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Position: 37°01’10.6″N 2°25’54.7″W
Even if you’re 30 years younger than any of the American presidential candidates, you should have heard of Spaghetti Westerns. Just as the curtain fell on Hollywood’s long, loving relationship with the western, Europeans swooped in and picked up where America left off. Given the huge numbers of émigrés from Europe to North America, it’s not surprising that the old countries retain a fascination for the genre. From German fiction and Italian cinemas to the Belgian/French Lucky Luke comics, gunslingers and bar girls were, and are, hugely popular art forms.
Between 1960 and the mid-1970s, Europe produced over 500 westerns. Almost all of which stayed on the right side of the Atlantic. The late Sergio Leone with his sweeping, operatic style remains the only director to find major financial success in America. Auteur Quentin Tarantino claims his favorite movie of all time is Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. (This blog has referenced that movie, obliquely, in the past.) Sergio Corbucci’s grindhouse classic Django also strongly influenced a young Tarantino. For me, though, Leone’s epic Once Upon a Time in the West is his crowning achievement. It is meticulous filmmaking. Each shot framed so precisely, so beautifully, you almost forget about the sparse script entirely. But not, of course, Claudia Cardinale.
Shooting
While many of the movies were produced in Italy, the deserts of Tabernas in southeastern Spain served as a primary shooting location (Ugh! – ed.). Thanks to the dry climate, a couple of the old studios and their rickety sets survive. The surrounding landscape is plainly recognizable from many of the best films of that era, including Lawrence of Arabia, Patton, and Cleopatra. Even part of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) was filmed nearby.
During our visit to Oasys Mini Hollywood about a month ago we enjoyed a short wild west stunt show. In truth, the actors were much better and the stunts more energetic than most Euro-westerns from the 1960s.
These days, the myth of the wild west is all about Silicon Valley and social media startups. Still, the temptation to pick up a six-shooter and play cowboys and Indians runs deep for baby boomers. So is the lure of filmmaking, as you will see below. Plagiarized in the traditional Spaghetti Western fashion, our movie was shot entirely on location, with all post-production completed at AFS, Aleta Floating Studios.
Video
