Sergio Corbucci
Django (1966)

Django (1966)

director: Sergio Corbucci

starring: Franco Nero, Loredana Nusciak, Eduardo Fajardo, Jose Bodalo

The retrospective dedicated to the spaghetti western at the Venice Film Festival continues with moderate success. The guns, even the baroque and verbose ones of the Italian western, interest only a few devoted lovers. The western as we knew it has become the most unpresentable genre in the history of cinema, even though it was one of the first cinematic genres to appear, just at the end of the real frontier.

Perhaps it's a generalized rejection crisis due to decades of television viewing by our fathers of titles like "Rio Bravo," "The Searchers," "Stagecoach"; it's a pity, as there will be fewer cinematic worlds on which to dream.

On Friday, one of the genre's cornerstones, the successful "Django" by Sergio Corbucci, starring Franco Nero, was screened at the festival. The film was a box office explosion at the time, confirming the thirst for extreme emotions of our Levantine audience that was already uneasy with the polite guns of classic heroes. Leone had given new life to a dying genre, but injected the most lethal dose of poison from which frontier cinema would never recover: the saturation of violence, the exaggerated use of camera movements and shots, faces as barren landscapes, the nihilism of the protagonists, and melodramatic and thunderous soundtracks were the chemical elements of the lethal potion.

It seems the genre was destined to die; "Django," the most famous undertaker in the history of tortilla westerns, was one of the direct executors of the murder.

Preserved at the MOMA as an example of "contemporary art," "Django" was Corbucci's fortune, here in his fourth western, and that of producer Manolo Bolognini. Moreover, it established new coordinates for our Italian westerns, absent or just hinted at in the classic Leone films. As Corbucci specified, the aesthetic choice of his films was made of mud, gloom, and night in "contrast to Sergio Leone's line of sand and sun" (quoting Corbucci).

"Django" would open the doors to its elder brothers, particularly the unforgettable, ominous, "The Great Silence" (1968) about which I've already written and would finally define the artistic choice of the author (an intelligent, jovial man with an already notable career in films with Totò and comedies).

That said, "Django" taken by itself is a film with truly mediocre moments; first of all its derivation, at times heavy, from "A Fistful of Dollars," the plot of which it emulates quite a bit. The technical roughness of certain scenes also affects the film's outcome, sometimes sloppy and ridiculous. The character of the avenging undertaker, which marks one of the most successful and long-lasting artistic collaborations between director and actor (Franco Nero), is interpreted by Nero in a way that is sometimes laughable, especially in the (rare) range of expressions. The conclusion of the film, where the gunslinger with mangled hands attempts and succeeds in wiping out the remaining band of Colonel Jackson, is hurried and childish (I won't mention its implausibility because I accept and quite enjoy these kinds of delirium).

What makes "Django" a classic film of its genre despite everything? What was said at the beginning: Corbucci creates a new microclimate for the spaghetti western. Those who were fascinated by the "southern Italian" atmosphere of Leone's westerns find in "Django" new worlds in which to immerse and give vent to the delightful inner delirium of western emphasis. A new type of gore (the assistant director was Ruggero Deodato...), a wind of cholera, a cemetery landscape, developed, as I said, excellently in "The Great Silence" and a grumpy undertaker as avenger.

The director of photography is Enzo Barboni, aka E.B. Clucher, the inventor of "Trinity" which was initially supposed to be played by Nero himself.

The beautiful soundtrack by Luis Bacalov sees the legendary Rocky Roberts singing the opening titles. This film was the favorite movie of the protagonist of "The Harder They Come," played by Jimmy Cliff. "Django" truly went around the world and acted as a catharsis for private injustices. Acquitted.