il buono il brutto e il cattivo

Couldn’t get Ennio Morricone out of my head while watching La fanciulla del West. None of what I was witnessing was making sense.

It seems that my chronology is all wrong…

I was born.

I fell in love with Tarantino films.

I saw the Good the Bad and the Ugly.

I watched La fanciulla del West.

Turns out that is all backwards.

Italy’s relationship with the ‘Western’ is quite significant and the artistic renditions of the west dates back to around Puccini’s time. Many of the western films made in the mid 19^th century were funded or created by Italian production companies; 56 years after La fanciulla del West premiered the Good the Bad and the Ugly was released. What spiked this interest in the west and what kind of (if any) immigration patterns did this interest create? I don’t have the answers to these questions yet but I know that there is an inseparable nature between the American image of modernity and the history of the Wild West.

What I was watching was an Italian opera with an American flare…Not an American western with Italian operatic twist.

A Horse opera or a spaghetti western? Is there a difference?

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