Circling a Square

 Circling a Square

Class of 2017 "Doolies" in Dining Hall
During Basic Cadet Summer Training

    Recently, in The Spaghetti Western blog, I found myself reminiscing about my childhood cap-piston cowboy days as a novice “square shooter.”  The phrase seemed fitting for a kid who imagined the Wild West as a place where every problem could be solved with a six-shooter and a trusty horse. 

Years later, only days after graduation from high school, I entered a very different frontier as a newly minted Air Force freshman cadet, known affectionately or perhaps not so affectionately, as a doolie.  The term stems from the Greek word doulos, meaning “slave” or “servant” and served as a daily reminder that I’d arrived at the bottom rung of a very tall ladder.  I soon discovered another kind of square.  This time I wasn’t playing “square shooter.”  I was being taught to become a “square eater” in the Academy dining hall.

While upperclassmen ate like ordinary human beings, we had not yet earned that luxury.  We had
rules instead: a strict code governing newly arrived novitiates like me.  We followed two rules at table:

"U-Gotta-Wan-It" ... A Newly Arrived 
Doolie Meets an Upperclassman

the first was “eyes in the boat,” meaning our gaze had to remain fixed on the center of our plates throughout the meal.  As young eaglets being groomed for life in the “wild blue,” the nautical metaphor seemed misplaced.  I wondered silently why a boat had wandered into an Air Force dining hall. Of course, no one asked for my opinion.  While the Academy had many traditions, soliciting feedback from a doolie wasn’t among them. 

The second mealtime canon was even more memorable: we had to “square corners” with our forks.  Rather than lifting a fork naturally in a graceful arc from plate to mouth, we were required to move the utensil in a precise square pattern, straight up from the plate, then directly toward our waiting mouths.  Squaring corners was a ritual designed to build discipline, precision, and attention to detail.  We did it everywhere, even in hallways when an upperclassman approached.  Apparently even mashed potatoes and smacking against the wall became character-building exercises. 

By Parent’s Weekend I’d lost weight.  Whether the result of fork drills, a summer of exercise, or simply the realization that cafeteria food was now a training method rather than a meal, remains open for debate.  But the future would see this ingrained discipline and consistency rewarded in the strict, to the letter, adherence to procedure and checklists.  Time and again it saved my life.

Conversation was another matter.  At meals, you never spoke unless addressed.  Between forkfuls, answering questions became yet another exercise to endure.  I vividly recall one upper-class

To Young Me, It Was Something Called 
"The Kentucky Derby"

cadet from bluegrass Kentucky who decided to interrogate me about horses.  Unfortunately, there was little I could do to shield myself from his criticism.  He’d chosen a subject about which my expertise was roughly equivalent to my current knowledge of quantum physics.  I had no idea what the top three races were beyond a lucky guess at the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs.  Horses were a distant concept for a kid raised in an industrial New England town.  He may have grown up surrounded by stables.  I considered myself fortunate to have had a cat.

A Kilo of Equina Please

    Being Italian, however, I did know a little something about horses ― horsemeat (carne equina) is a popular meal choice in Italy.  Wisely, I didn’t mention this fact that I’d once heard during family mealtime where conversation was seldom calm dialogue, and only “any-which-way” strategically timed fork movements guaranteed your plate would remain filled.  Somewhere in those boisterous exchanges there was also made mention of an ancient horse race in a faraway place I was unfamiliar with.  It was an obscure reference and topically in bad taste for me to voice to someone so obviously keen on and especially during Academy mealtime interrogation.  A doolie offering unsolicited foreign historical commentary was about as welcome as a horse wandering into formation.  I’d need to wait a year or two.

Time drip-dripped and decades passed.  Eventually, Maria Elena and I, our language fluency lacking, discovered this foreign place together, extracting meaning from it in a way only first-time tourists can ― slowly, enthusiastically, and occasionally without knowing exactly what we were looking at.  In Tuscany, we eventually reached what seemed like a fairy-tale place following a brief train ride from Certaldo and our agriturismo home base, Tenuta Torciano (click).  On the

Tower-Laced Skyline of San Gimignano 

horizon stood the remaining towers of San Gimignano, rising like medieval exclamation points against the Tuscan sky.¹

Then came Siena which revealed itself slowly, almost theatrically.  The memory that remains most vivid is the great shell-shaped Piazza del Campo, where we sat on the warm brick pavement, shifting from one patch of shade to another as the slender fourteenth-century Torre del Mangia clock tower cast its moving shadow across the square.  The tower seemed less like a building than a giant sundial, quietly reminding us that, as always, time was passing.

We wandered through the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena’s

Effects of Good and Bad Government Side by
Side in the Hall of the Nine, Palazzo Pubblico

Gothic town hall, and stood before two monumental paintings, Good Government and Bad Government.  Their immense scale and historical significance left a lasting impression.  Today copies, greatly scaled down copies, hang on our walls.  Those moments remain among our treasured travel memories.  Yet whenever we think of Siena, another image comes to mind, one we have yet to experience.

Though, in my humble estimation, it is far too early to rush around checking off the final items on a “bucket list,” as a return to Siena has earned on ours.  We did not miss its

Started Mine Early

most celebrated spectacle through poor planning or chance.  We missed it for the simplest reason of all: Timing.  

This extravaganza occurs only twice each year.  And true to its rare schedule, it arrives with enormous drama and is over almost as quickly as it begins.  Its infrequency is part of its magic, drawing visitors from across the globe who compete for the simple privilege of being there.

On those occasions, Siena transforms.  The city swells to spill over capacity, like a stadium overflowing before a World Cup final.  Crowds pour into the Piazza del Campo, claiming every possible viewing position, hours, sometimes days in advance.  In the center of the square, spectators stand shoulder to shoulder inside an dirt track as the piazza becomes the stage for one of Italy’s most extraordinary traditions.  This is not a medieval reenactment staged for tourists.  It is not a flag-throwing performance, although one can precede the race, nor a nostalgic nod to another era.  This is the Palio di Siena.  

Piazza del Campo on Race Day

The Palio is a breathtaking bareback horse race and a fiercely cherished civic tradition whose origins stretch back centuries, first mentioned in a document dating to 1239.²  Piazza del Campo is not merely a beautiful square.  It is transformed into a living theater.  Siena remains one of those rare cities where communal structures still shape modern life, and the Palio is its most vivid expression — a spectacle carrying nearly eight centuries of memory, rivalry, faith, and pageantry.

The race itself has evolved significantly.  For centuries, it was run “alla lunga,” a long-distance course beginning outside the city walls and ending at the Cathedral.  The route was thrilling but dangerous as horses thundered through narrow medieval streets where stone walls and sharp turns left little room for error.²  Its deeper roots reach into medieval public games held in Piazza that included contests of strength, jousting, even bullfights.  By the 13th century, Siena was already holding horse races in honor of the Virgin Mary. 

    The first circular Palio or “alla tonda” held in the Campo in 1633, establishing the form recognized today.  But calling the Palio a sporting event only tells part of the story.  It is more accurately a civic and religious ritual. 

By 1701, the twice-yearly race had been fixed on important Marian feast days: 2 July, dedicated to the Madonna di Provenzano, and 16 August, dedicated to the Assumption of Mary.  The July race is beloved but the August steeplechase, associated with the Assumption, thought more prestigious, is exalted.  Together, they are not simply two competitions on a calendar, they are two acts of civic devotion.

At its heart, the Palio belongs not to tourists but the living heartbeat of Siena’s seventeen Contrade (districts), which extend outward from the piazza.  These are historic districts that have shaped the city’s identity since the Middle Ages.  Originally medieval military companies, the tight-knit Contrade evolved into neighborhoods, social clubs, extended families, and cultural identity anchors, each carrying generations of memories.  To Sienese citizens, the Palio goes much deeper than a horserace.  It is history made visible.  It is the sound of centuries galloping through the streets.

Each Contrada has its own church, fountain, colors,

Surrounding the Piazza - a Breakout
of Siena's 17 Contrade

animal symbol, centuries of lore, and rivalries.  Some rivalries are friendly.  Others are definitely not.  These relationships shape alliances, betrayals, and race strategy more than any horse or jockey can.  Losing is taken personally, particularly when the winner happens to be a rival Contrada.  It is nowhere near the severity of the Capulet and Montague feud in Shakespeare’s imagined Verona, but after centuries of wins and losses, outsiders can scarcely fathom the emotional toll extracted by the swings from delirious victory to agonizing defeat. 

The pieces of a winning strategy begin to jell well before the horses enter the Campo.  The winning formula takes a special sauce that blends the quality of the horse, the jockey’s tactics, alliances, rivalries, and as might be expected, money.  In fact, being first across the finish line may not be the most important consideration.  If your sworn enemy is racing, what’s wrong with making sure they lose, even at the cost of your own victory?

Then come the true heroes, the horses.  Jockeys are hired mercenaries.  Horses are treated like sacred champions, with some winning horses celebrated for decades.  You might think that every Contrada maintained its own stable to groom their future race champions.  Not so.

Horses and riders (cavalli e fantini) are assigned formally only days before the race.  In Piazza del Campo a drawing of lots occurs at a highly charged public meeting known as the la Tratta (The Assignment).  This lottery is designed to eliminate favoritism by making horse assignments intentionally uncontrollable, thus preventing a district from providing its own horse.  In the space available only ten Contrade compete in each Palio.  Seven are selected because they had not raced in that same Palio the previous year; the remaining three are drawn by lottery from the remaining eligible districts. 

A district can only hope for a horse with proven Palio experience, one that can accelerate well during the start, and is agile enough to survive the brutal turns.  However, captains do participate in preselecting and testing horses for the lottery pool.  Technically this is not “choosing your horse,” but it does allow captains to influence which horses are suitable for the pool.  Captains try to avoid a situation where one super‑horse dominates which makes the entire Palio a single-horse drama.  If the pool contains many strong horses, the lottery proves less risky.  If the pool contains several mediocre horses, strategy, jockey selection and alliances matter more.  Captains influence their preferences by advocating for or against certain horses by arguing a horse is unsafe, inexperienced, or does not fit Palio traditions (e.g., proven runners, “veterans”).

Once a horse is drawn, the Contrada’s racehorse groom and guardian, the barbaresco takes custody of the horse.  From that moment on, the horse becomes the center of the district’s life until the race.  It becomes almost sacred to the Contrada, blessed in the district’s church, and guarded day and night.  Only following assignment can the chess match of maneuvering fully play out for advantage through strategic deal-making, sometimes with a hint of scheming involved. 

Jockeys are selected by individual Contrada not for the piety they display during church services but for their cunning.  They need to dominate the famously chaotic mossa (the start), block rivals; negotiate the dangers of riding bareback on this treacherous track; and, above all, follow contrada orders, even when those orders mean sacrificing a chance to win in order to prevent a rival from doing so.

And then there is the money.  What outsiders might call cheating has been woven into the tradition.  It is no secret that Contrada negotiate covert pacts with one another:

“You help us at the start.”
      “Create traffic to block our rival.”
      “If you win, we’ll fund your feast, if you ….”
      “Support us now and we’ll support you later”

Siena does not describe this as corruption.  Instead, they prefer to elevate its characterization to “ritualized negotiation” and part of tradition.  Counter alliances and secrecy are all part of the negotiations.  It is “pay to play” morphed into “pay to win.”  It seems Sienese horse racing, having arrived centuries before John Lyly wrote in 1578 that “the rules of fair play do not apply in love and war,” had already decided that the Palio belonged in the same category.  Fair play, apparently, is negotiable. ³ 

 Then comes the mossa.  The Start of the Palio,²

Palio Start With the Rincorsa Horse Far  
to the Right Ready to Storm the Line

(click) unlike most horse racing starts, can determine as much as 70 percent of the race outcome.

§  Nine horses line up between ropes.  The tenth horse, the rincorsa, waits behind and outside the rear rope.

§  There is no mechanical starting gate as with a thoroughbred horse race.  No orderly countdown.  Instead, the rincorsa charges into the pack, triggering the start.

§  Jockeys immediately shout, shove, block, and fight for position.

§    False starts are common.

§ A perfect start can make the race unwinnable for everyone else.

The horses run three clockwise laps around the Campo on a dirt track laid over the brick piazza.  Danger is part of the tradition’s identity and like Spain’s Running of the Bulls is intentionally built in. 

Crash at the San Martino Turn

The Campo’s geometry creates sharp, uneven turns, none more notorious than the especially treacherous downhill San Martino turn back toward the tower.  Horses skid, jockey’s slam into one another, and falls are common.

Once underway, strategy becomes brutally simple:

If ahead: block aggressively, force a rival wide, use the whip strategically even against other            horses and riders.

If behind: exploit alliances, disrupt the leader’s rhythm, pray for a helping hand of someone            ahead makes a mistake or falls.

After all that buildup, the actual competition is breathtakingly brief.  The Palio may be one of Europe’s oldest, fiercest, and most theatrical of civic rituals, but it lasts all of about ninety seconds.  Centuries of tradition, months of anticipation, days of maneuvering, religious ceremonies, political alliances, money, strategy, horses, jockeys, rivalries—and then it is over before you have time to finish a cup of coffee.

It is legitimate for a riderless horse to win, for the horse is the competitor, not the jockey.  It has happened.  Most recently, in August 2023, “Crowned Goose,” representing the Oca Contrada, lost its jockey mid‑race yet crossed the finish line first, securing the victory.  Imagine spending months preparing for victory, watching your jockey

A Case Where a Riderless Horse Wins!

hit the dirt, and discovering that your horse has decided to finish the job without him.  That, in Siena, is called winning.

Victory celebrations can last all year with the winning Contrada holding feasts, parades, and rituals that can continue for months.  The triumphant district receives the pallium, a hand-painted silk banner that becomes an object of enormous pride to the Contrada.  History records that the last-place finisher received a pig.  A document from 1239 records a man being fined for refusing the pig awarded to the loser.  Even in medieval Siena, apparently, nobody wanted to be reminded of coming in last.  Today, the Contrada that comes in dead last is said to have “preso la cuffia,” literally “taken the cap.”  It’s not a prize but a mark of symbolic shame that Siena uses for social and political humiliation.  It matters because Palio rivalries are intense and deeply historical.  In the July 3, 2026 Palio, the Nicchio district “took the cuffia,” becoming not only the last place finisher but grabbed the added distinction as the “nonna del Palio.”  This distinction as “Grandmother of the Palio” marks this district as the Contrada with the longest victory drought. ⁴  True to its name Snail (Nicchio) indeed.  As I hope to have inferred by this point, Siena takes its races seriously.  

The Palio has even found its way onto the big screen.  In the 2026 romantic comedy, Solo Mio, staring Kevin James with a cameo by Andrea Bocelli, a brief scene offers a glimpse of the race from a balcony.  But Siena insists the Palio exists for Sienese identity, not entertainment for tourists.  Nonetheless, thousands descend on the city, crowding into the square or pay €1000-€1500 for the

privilege of watching from private balconies overlooking the Campo.  

Viewing from the square is free, non-ticketed, and first come, first served.  But wow, hold your horses.  Free does not mean easy.  Watching from the center of the Campo may be the most taxing way to experience the Palio: no shade, no seating, no bathrooms, and, once the crowd is packed in, no easy exit until the race is over.

But from wherever we watch it, we want to be there.  Because the Palio survives not as a reenactment of the past but as the past still being lived.  It binds neighborhoods, preserves medieval identity, turns rivalries into ritual, and compresses nearly eight centuries of memory into ninety explosive seconds. 

And perhaps that is why the story comes full circle for me.  As a child, I imagined the Wild West as a place where a horse, a six-shooter, and a little courage could solve almost anything.  At the Academy, I added “square eater,” one fork movement at a time, to “square shooter” and wondered why.  And like Daniel LaRusso, the Karate Kid endured “wax on, wax off,” I later realized it was all in preparation for what lay ahead.  Like rounding the corners of a square into a circle through continuous drill, rehearsal, and simple traditional repetition like the Palio, it becomes a part of us. 

In Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter, I recently read:

“All we have is the story we tell.  Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character – what we believe – none of it is real; it’s all part of the story we tell.  But here’s the thing: it’s our goddamned story!”

Unfortunately, had this been written years ago, I’d have had a story to tell that upperclassman.  One not simply adding to our rhythmic eating but one appending a wowing fourth race to the rather stodgy list of races he expected from me.  Damn the ensuing rebuff and demerits for speaking out of turn I’d have reaped.

Just maybe it’s time.  After all these years, bucket list aside, I find myself wanting to return to Siena.  Siena, where seventeen ancient rivalries, ten horses, ten jockeys, a piazza full of humanity, and centuries of Italian history merge into one magnificent ninety-second sprint on an improvised circular track inside a square piazza.  Siena, where the Palio becomes part of my goddamned story. 

See you in Siena.  

From that Rogue Tourist, 
Paolo

 

Refs:

1.  Tenuta Torciano - Wine and Tastings in San Gimignano, https://www.torciano.com/en/

2.  Race Start Video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDafJprXa90

3.  Origin of “All Is Fair in Love and War,” John Lyly novel “Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit”

4.  www.https://gazzettadisiena.it, 4 July 2026 report of 3 July 2026 race

 

 

The Spaghetti Western

 The Spaghetti Western

      Unlike a high school buddy, who devotedly listened to the radio while piddling at homework (yes, we had homework then) and knew every singer and hit, I was more a sing-along mumbler.  Absent homework, I still am as I sit in my little office cubby capturing thoughts.  These days, though, my mumbling has limits.  I find lyrics distracting while trying to write.  Too many lyrics and their words linger in my mind.  Others lose meaning when they overlap with those of a song or echo with a thought.  So, to be honest, I’ve become more a hummer now days, mimicking some tune, sometimes pulsing, sometimes lightly wafting through the room. 

My background music tastes run wide.  Vivaldi, Yo-yo Ma and Sting come to mind, but when it comes to movie scores, two giants dominate my personal taste: German-born Hans Zimmer and Italian composer Ennio Moriccone.  Comparing these two dominant poles of modern cinematic music, I find Zimmer more a cathedral’s architectural engineer, with Morricone, the fresco mystic, painting emotion on its walls.  The difference is dramatic.  Zimmer needs a nuclear reactor’s electric output to accompany a hybrid orchestra and power his sonic architecture of computers, electronics, and rock synthesizers; while Morricone could conjure magic with a handful of instruments and a whisper of melody.  Zimmer stirs me with pounding, martial processions: a Roman legion on the march (The Gladiator) or spearheading a galactic invasion (Dune).  It is difficult to choose between the two, but there’s no need.  You can have both, but when it comes to a vote, the romantic in me bows to Ennio, whose chamber-like music scores add commentary without ever uttering a word.

Even his name feels uniquely ancient.  Unlike Enzo, short for Vincenzo, or a familiar Tony
chipped from Antonio, Ennio, lacking an obvious nickname is absent firm grounding.  His name is

Composer Ennio Morricone

thought to trace to Ennius, an old Roman family name tied to pre‑Roman Samnite languages and the early Roman poet, often called the “father of Roman literature,” Quintus Ennius.  While its exact origin remains obscure, the name is deeply Italic, one that quietly echoes ancient Italy, endowing it with a kind of cultural gravitas.  It’s almost too perfect for the maestro, this giant of a man who reinvented the sound of modern cinema. 

As famous as he became in the wide field of musical composition working as a orchestrator and conductor in the recording field, Morricone lived and worked mostly in Rome and never felt the need to learn English.  Later in his career, even while scoring major international productions, this phenom never cared about his standing in the eyes of Hollywood, nor ever desired to live there.

He was born in 1928.  Like his father, a musician, he learned to play the trumpet.  As a sign of gifted talent, Morricone wrote his first composition when he was six years old.  This was followed by a stint at the Saint Cecilia Conservatory which he’d entered in 1940 at age 12.  Before receiving his diplomas in trumpet, composition, and instrumentation in 1946, Morricone was already active as a trumpet player, often performing in an orchestra that specialized in music written for films. 

    Later, he supported his family by playing jazz gigs, arranging pop songs for the Italian broadcasting service RAI, Italy’s national public broadcasting company.  He also was a ghost writer under various pseudonyms and arranged music for films credited to already well-known composers, in addition to arranging songs for artists ranging from Paul Anka to Andrea 

Director Sergio Leone

Bocelli.  During the 1960s and 1970s, Ennio also participated in an avant-garde ensemble whose experimental sounds would later seep into his film work.

But the hinge of his career pivoted on a childhood friendship with Sergio Leone, a third-grade bond that developed into a lifelong collaboration.  From this alliance emerged a groundbreaking series of so-called Italian Spaghetti Westerns that didn’t just popularize the genre, they transformed cinematic history with Sergio Leone blazing the trail.

In total there were three Leone westerns, referred to as “The Dollars Trilogy.”  Like a cowboy fanning his revolver, they were released in rapid succession:

A Fistful of Dollars (1964, released in the US in 1967 was a remarkable box-office success grossing $14.5 million in the US versus a budget of US$200,000)

For a Few Dollars More (1965, also released in the US in 1967, hauled in US$15 million and indemnified the concept.) 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966, released in the US in 1967 grossed US$25.1 million)

I find the term Spaghetti Western somewhat derogatory especially when lumped with Meatball or Macaroni Westerns.  Typically B-rated and made on low budgets, the term was coined in obvious

reference to Italian spaghetti and because these Westerns were produced and directed by Italians.  But Italians embrace the era proudly and consider it an important part of Italian cinematic history for it produced international acclaim for its Italian director, Sergio Leone and Italian composer, Ennio Morricone.

By far the most commercially successful was Sergio Leone's seminal film, A Fistful of Dollars.  It resulted in a stylistic earthquake: long silences, sweeping vistas, extreme closeups, black comedy, and violence that felt operatic in its movements.  Morricone’s music didn’t accompany these scenes, it shaped them, for Ennio composed some pieces in advance from reading the script.  Later, they were in Leone’s mind as he filmed the action as the actors essentially moved in tempo of the scored themes.  The result was a kind of cinematic choreography, an opera performed with guns, dust, sweat, and violence.  The result: a distinct genre

Western Style Town Created in Spain
for Good, Bad, and Ugly

had arrived, nothing approaching an American western. 

The result produced a profound impact on the career and musical style of Ennio Morricone.  His music is as legendary as the films themselves.  In many ways, they transformed him from a respected Italian film composer into one of the most influential composers in cinema history. 

And then there was the superglue of Clint Eastwood.  All three films starred this American actor as a mysterious drifter, sometimes bounty hunter, who depicted Sergio Leone's intense vision of the mythical West as a counter hero to the classic American Western.  Eastwood was on break from the TV series Rawhide and nearly turned down the role.  Sergio preferred actor James Coburn but couldn’t afford him, so he hired Clint, yet a nobody, for $15,000. 

 To this point, American Westerns portrayed noble heroes who wore white hats, like Gary Cooper and John Wayne, as purveyors of civilization and justice to the frontier.  Italians, with thousands of years of

The Man with No Name

conquests, wars, and hardship in comparison to our rather brief 250-year glimmer of existence, conceived of the West differently.  Arising from the shards of empires, you’d expect their westerns to reflect a mindset poles apart, which they did.  To them, it was exotic myth, a place where freedom, lawlessness, and survival blurred as a morally ambiguous drifter, Eastwood, “the better of the bad,” eliminated evil without ever donning a white hat.  Rather than copying the American brand, they invented a darker, more violent and cynical focus on the protagonist, who as demented as he may have been in his quest for dollars, was the epitome of justice.  As shocked as American audiences may have been, in the end, however brutal the Italian version of justice was to achieve, it prevailed.  

Long before he evolved into Dirty Harry, “The Dollars Trilogy” transformed Eastwood from a TV series actor into a global icon, renowned as “The Man with No Name.”  To this point he was unknown as a film actor, not yet the cinematic icon he’d become.  The series’ deep and lasting impact launched Eastwood’s movie career and permanently reshaped his persona.  He became a distilled archetype — stoic, ruthless, and word‑sparing, who communicated through stares, silence, and cat‑like movements.  Lacking traditional heroic qualities, he still drove the story, often earning audience sympathy as he betrayed and played villain against villain to become a visual shorthand for a new kind of Western masculinity.  

To accompany this stoic and ruthless “The Man with No Name,” Sergio wanted the score to play an important role; in fact, he famously kept scenes running longer because he didn’t want the music to end, which explains why the films move so slowly (the longest, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” runs approximately three hours long).   Contrary to present day methods, Leone insisted the music play as scenes were being shot which gave an operatic pace to scenes as the actor’s movements gravitated to the rhythm.

      In addition to long sequences, Leone’s 

Trademark Eastwood Wincing Squint 
and Stub of a Cigarillo

direction embraced extreme closeups.  At times they approached still portraits, only as wide as a cowboy hat’s brim, encapsulating the width of two eyes and a sunburned nose.  Leone’s direction and search for perfection (some takes were repeated forty times), lengthy sweeping panoramic vistas, long silences, and unconscionable violence were also influential steppingstones to Clint’s stardom.  To this technique of direction, Morricone's climatic melodies of unusual sounds and instruments toyed with the silent interludes.  Closeups of sweaty faces in a gunfight, one after another, panned across the screen, not only mesmerized audiences but fueled Eastwood’s shifty image as the better of the bad.  The unshaven, sarcastic, insolent Western antihero had his share of distinct trademarks: a wincing squint, a stubby cigarillo cigar, black jeans, his gun and hat from Rawhide, and a sheathing poncho.  Like “rock soup”, bandits, outlaws, ruthless villains, defenseless victims, lovelorn damsels, and merciless brutality, each contributed to the recipe for Italian western sagas unlike anything on the American screen.  Their release in the U.S. ignited a cinematic explosion that didn’t just elevate Eastwood’s career; it created the Clint Eastwood we know today, who sold the American west, like the Marlboro Man sold cigarettes.

It is no fluke that both the “The Man with No Name” and the “Marlboro Man” share DNA.  At their core, both represent a distilled version of American masculinity and individualism.  Both are

The Original Marlboro Man
Colorado Rancher Robert Norris

hyper‑masculine cowboys, selling rugged independence.  While one is a cinematic creation, the other a marketing ploy, there is a kinship between these two paragons of Western idealism.  Like images of the Old West, their dust covered clothes, gritty weather‑beaten complexions, and solitary posture in the saddle, reinforce a nostalgic heroic vision of the American West.  More an American cultural myth, these self‑reliant men have more to say through deportment and expression, than dialogue.  Their uncomplaining images serve as the face of American toughness; the kind of “manly-look” politicians attempt to borrow when they find the need and don plaid flannel shirts and cultivate a five‑o’clock shadow as they walk off with a shotgun. 

For Morricone as well, the series was a recipe served up in heaven.  The films put Morricone's scores firmly on the map.  His innovations in music, coupled with the acting, and storytelling combined as a distinct genre nowhere close to an American western look-alike.  

When budget restrictions limited Morricone's access to a full orchestra, he innovated by harnessing his earlier experimentation with sounds to yield dividends.  He used gunshots, cracking whips, whistles, human voices, Jew’s harps, castanets, trumpets, harmonicas, bells, and Fender electric guitar twangs, even coyote-like howls as substitutes for orchestral arrangements.  His unconventional score for “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966), inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008, remains one of the most influential film soundtracks ever written. Listen to the Theme and be amazed.

 Some of his other celebrated scores that cemented his legacy include:

Once Upon a Time in the West

The Mission

Cinema Paradiso – There is an effortless Vivaldi-like melody here.  Listen to this Clip that seems to unfurl as in his western themes

The Untouchables 

The Thing – I must add that the 1951 original starring James Arness as “The Thing,” absent   today’s PG guidance, scared the bejeezus out of me as a youngster tagging along with cousins

The Hateful Eight 

In addition to numerous awards, Morricone earned two Oscars including a competitive win at age 87 for Best Original Scored Film in 2016 following an Honorary Academy Award Citation in 2007 for “his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music.”  When the maestro died at 91, the result of injuries sustained during a fall, he left behind a prolific musical repertoire of more than 400 films spanning more than seven decades and earned 70 awards.  Yet of all of Ennio’s musical compositions, those with Leone remain his most recognizable achievements.  

Call them what you may, Spaghetti Westerns if you must, but The Dollars Trilogy carved its initials into the bedrock of popular culture.  It was a mythical place where heroes and villains looked alike, where morality was a sliding scale, and where music carried an emotional truth like nothing seen before. 

Sergio Leone, who had earlier in life dropped out of law school, never-the-less made the case for heroes and villains to look alike.  All rarely shaved, were fouler than dirty, and sweated profusely.  Good, bad, or ugly, as the situation demanded, he famously pioneered a character’s gradation of badness until morality became a sloping gradient, sometimes simply the quickness of a draw.

And Morricone made the movies work with narratives, not of words but with larger-than-life crescendos, and haunting melody, that became a film’s bloodstream.  His soundtracks shaped the films, influenced its pacing, and became inseparable from Leone’s fundamental form of storytelling.  He made

A Director's Nightmare -- Spanish Location,
English & Italian Actors

history balancing brutality with beauty and turning murderous insanity into art. 

Its impact was immediate and lasting.  Eastwood’s frugal use of words, content to stare, became recognized worldwide.  Leone’s blend of innovation, relying on visual grammar, its long silences, the operatic pacing, the closeups that felt like portraits, became part of the DNA of modern filmmaking.  Ennio’s scores, sometimes a shorthand for tension, grandeur, or the strange poetry of violence, rewired the expectations of what cinema could be.  In so doing, they created a Wild West that felt far truer than the one I’d inherited.  

Together, each of them, fluent in a different language; image: silence, melody, discovered they could speak in unison to fashion a big screen trilogy of a place where justice limped forward, where survival was a negotiation, and where beauty and brutality shared the same frame.  Their films didn’t ask permission to redefine the Western, they simply did.  

So go ahead, binge them on Netflix or Tubi as I did recently.  If any, the final minutes of the last of the Dollars Trilogy films, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” provide a fitting and unforgettable conclusion, not only to the film itself, but to the Trilogy as a whole.  

Final Epic Standoff Scene from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

In a wordless three-way confrontation amid the stillness of a vast cemetery surrounded by thousands of decrepit crosses, the uneasy alliances and betrayals between three gunslingers culminate in one of cinema's most legendary standoffs.  It is the reimagining of an ancient gladiatorial arena.

Here, the fabric of Sergio Leone’s mastery is on full display.  Its intensity is all there, building with the music.  Time itself seems to stretch as extreme close-ups linger on eyes narrowed with calculation, hands hovering above holsters, and beads of sweat gathering under the relentless sun, as camera long shots and close-ups sweep across the endless circle of stone, dust, and heat.  Verbal dialogue vanishes.  Only the whisper of the wind through the crosses remains as Ennio's “fresco” of a score swells from The Ecstasy of Gold into The Trio, transforming the moment from a simple gunfight into a test of nerve, loyalty, deception, and will.  And audiences, stunned by the audacity, never looked back.

In this dystopic mythology of the Old West, distilled to its purest and most operatic form, three men, one circle, and the hush of silence are so intense that the story seems to hold our breath.  When the gunfire finally breaks its hold, the Dollars Trilogy does not merely end, it achieves immortality.  Breathing once again, I felt its influence grip me.  I’d again witnessed something epic.

From That Rogue Tourist,
Paolo 

For a deeper dive into events behind The Dollars Trilogy, watch the following: “Twenty Movie Secrets” and/or "Interview with Eastwood".