Flipside presents How The West Was Weird

Forget those sleep-inducing, Sunday afternoon westerns, The Flipside are hosting something a little more way out in October at London's BFI - How The West Was Weird.

You see, the Old West was really a dark place, a lonely place and a violent place - something not forgotten by a select bunch of directors. And from Sunday 7th October, you can see how the west really was won. Read on for the season details...

The Great Silence (Il Grande Silenzio)
Aka The Big Silence
Italy - France 1968
Dir Sergio Corbucci
English Language Version 101 mins

Stark, bleak and enigmatic, this legendary Italian film is an eye-opening antidote to the Hollywood western mythos. Mysterious mute bounty hunter Silence searches the snowy mountain wastes for crazed killer Tigrero, essayed with gusto by the brilliant Klaus Kinski, to the accompaniment of one of Morricone's most hauntingly memorable scores.
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It Ain't City Music
USA 1973 Dir Tom Davenport 15 mins
A revealing portrait of the National Country Music Contest, Virginia, filled with raw performances - and that's just the spectators - for the camera.

Thurs 11th Oct 18:00 NFT1
Sun 14th Oct 20:30 NFT3

DVD Review: Once Upon a Time in Italy - The Spaghetti Western Collection (A Bullet for the General / Companeros / Four of the Apocalypse / Keoma / Texas Adios)

There may be no such thing as a definitive Spag-Western boxset out right now...unless you consider the Sergio Leone Anthology as such; then again, it's solely Leone, whom despite his general awesomeness isn't representative of the genre as a whole.

Anchor Bay's Once Upon a Time in Italy collection (released in 2004) of 5 Italo-westerns isn't "definitive" by far. It is, however, terribly entertaining and gives viewers a good idea of the broad scope the spaghetti-western reached back in its days of glory.

The 5 films are: Damiano Damiani's A Bullet for the General (better know as El Chuncho, Quien Sabe?); Sergio Corbucci's Vamos a Matar, Compañeros; Lucio Fulci's Four of the Apocalypse; Enzo Castellari's Keoma; and Ferdinando Baldi's Texas Adios.

DVD Review: The Great Silence (1968)

Thinking of the great spaghetti western directors of all time, the three Sergios (Leone, Sollima, Corbucci) always pop up. The latter of the three is at the helm of The Great Silence -- one of the best westerns, Italian or otherwise.

What makes Il Grande Silenzio so memorable, refreshing, and rewarding is the unexpected shock value Sergio Corbucci provides the viewer through his refutation of the most essential spag-western elements which we're most familiar with. In a remote, snow-covered Utah village, vicious bounty killers are massacring at whim, mostly innocent "bandits" and local pariahs (apparently Mormons!), in order to collect loot and appease the caprice of the corrupt banker ruling the area.

Fittingly, who better to play the sadistic, self-satisfied leader of the brutal bounty hunters, Loco, than Klaus Kinksi? Fans of Italo-westerns will also love the casting of perennials Luigi Pistilli and Mario Brega (of Sergio Leone fame), as the aforementioned money-grubbing banker and his heavy set, sausage-eating henchman, respectively. While chaos reigns completely, a widow (Vonetta McGee, from the wonderfully anti-PC The Eiger Sanction), whose husband has been gunned down by Loco, calls on justice -- in the form of "Silence" (Jean-Louis Trinitgant), a mute who avenges wrongdoing and has, of course, the reputation of being the fastest and deadliest shot in all of Utah.

Django (1966)

Traditional westerns were typically sedate affairs, with the odd bar fight a spot of gun slinging and the corrupt sheriff the only things that made the west wild. But all that changed in the 1960s with the spaghetti western, which took the tired old format into grittier, more violent territory - and none more gritty than Sergio Corbucci's Django.

And it's violent - so violent that it was banned in numerous countries because of the never-ending body count. But it's certainly entertaining. Franco Nero is Django, a fast gun dragging a coffin - for reasons that become evident during the movie. He walks into perhaps the most stench-ridden town ever to hit the movie screen, held together by mud and decay - and very soon, several piles of dead bodies.

Cult Clip: A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

On Sunday Feb. 25th, the great Italian composer Ennio Morricone will be receiving an Honorary Oscar at this year's Academy Award ceremony to celebrate his contributions to the art of film music. In the sixties Morricone first made a name for himself by scoring some of the greatest spaghetti westerns produced in Italy. Morricone was a classmate of director Sergio Leone’s and when Leone hired Morricone to score his first western, cinematic history was made.

The first film Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone worked on together was A Fistful of Dollars (Per un pugno di dollari) made in 1964. The movie starred a very young Clint Eastwood as "The Man With the No Name" in a role that would define his career for a decade.

Both Clint Eastwood and Ennio Morricone have come a long way since their spaghetti western beginnings, but here’s the trailer from the very first movie they worked on together with director Sergio Leone, A Fistful of Dollars.

- Kimberly Lindbergs

Cult clip: Django (1966)

Arguably, the most influential of all spaghetti westerns, Sergio Corbucci's Django is more gritty and bloody than the better-known Sergio Leone flicks and a film responsible for over 30 spin-offs (though only one was an officially sanctioned sequel).

Like Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, Django is a loose remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, with Django (Franco Nero) heading for a town wiped out by clashes between the Mexicans and a racist group of Civil War stragglers, playing both parties off against each other for his own gain. And all the time dragging behind him a large pine coffin.

If that sounds confusing, check out the trailer for a flavour of this genuine cult classic.