Tag: Western
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Duck, You Sucker! Sergio Leone’s belief in friendship
Few directors are as consistent and determined in sticking to the theme of friendship throughout their filmography as Sergio Leone was. The Italian filmmaker behind such classics like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Once Upon a Time in America was always – no matter what – a great believer in the power…
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The real-life tragedy of John Huston’s Misfits
Few movies can reflect and predict – without knowing, of course – the real-life tragedy of the people involved in their making as accurately as John Huston’s off-beat and fatalistic film from 1961, The Misfits, starring Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter and Eli Wallach. Huston’s film is drenched in the tragic fate…
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Holy Smoke: The power dynamics of Jane Campion
Given the overwhelming success of Jane Campion’s latest movie, The Power of the Dog, which through its world-wide Netflix release managed to find its way into the mainstream and earn 12 Oscar nominations, I decided to look back on what is arguably Campion’s least known work, Holy Smoke; a real oddity in a director’s filmography…
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High Noon: Why We Need Unconventional Heroes
There are movies that make history, and then there are movies that are history. Over the last century, few movies have reflected the era they were made in as vividly as Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon did back in 1952. Upon its initial release, the seemingly simple story of a small town sheriff having to confront…
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Musica, Maestro: Remembering Ennio Morricone
We find ourselves today, a few hours after Morricone’s passing, stripped of the presence of a man who was capable of amplifying emotions like no other. Having composed film music for over 60 years, Morricone leaves us with a catalog not of films, but emotions. Rarely have I felt so connected to someone who, like…
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How the West Was Won by Clint
There have been numerous articles and reviews that have tackled the obscurity and the powerful kick of Clint Eastwood’s 1992 Western, Unforgiven. Countless film critics and film scholars have used Unforgiven as the prime example of an anti-violence film, a film that used short yet effective spurts of bloody action to convey a message about the theme of…
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Love Letter to the West
Westerns. John Ford was the master of Westerns. He was THE guy when it came to depicting gunfights and chases on horseback. Sergio Leone might be the director you’d like to think invented the Western genre, but he didn’t. He improved the Spaghetti Western one. The Western genre was all John Ford’s. Westerns at the…
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So Long, Friend.
Interaction between actors is key in order to fully enjoy a movie, isn’t it? There have been countless movies, even ambitious ones, with interesting concepts, fine directors, but when the interaction between actors isn’t there everything comes crashing down. There has to be some sort of understanding between the characters, a feeling of acknowledgment because…
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Son of a Gun
Today’s topic: the not so Spaghetti Western of Sergio Leone. The 1960s were a time of booming ecstasy in European cinema, especially the Italian, German and French, which were producing an average of 112 films every year. It may not seem as much compared to today’s Hollywood productions, but in those times the three countries I…
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No Heroes
Today’s topic: the end of an era in The Wild Bunch (1969). A lot of people consider the Western genre to be boring nowadays. My own generation, the youngsters, seem to be repulsed by the boring scenery, outdated dialogue and predictable action. Sure, Westerns are predictable; the good guy wins, the bad guy dies. The special effects…
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