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 is 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".