Venice Film Festival to Showcase Spaghetti Westerns

Posted by Kurt Halfyard at 4:53am.

Posted in Random Geek Talk , Continental Europe & Russia, Random Festival News, Seldom Seen News.

It is time to grow that 5 O’Clock shadow and break out the dusty Stetson because this years Venice Film Festival is presenting a fabulous opportunity to take a look at some of the more obscure entries in the Spaghetti Western oeuvre. Restoring films from Pasquale Squitieri, Lucio Fulci, Giorgio Capitani, Eugenio Martin, Giorgio Ferroni and Riccardo Freda from mid 1960s to the mid 1970s, the festival is aiming at screening the films that have not been widely shown for decades. The festival is highlighting the bulk of the genre rather than placing emphasis on the sub-genres most famous director, Sergio Leone. (Note that Sergio Corbucci’s Django will be on display.) This sidebar is to be hosted by Quentin Tarantino.

Takashi Miike’s spaghetti-styled western Sukiyaki Western Django is also to be screened at Venice - In Competition - with the often delayed and re-edited Hollywood film, Andrew Dominick’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (which is not a done in the Italian style, but it is nice to see Westerns even made at all).

Venice Spaghetti Western Sidebar
Full Venice Line-Up

[Source: Reuters]

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Reader Comments

Blake 07/26/2007 @ 4:04pm

This really is great news. Sitges ran Spaghetti Western retrospective several years ago. For most festivals beyond that they seem to always play the usual Spaghetti Westerns everyone is already familiar with. There is a handful of films in this Venice sidebar that Tarantino has shown over the years at his film festival at the Alamo Drafthouse, with El Desperado (1967) by Franco Rossetti (as Tarantino would dub the master of creative weaponry) the most recent. Tarantino has over the years been studying Spaghetti Westerns high and low, looking for all the gems. Of the Spaghetti Westerns Tarantino has shown that I hadn’t seen before I think Day of Anger and Arizona Colt were my favorites.

This lineup at Venice is certainly very diverse, with nearly all being from different directors and I imagine a great eye opener to those only familiar with Leone. Some of the titles they are showing like Big Gundown is certainly a treat!

I can only hope this spurs (no pun intended) some DVD outfits out there to release some of these titles to home video!