release. It was banned and censored in a hell of alot of countries. Today, the physical violence is obviously not as impactful as it was back then (especially with the lack of squids at this point -- something Peckinpah gleefully relished in his Westerns). However, while the physical violence doesn't hold up. The sheer sadism and callousness present in this film does hold up and does great work in establishing this films atmosphere.

Think about it. In this film, every bad group or individual is introduced in company of some gruesome display of sadism.

Take this scene for instance -- where we are introduced to Maria (an escaped prostitute) and the villainous gangs. Our first sight of the Mexicans is them viciously flogging her on some ropey bridge for trying to run away from them, brandishing her backside with lashes and torturous welts. All the while the bosses underlings are leering and smirking in leecherous excitement about what they're seeing. It's like Cubo was an extra in this movie or something!

Then the Mexicans are all shoot dead -- and we're introduced to these guys.

At first glance -- you'd think these guys were out to save her. They did just murder her torturers, after all. But nope! They just saved her because they wanted to burn her alive for being a "race traitor" and having run out of them previously. They saved her -- just so that they could kill her in an even slower and more horrific way.

In Django, wherever you turn, you're going to run into some horrific occurance of violence. It permuates the film.

Then we have the bosses.

Major Jackson is introduced sniping Mexicans who couldn't pay his "protection money" for sport! He lets the guy run all the way to the hills just becaue he wants to see if he can make the shoot. And his sidekick Ringo is a real ugly son-of-a-bitch who shoots his targets with a revolver just as he has dashed from the stockyard! And what happens then? The murdered man's sons run up to his corpse and cry out in lamentation!

Do you get what I mean about this film being sadistic? That it isn't all about physical violence? There was no practical need to show such horrific occurances. The film did it anyways just because that's how it rolls.

But hey! Maybe the Mexican Bandit-General is a more agreeable sort? Maybe he--

Nope! Mexican Bandit-General is even more visious than his counterpart! He's introduced cutting a guy's ear off and then feeding it to him -- guffawing like a fat bozo as the man has to eat his own ear! Talk about brutal man.

EDIT: Fun Fact: This is where Tarantino got the inspiration for the ear-slicing scene in Reservoir Dogs. He didn't steal everything in that movie from City on Fire!

This is a really sadistic flick. The ghostly and apocalyptic visuals work perfectly in tandem with this visciousness and callosuness.


Next mega-post, I think I'll write something about how this is a Spaghetti film, how it is iconoclastic towards Traditional Westerns and subverts many of its genre tropes and expectations (unless someone touches on that before me of course). And another post about the actors too, I think.

 

[chickenluver]

* The title "Django" is a reference to renowned jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, who had a crippled hand. Viewers at the time would have been aware of this allusion.

fucking mind blown. Django Reinhardt is my favorite Jazz guitarist. I never put two and two together.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

After three hours of trying to get the English subtitled blue-ray downloaded, success was had. And yes, it's so much better than the dubbed version (that made me quit after 10 minutes of it being unwatchable). Sorry for anyone who suffered through that shit version. You definitely weren't given the best opportunity to enjoy the film.

This was a fun movie. I'd put it between The Ritual and Southbound in terms of my enjoyment. There were some good plot twists. Was jazzed when he pulled that belt-fed out of the coffin. His pistol marksmanship was non-plausible, but all in good fun. Dude was a real dick though. I didn't much care what happened to him, but it was a fun ride nonetheless.

I had to wonder just how much Peckinpah borrowed from this film for The Wild Bunch. Django seemed to move a little faster but was less artsy.

 

[europe1]

Ah shit I forgot to mention in my nr 2 post!

EDIT: Fun Fact: This is where Tarantino got the inspiration for the ear-slicing scene in Reservoir Dogs. He didn't steal everything in that movie from City on Fire!

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

This is where Tarantino got the inspiration for the ear-slicing scene in Reservoir Dogs.

For sure?

 

[europe1]

For sure?

I've read it on several accounts.

The wikipedia page for Reservoir Dogs mentions it

and Sergio Corbucci's 1966 Spaghetti Western Django inspired the scene where a police officer is tortured in a chair.[7][8]

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

I've read it on several accounts.

The wikipedia page for Reservoir Dogs mentions it

So Res Dogs is part Japanese, part Italian.

Spoiler

And part cantaloupe.

 

[MusterX]

I love the way this film is put together and it may be because I love spaghetti westerns but I love westerns in general. For example, when the opening scene begins and we see Django dragging a coffin, the score matches this moment perfectly with the Django theme song even though we have had no lead in or experiences with the film or characters yet. I want to post some of the opening lyrics to that song because it really sets up the idea that this guy has nothing to lose. In prison we call that the mother fucker you don't mother fuckin mess with.

Django!

Django, have you always been alone?

Django!

Django, have you never loved again?
Love will live on, oh oh oh...
Life must go on, oh oh oh...
For you cannot spend your life regretting

Django!

Django, you must face another day

Django!

Django, now your love has gone away
Once you loved her, whoa-oh...
Now you've lost her, whoa-oh-oh-oh...
But you've lost her forever, Django

Usually when we watch a film that @europe1 really likes he blows it out with walls of text that will try to keep out any invaders so its hard to really add to his excellent thoughts on these select films.

@europe1 what is the deal with Italians making some of the most awesome westerns? What is their obsession with the wild west? What a strange time in American history and it only lasted really about 20 years, shorter than that if you ask some historians. The thing about spaghetti westerns is they almost always provide a few laughs that crack me up. Here is an example. When Maria is being whipped one of the Mexicans laughs in a hilarious way. He just loves seeing her get whipped.

Timestamped, just watch for 20 seconds. The entire film is available on YouTube so its not a violation to post it here. This is the dubbed version but I'm just using it for hilarity.



In the first 8 minutes of the film we learn so much with so little said. Django is hauling a coffin, the Django theme song sets a somber mood of a man who has had a hard time in life, and we see two warring factions, one Mexican revolutionaries and the other racist southern white men who still don't like Yankees. All in 8 minutes. Its a masterful set up to explain a lot in a short period of time with almost no dialogue. Its not quite on the level of the opening scene of Once Upon a Time in the West but its a damn good first 8 minutes.

Anyway, I really like this movie and I could say more but I'll save it for other posts rather than nuke the thread with another wall of text.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

As a gun dude, I wish they'd have used something real or at least made up something less fake.

• The belt has bullets still in the cartridges on both sides.
• It's not in a position that could actually feed.
• In a Gatling gun the barrels would just be around the perimeter.
• In a Gatling the barrels spin and I didn't see that spinning.
• His hands don't seem to be in position to fire.

Still, it's always fun to see homies mowed down by machine guns in westerns.





Movie was all downhill after that.

 

[MusterX]

Also, what is the deal with Westerns and whores? It seems like its a rule that if you are going to make a Western then it must contain at minimum, 1 good guy, 1 bad guy, 2 opposing factions, and at least 1 whore house. I'm not complaining but it seems like there was a lot of whores in the wild west.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Also, what is the deal with Westerns and whores? It seems like its a rule that if you are going to make a Western then it must contain at minimum, 1 good guy, 1 bad guy, 2 opposing factions, and at least 1 whore house. I'm not complaining but it seems like there was a lot of whores in the wild west.

What women would be out there other than whores and wives?

 

[MusterX]

What women would be out there other than whores and wives?

Its a rough line of work, sometimes you get a black eye.

 

[europe1]

the score matches this moment perfectly with the Django theme song even though we have had no lead in or experiences with the film or characters yet.

Yeah. I really love that theme song. It works impeccable with the film.

When Maria is being whipped one of the Mexicans laughs in a hilarious way. He just loves seeing her get whipped.

@europe1 what is the deal with Italians making some of the most awesome westerns? What is their obsession with the wild west? What a strange time in American history and it only lasted really about 20 years, shorter than that if you ask some historians.

That's a huge question, obviously.

One contribution were -- simply -- Mussolini and the Fascists. During WW2, there was an embargo on American films. However, when the embargo was broken, several decades of great American movies where suddenly bombarded onto Italian cinemas. So Italians got to see a whole boatload of the best American westerns in a very short timespan. The future directors who would grow up and make these Spaghetti Western movies -- like Sergio Leone, Sergio Courbucci, Sergio Solima -- all watches these movies in their youths. There was an concertration effect, basically. While in America, people watches all the western as they came out -- in Italy, they watched all the best westerns in a relatively short spann of years.

So this effect created a lot of Italian Western fans. However, while they adamantly loved the genre and its elemental trappings, they were also critical of it. There was basically a cultural difference at work that colour their perspective and assessement of it.

Contrary to popular belief, there were European Westerns looong before Sergio Leone got together with Clint Eastwood. But they all uniformally sucked (except Lemonade Joe... Lemonade Joe is fucking hysterical). Why did they suck? Because they slavishly copied the American formula. They tried to copy-paste American films but, naturally, they could beat the Americans by their own playing rules. The director of this movie, Sergio Corbucci, even made one of them, Minnesota Clay.

What Sergio Leone did -- was to make Westerns after a Italian sensibility. He didn't want to copy the American style but to create his own sub-group of Westerns. This was the 60's after all. Reforming and recreating things were in fashion. American westerns were also being remade by people like Peckinpah. Other directors picked up on this trend and followed.

So here you have a situation with a bunch of directors who grew up watching westerns -- were very knowlagable about the genre -- yet had a mission to see it changed. That a recipe for a pretty dope movement right there.

Corbucci was one of the most ardent disciples of this movement. He said that he deliberately made Django to be a very iconoclastic western. Some examples of how this is a Spaghetti Western as oppose to an Traditional American western:

* Django doesn't ride into town. American cowboys always had horses. Seeing him walk communicates the drudgery and lonesomeness of his situation. Horses signify a sense of freedom -- of being able to travel freely around the frontiers. That's not what Django is about.
​

* All the design and costuming is very rugged, worn and lived-in. There is a gritty -- yet also evocative -- quality to the production. In comparison, here is a picture from the 1971 John Wayne movie Big Jake (a fairly good film actually), one of the last Traditional Westerns. Notice how prim and straight-laced the clothing is. It's a more classical cowboy design, utilitarian. In Django, there is dirt and grime everywhere. People look more rugged. It gives the film and entierly different feel. There is also a greater attention to detail and ornateness to the production.​

* There is also a more "European and Catholic" sensebility towards morality in Spaghetti films. Characters are cruel and sadistic, almost like animals. However, as we find out, even Django's motivations arn't pure. It's revealed that he wants to escape off with the gold. He isn't the moralistic hero that we first assume him to be. You can also see this in Eastwood's films, where he is a lot more morally ambigious.
Sure you could see ambigiously moral characters in classical Hollywood Westerns. Like, say, the really good The Naked Spurr. But in American Westerns, the entire point of the film was to "overcome" this ambiguity, make the characters wholesome again. In Eastwood's films, there is no "straightening-out" process at all to be had. And in Django, Nero's murky motives is introduced as if the film had just pulled the rug from straight under us. Suddenly he's in-league with the callous Mexicans and really onlt wants a big pot of gold, shooting up the bartenders bar and acting cold-hearted towards his love-interest. It's that Catholic doctrine of everyone being a sinner. There is moral weakness and evil within him. He even kills Federales who seem to be completely innocent. Nero only redeams himself after a whole lot of pain, being crippled, seeing his plans thwarted, and other people dying. You didn't see such harshness before.

* Another point is the focus on music. Italy has a superb music industry. They exploited that fact ruthlessly. So in Spaghetti Westerns, the soundtrack is much more integrated with the movie than it was in American films.

* Spaghetti pictures were also plain more violent and brutal than American's were. John Wayne famously refused to shoot an character in the back, even though it was just a film. Hollywood westerns had to portray a straight-laced morality for its heroes and its use of violence. The Italians went operatic with their violence just as they did with their music and production design (and pretty much everything else I suppose). They made violence a spectable. The violence became a show in-and-of-itself, rather than just something that had to be present in the story. Watch a traditional Western like Rio Bravo. It's a fantastic movie -- one of the best Westerns ever -- but it's use of violence is rather uncreative and stock at its final shootout. Stand behind some cover and shoot at the bad guys standing behind another piece of cover. The Italians made violence into a show that you could have fun with.

EDIT: * Another iconoclastic element is how this movie completely does away with tropes like Cowboys and Indians. There are none to be found in Django (just like in Eastwoods movies). Instead the enemies are more general. There is a war-like atmosphere between the gangs, it isn't just cattle rustling. The Southern gangs racism is more pointedly called out. You didn't see that in traditional Westerns.

* I'm sure there is more... but my fingers hurt...

​

​

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Its a rough line of work, sometimes you get a black eye.

Wifin' or whorin'?

 

[MusterX]

Wifin' or whorin'?

LOL, both.

 

[europe1]

I had to wonder just how much Peckinpah borrowed from this film for The Wild Bunch. Django seemed to move a little faster but was less artsy.

I've never seen Peckinpah refeer to Django or any other Spaghetti Western to be honest. They happened waaaay after his formative years. He had even directed Westerns when the Spaghetti trend started. From what I've read, Peckinpah's brutal, revisionist take on the Westerns were mainly influenced by two things.

* The actual cowboys he knew in his youths. Let's just say... they were pretty different from what you saw in movies. Rough-handed, foul-mouthed hard-drinking laborers who acted nothing like John Wayne. There was a huge dissperance between what he saw in movies and what he saw in reality. That affected him.

* The Vietnam war. Peckinpah hated it. He saw the ruthless violence going on in it and he wanted to transport that to be big screen. In a classical Western like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (also with John Wayne), the cavalry can ride into an Indian camp and subdue the population without any big massacre happening, no women or children are killed. Peckinpah knew that all of that was a big pile of bullshit. It never happens like that, not in the old Western, not in Modern Warefare. So when Peckinpah directed a battle scene, he made sure there was destruction and collateral damage comming out the ass! Just like in Vietnam. When Peckinpah made a battle-scene, EVERYONE DIED! People shoot women and children in the back as they ran away.

Plus... dude was just obsessed with violence. Pretty darn weird how he was such a peace-loving liberal in real life.

 

[MusterX]

Yeah. I really love that theme song. It works impeccable with the film.

That's a huge question, obviously.

One contribution were -- simply -- Mussolini and the Fascists. During WW2, there was an embargo on American films. However, when the embargo was broken, several decades of great American movies where suddenly bombarded onto Italian cinemas. So Italians got to see a whole boatload of the best American westerns in a very short timespan. The future directors who would grow up and make these Spaghetti Western movies -- like Sergio Leone, Sergio Courbucci, Sergio Solima -- all watches these movies in their youths. There was an concertration effect, basically. While in America, people watches all the western as they came out -- in Italy, they watched all the best westerns in a relatively short spann of years.

So this effect created a lot of Italian Western fans. However, while they adamantly loved the genre and its elemental trappings, they were also critical of it. There was basically a cultural difference at work that colour their perspective and assessement of it.

Contrary to popular belief, there were European Westerns looong before Sergio Leone got together with Clint Eastwood. But they all uniformally sucked (except Lemonade Joe... Lemonade Joe is fucking hysterical). Why did they suck? Because they slavishly copied the American formula. They tried to copy-paste American films but, naturally, they could beat the Americans by their own playing rules. The director of this movie, Sergio Corbucci, even made one of them, Minnesota Clay.

What Sergio Leone did -- was to make Westerns after a Italian sensibility. He didn't want to copy the American style but to create his own sub-group of Westerns. This was the 60's after all. Reforming and recreating things were in fashion. American westerns were also being remade by people like Peckinpah. Other directors picked up on this trend and followed.

So here you have a situation with a bunch of directors who grew up watching westerns -- were very knowlagable about the genre -- yet had a mission to see it changed. That a recipe for a pretty dope movement right there.

Corbucci was one of the most ardent disciples of this movement. He said that he deliberately made Django to be a very iconoclastic western. Some examples of how this is a Spaghetti Western as oppose to an Traditional American western:

* Django doesn't ride into town. American cowboys always had horses. Seeing him walk communicates the drudgery and lonesomeness of his situation. Horses signify a sense of freedom -- of being able to travel freely around the frontiers. That's not what Django is about.
​

* All the design and costuming is very rugged, worn and lived-in. There is a gritty -- yet also evocative -- quality to the production. In comparison, here is a picture from the 1971 John Wayne movie Big Jake (a fairly good film actually), one of the last Traditional Westerns. Notice how prim and straight-laced the clothing is. It's a more classical cowboy design, utilitarian. In Django, there is dirt and grime everywhere. People look more rugged. It gives the film and entierly different feel. There is also a greater attention to detail and ornateness to the production.​

* There is also a more "European and Catholic" sensebility towards morality in Spaghetti films. Characters are cruel and sadistic, almost like animals. However, as we find out, even Django's motivations arn't pure. It's revealed that he wants to escape off with the gold. He isn't the moralistic hero that we first assume him to be. You can also see this in Eastwood's films, where he is a lot more morally ambigious.
Sure you could see ambigiously moral characters in classical Hollywood Westerns. Like, say, the really good The Naked Spurr. But in American Westerns, the entire point of the film was to "overcome" this ambiguity, make the characters wholesome again. In Eastwood's films, there is no "straightening-out" process at all to be had. And in Django, Nero's murky motives is introduced as if the film had just pulled the rug from straight under us. Suddenly he's in-league with the callous Mexicans and really wants a big pot of gold. It's that Catholic doctrine of everyone being a sinner. There is moral weakness within him. He even kills Federales who seem to be completely innocent. Nero only redeams himself after a whole lot of pain, being crippled, seeing his plans thwarted, and other people dying. You didn't see such harshness before.

* Another point is the focus on music. Italy has a superb music industry. They exploited that fact ruthlessly. So in Spaghetti Westerns, the soundtrack is much more integrated with the movie than it was in American films.

* Spaghetti pictures were also plain more violent and brutal than American's were. John Wayne famously refused to shoot an character in the back, even though it was just a film. Hollywood westerns had to portray a straight-laced morality for its heroes and its use of violence. The Italians went operatic with their violence just as they did with their music and production design (and pretty much everything else I suppose). They made violence a spectable. The violence became a show in-and-of-itself, rather than just something that had to be present in the story. Watch a traditional Western like Rio Bravo. It's a fantastic movie -- one of the best Westerns ever -- but it's use of violence is rather uncreative and stock at its final shootout. Stand behind some cover and shoot at the bad guys standing behind another piece of cover. The Italians made violence into a show that you could have fun with.

* I'm sure there is more... but my fingers hurt...

​

​

Wow, take it easy bro, lets all just stay calm....I asked you about Italian Westerns and you were ready to draw on that shit.

That's awesome. I don't know if you just knew all that or looked it up but it really puts some stuff into perspective. I grew up watching Westerns and Spaghetti Westerns and just loved them as a kid. I can remember watching My Name is Nobody and just thinking it was awesome.

In fact, Terence Hill is that sort of unknown, forgotten Western guy that provided some seriously great moments.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

I've never seen Peckinpah refeer to Django or any other Spaghetti Western to be honest.

Kinda felt similar to me. If he never saw Django then either I'm on crack or it's a coincidence.