Spaghetti Westerns

Spaghetti Western, also known as Italian Western or Macaroni Western (primarily in Japan), is a broad subgenre of Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's film-making style and international box-office success. The term was used by American critics and other countries because most of these Westerns were produced and directed by Italians.

According to veteran Spaghetti Western actor Aldo Sambrell, the phrase 'Spaghetti Western' was coined by Spanish journalist Alfonso Sánchez. The denomination for these films in Italy is western all'italiana (Italian-style Western). Italo-Western is also used, especially in Germany. The term Eurowesterns may be used to also include Western movies that were produced in Europe but not called Spaghetti Westerns, like the West German Winnetou films or Ostern Westerns. The majority of the films were international co-productions between Italy and Spain, and sometimes France, Germany, Israel, Yugoslavia, or the United States.

These movies were originally released in Italian, but as most of the films featured multilingual casts and sound was post-synched, most "western all'italiana" do not have an official dominant language. The typical Spaghetti Western team was made up of an Italian director, Italo-Spanish technical staff, and a cast of Italian, Spanish, German and American actors, sometimes a fading Hollywood star and sometimes a rising one like the young Clint Eastwood in three of Sergio Leone's films.

Over six hundred European Westerns were made between 1960 and 1978. The best-known Spaghetti Westerns were directed by Sergio Leone and scored by Ennio Morricone, notably the three films of the Dollars Trilogy – A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) – as well as Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). These are consistently listed among the best Westerns of any variety.

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