Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: About Spaghetti Westerns

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Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 10-09-2002, 06:56 AM:

I found the following detailed description of the history of the spaghetti western at the following page:
Link

When you think about it, the commercial success of foreign films in the US has waned somewhat in recent years. One wonders whether the Europeans are still actively pursuing the market?

The formula seems simple enough. Take a couple of high profile American stars, add a few locals (Italians will do), film in Spain or somewhere that looks like the US, change the names of any Italian people to English sounding names, get a good plot with a little European spin and then do a high quality dub of all the actors with American voices.

The spaghetti western was simple and fun. It was also stylistically different from US fare but it worked.

When will the Europeans get their act together an provide the US with some competition?

cheers Peter

Posted by Thomas Hauerslev (Member # 566) on 10-09-2002, 08:36 AM:

Wonderful page about "Westerns". "Old Shatterhand" was filmed in
MCS-70 Superpanorama (65mm - no less). Cameras and lenses by Norwegian/German Jan Jacobsen.

Film maker Paul Gerber once described Danish film industry to me like this: "The difference between American and European film industry is that you don't have one". To some extent he's right - at least where Danish films are concerned. Most of our productions are Government founded!!

Many US films are actually made in Europe and many US films are re-makes of European films (Mostly French) because a large fraction of US filmgoes (most of them I'm led to believe) doesn't understand foreign languages. Sometimes the remakes don't improve over the "Americanization" - only "bigger and louder".

Examples of EU films remade in the US: "Three men and a Baby", "Breathless", "Cousins", "Down and out in Beverly Hills", "Point of no Return", The Birdcage", "Insomnia", "Nightwatch", "Scent of a Woman" and "Vanilla Sky" to name a few.

The recent trend in this country is to make "Danish" films in English like "Smilla's Sence of Snow", "Dancer in the Dark"*), "It's all about Love" and "Braking the Waves". Personally I don't like Triers films, but I feel that in order to raise money to make the films, they have do them in English. So much for our culture - or is it globalization acted out in the movies.

*) Filmed in Sweden to double for the US with Icelandic star and directed by a Dane - confused?

Finally, does it matter where the films are made, or must they nessesarily be made in the country where the action takes place? In that case how about "Star Wars" and the like?

------------------
Cheers, Thomas
www.in70mm.com
www.dp70.com
www.70mm.dk

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 10-09-2002, 10:16 AM:

quote:
Sometimes the remakes don't improve over the "Americanization" - only "bigger and louder".

Agreed, but the Western is purely an American genre. Sergio Leone loved them. So do I... my favorites are B-Westerns. Especially the Wayne Lone Stars and Hoppy (Wm. Boyd).

The Clint Eastwood/No Name trilogy is great! The Spain locations definitely give them a "mood".

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Better Projection Pays!

Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 10-09-2002, 10:28 AM:

Tim, Ditto - I like they way you think. I grew up with the early westerns, Hoppy, Roy and Gene and don't forget Red Rider and Lash LaRue.

Posted by Dave Williams (Member # 299) on 10-09-2002, 11:26 AM:

As far as americanization of foriegn films, sometimes it is the only way to get a good film to the US market, as MOST people will not view foreign language films. If they have to read subtitles or listen to nasty dubbing, people don't want it.

Sometimes the recreation is actually quite good. Sometimes it is good, but not quite as good as the original foreign language film.

Many films now are coming out of Australia for production now. As Peter Jackson found in pre-production for the Rings trilogy, that down under you get three times the production for your US dollar. So when they spent $180 million dollars for the production of the three movies, they would have spent three times that if filmed in the states, or in other words, $540 Million Dollars!!! That is why much of the Matrix and its sequels are produced in Australia, to get more bang for the buck. The original movie only cost $50 million to produce as a result of its production location.

In comparison, DEATH TO SMOOCHY, also cost $50 million to produce. That film should have cost no more than $10 million, TOPS. But it was produced here in the US, where we have very tight union controls on production and the costs skyrocket if you want to shoot a film as SAG/AFTRA production.

I think that foriegn films are due for a big hit in this country. We have been deluged with crap for years, and people are really starting to see that the markets outside the states rarely get hit with this level of crap, and maybe just maybe it is worth a look.

Dave

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 10-09-2002, 02:18 PM:

Bob, were you a front-row kid?!! Right, and let's also not forget Windy/Gabby, Lucky, Frog, and Fuzzy Q. Jones.

Aren't B-Westerns great? High action and adventure, and perfect escapism! If they could only make movies like that today. Would've loved to see them on the theatre screen. I did have a 35mm print of Lash LaRue in "Stage to Mesa City", but it was in bad shape, and a decent 35mm Gene Autry "Strawberry Roan". Still, I never got to see them on the big screen.

Keep the flame burning, saddle pals!

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Better Projection Pays!

Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 10-09-2002, 07:51 PM:

Dave

Dubbing doesn't have to be nasty. Although I'm not a big fan of dubbing there is good dubbing and bad dubbing. Bad dubbing is when you get one person to do several different voices in the one film. Good dubbing involves careful timing and the use of a range of good native voices carefully chosen.

I have found the dubbing in Sergio Leone films I have seen thus far to be quite acceptable. After a while you grow accustomed to it. Certainly many overseas audiences have become accustomed to seeing english language films dubbed into the native language. I think that if a quality dubbing is good and the film itself is good enough to appeal to a native audience then it can work. Perhaps Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon proves my point.

The problem as I see it is that the Europeans need a concerted strategy to crack the American market. They need to get together and produce a series of films good enough for people to watch them and then aggressively market them in the US. After a couple of years of successful films the market should get accustomed to watching films from overseas.

Another strategy might be for an overseas Government to buy a film chainin the US and then offer 2 for 1 deals whereby patrons get to watch a US film and a foreign film on the same bill. This might help start getting US audiences interested in foreign product.

I thought that 'No man's land' was a step in the right direction in getting a couple of English actors to head the bill. The difficulty was that subtitles were necessary to due to multilingual nature of the films.

I'm surprised that Taxi and Taxi II weren't agressively marketed also. These two films are as good and as commercial as you can get and are arguably classics of their genre. I'm surprised that an American version hasn't been made yet also.

Returning to the topic, the time seems ripe for a return to the spaghetti western. Audiences need something different and it would be great to see a followup to the Good the Bad and the Ugly. Hopefully Clint would be prepared to do it.

cheers Peter

Posted by Gerard S. Cohen (Member # 994) on 10-09-2002, 10:08 PM:

Thomas asks,
<< Finally, does it matter where the films are made...?>>

Well, it certainly matters to the production unions!
In the US, there is constant discussion about Hollywood films being shot abroad, even in Canada (ironically, the I.A.T.S.E. is international, US/Canadian) where wages are lower and the exchange rate makes production cheaper for US studios and investors. In some countries the armed forces can be rented for far less than paying American extras, and camera crews, carpenters, costumers and actors can be hired for much less than US union wages. This really bugs out-of-work actors and technical crews--and their families--in the U.S.!

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 10-10-2002, 01:22 AM:

When the Spaghetti Westerns were filmed, the Western had already become a very classic genre, like Italian Opera. It didn`t matter if they were in any way realistic, all you needed was hats, guns and horses. Other European countries produced Western movies, too. There was a series of German movies about a German railroad engineer who goes to America where he is known as "Old Shatterhand" and his Indian friend "Winnetou", chief of the Apache. They were filmed in Yugoslavia. Even the GDR produced Western movies. They were probably the first in which the Indians (or Native Americans) were the heroes fighting the Imperialist aggressors who took their land.
Somehow I think that those films were the first signs of the downfall of the European movie industries. The Italians made many adventure movies set in the classical Roman and Greek world in the 50s and early 60s. When audiences got tired of them, they didn`t know better than turning to tested American genres instead of developing their own.
One of the main reasons there are few big European productions now is peobably that they failed to cultivate specific European genres over the last decades. If there are any bigger German productions, they are almost always set in the Nazi time because other eras don`t seem to provide a spectacular background for a big movie. The production costs are also very high and so it is a big risk to produce a movie which might not do well on the international market which is tuned to American tastes.
Looking at the British film industry, you see that most British films are small productions too. British actors/writers/directors have to go west if they want to go on to a larger scale. The only big-scale British productions are the Bond movies, and they are based on a recipe developed in the 60s.
The only exception to this is France, which regularly turns out really good and interesting movies. But even those rarely make it to the international market but unfortunately often get remade in the US.
Michael

Posted by Dave Williams (Member # 299) on 10-10-2002, 01:50 AM:

And example of very bad dubbing is the DVD of Run Lola Run. IT IS NASTY!!!

Dave

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 10-10-2002, 04:10 AM:

Dubbing is for idiots only anyway. Does that also mean that I think that the majority of Germans who watch everything dubbed in German are idiots? Absolutely! The original voice and expression is as much part of the performance of the actor as the visual acting. Dubbing destroys that completely. A translation can give only a vague approximation of the original content because in every language just how you word and phrase is so very important. If you subtitle a movie, you don`t miss part of the meaning, as many people say since the subtitles can only give a summary of the text, because you can`t translate the exact meaning anyway, but with subtitles the voice, tone, accent etc. are preserved.
Part of the reason European movies aren`t accepted in the US and have to be remade is probably that Americans don`t seem to be interested in finding out what is going on in other countries.
Michael

Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 10-10-2002, 06:53 AM:

Michael

It pains me to admit it but there is a place for dubbing. For those people who can't read or whose eyesight is not 100% dubbing is quite a useful tool.

I don't think dubbing itself is the evil - rather bad or cheap dubbing is the evil. The problem is simply that much dubbing of European films is done on the cheap and it ruins the film. When a dubbing outfit does the job properly and takes time and care to reflect the feel and inflexion of the original voices the results can be acceptable. This involves careful mixing of the original soudntrack and attention to audio detail something that takes time and money.

Personally I prefer to see films with their original soundtrack because nothing is as good as the original soundtrack but if dubbing is the only way to get Americans to watch foreign films then I support it if well done.

cheers Peter

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 10-10-2002, 07:34 AM:

Actually, the work of German dubbing studios is very good. Many say they are the best in the world. Probably true, but I still hate it. I don`t want to see people in New York speaking German. It is grotesque. It is like watching a silent movie and listening to a German audioplay - that`s what it really is. Or imagine a movie shot in, say, Berlin where they have taken down the street signs, replaced them with English ones and say it is New York. Would you buy it?
I also prefer to watch movies in the original version when I don`t understand the language. With subtitles of course! For instance, I am a big fan of the Hong Kong cinema even though I don`t speak Cantonese at all. It is a very important part of the movie`s athmosphere.
Your original post made me think a lot about why the movie industries here don`t really compete with the US. But it is a very complex subject, and I haven`t found a simple answer yet.
Michael

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 10-10-2002, 07:40 AM:

I don't know why anyone would want to listen to Lola Rent (Run Lola Run) in a dubbed version since the dialog is fairly minimal.

As for the spaghetti westerns (mostly filmed in Techniscope!) the dubbing is a deliberate part of the effect. Leone grew up watching US westerns in dubbed versions so he tried to create the same sort of disconnected sense when he made his own movies. Note also that when those were made the traditional archetypical American western was for the most part out of fashion. Leone's films turned the ordinary western convention on its ear. Bad guy or semi-bad guy as protagonist etc. It was like a breath of fresh air for a tired old genre. (Later there would be other revisionist westerns, too, like The Wild Bunch.)

Let me put in my vote for The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Some years back Mark G and I had an opportunity to screen an IB Tech print of this film and while a little grainy from the 2-perf negative, with the color and contrast of dye transfer, WOW, it was like you were there. It ranks among my favorite movie viewing experiences of all time.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 10-10-2002, 07:59 AM:

You are probably right there, Steve. In that time, Italian movies were ALWAYS dubbed, even if they were Italian productions. It just was not customary at Cinecittà to record the dialogue on the set. There were many foreign actors, especially Germans, French, or Americans (such as Steve Reeves - "Hercules") who played their parts in their own language alongside Italian actors and whose dialogue was then dubbed in Italian.
Maybe the Spaghetti Western were the first deliberately "trashy", proud-to-be-B pictures in movie history.
But I don`t think they can ever come back. They were a phenomenon of their time. Maybe someone does one as a hommage to the genre like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is a hommage to 30s and 40s cliffhangers. Eastwood probably already delivered his contribution with "Unforgiven". It is not a Spaghetti Western, but it clearly reflects his earlier roles.
Michael

Posted by Dave Williams (Member # 299) on 10-10-2002, 10:46 AM:

The only reason I listened to the dubbing on Lola Rennt (run lola run) is to hear what they did with it. I had heard it was horrible. It sounds as if we are listening to some late teen californians who just got thrown out of the gap for loitering.

Peter, an example of dubbing for no good reason is Mad Max. When that wonderful Australian gem was pegged for US distribution, it was dubbed for US audiences. Well the new special edition DVD has the original voice tracks and MAN that is such a fresh change.

Dave

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 10-10-2002, 03:30 PM:

Do you mean to say that the original US release of Mad Max was dubbed in American voices because they were anxious that American audiences would not accept the Australian accent?
Michael

Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 10-10-2002, 11:04 PM:

I haven't seen Mad Max as yet - I shall have to get it out on DVD and see how it looks dubbed in American.

I think the dubbing on the Sergio Leone films gave the films part of their unique character. One of the effects of dubbing is the loss of background noise as well as the accentuation of the noises that are actually put in. A person pacing sounds louder than it might in an undubbed film, the wind is louder than normal and sound effects more stark.

The net effect is that there is overstated light and shade on the soundtrack. Events accompanied by noise have greater impact - even the crunching of the sole of a shoe on gravel becomes earth shattering. It is somewhat like having the audience's senses made more acute and in my opinion gives the film more impact.

Thus, what otherwise might have been a disadvantage, Leone turned to his advantage and created westerns with greater impact and volume.

I think its high time for a sequel to the Good, The Bad and the Ugly. I see no reason why the Italians couldn't make a new sequel in the same style.

What I am curious about, as an aside, is what happened to the film site in Spain where the films were filmed. Do the buildings still stand? Presumably there would still be a railroad, railroad station etc etc.

cheers Peter

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 10-11-2002, 12:21 AM:

Dunno, but the trains are one dead giveaway that we aren't in Kansas anymore (to coin a phrase).

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 10-11-2002, 10:15 PM:

FILM LOCATIONS OF THE 'DOLLARS' TRILOGY DIRECTED BY SERGIO LEONE
FILM STILLS AND LOCATION PHOTOGRAPHS
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jimmy.r/

The page is very slow but worth visiting!
Michael

Posted by Thomas Hauerslev (Member # 566) on 10-13-2002, 12:12 AM:

Prompted by the first post, I watched "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" last night on TV. It was a treat to see it it again. Wonderful stereotypes, editing, photography, music and great plot twists. It has this very cheap look, and suddenly huge production value shows up when they blow up the bridge and thousands of stand-ins are on-screen.

There are SO many cheap and crappy films shown on national Danish TV at the moment. Many of which (luckily) never reached Danish cinemas, but are now shown on TV - I gather they buy them cheap.

And then suddenly "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" shows up, in letterbox and great color. Even my wife stayed up to see it.

Just priceless.

------------------
Cheers, Thomas
www.in70mm.com
www.dp70.com
www.70mm.dk

Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 10-13-2002, 06:28 AM:

I hope you masked your TV set with black tape above and below the picture Thomas

Seriously though it is great. I just hope that they didn't put any commercials on your Danish TV channel but showed the film as in theatres - in one piece. I'm glad you enjoyed the film.

cheers Peter

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 10-13-2002, 09:26 PM:

Peter, are there any Australian Western movies? It would be hard to explain the Kangaroos in the background, but the Spaghetti Western never tried to be too authentic either.
By the way, the article you linked to in your first post is very interesting. I didn`t even know that the first German "Old Shatterhand" movie started the wave of European Western production. Those movies were not B-pictures, but very big productions at the time, I believe some of the biggest German productions ever. All of them were based on the novels of the 19th-century German writer Karl May, and it was logical for them to start making them into films sooner or later, as May`s adventure novels were favourite boys` reading for decades. There is also another series about the same central character, as I wrote earlier, a German railroad engineer, who leaves the Wild West after his friend "Winnetou" dies, and he goes on to the Balcans were "Old Shatterhand" becomes "Kara Ben Nemsi".
Michael

Posted by Peter Berrett (Member # 672) on 10-14-2002, 03:21 AM:

I don't known of any truly Australian Westerns Michael. Australians have made a few films about life in the 19th century in Australia but that is quite different.

My interest in a true 'Australian' western is the fact that the country up in the north western part of Australia is similar to that in south western USA. Australia has such a wide range of scenery that it is ideal for movie production.

cheers Peter

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 10-14-2002, 03:56 AM:

Isn`t there a movie with Tom Selleck as some kind of Western character in Australia?
Michael

Posted by Thomas Hauerslev (Member # 566) on 10-14-2002, 08:29 AM:

National Danish TV broadcast commercials between programs. Films are shown in the original AR. On commercial channels it's a different ball game. Pan and scan and commercial breaks at almost all reel changes. Movies ruined - that's it.

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Cheers, Thomas
www.in70mm.com
www.dp70.com
www.70mm.dk

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 10-14-2002, 09:37 AM:

In Britain it's even worse than that: some channels interrupt programmes (including feature films) and broadcast commercials in the middle of them. That's one of the many reasons I don't have a TV at home.

I suppose you could describe Crocodile Dundee as an Australian Western, albeit a spoof one...