A director’s take on the Spaghetti Western
10,000 Ways to Die: A Director’s Take on the Spaghetti Western
by Alex Cox
From Liverpool to Cinecitta
A review by Gerry Donaghy
One of this summer’s most curious films was Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which the trailers depicted as a straightforward Dirty Dozen (maybe Kelly’s Heroes would be a better comparison) type picture, but can in fact be best described as a Spaghetti Western populated with Nazis — substituting a suave Nazi for Lee Van Cleef’s ruthless killer, hidden Jews for missing Confederate gold, and setting it all to a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. (One could also call it a meditation on the power of cinema, a thank-you letter to the French for their appreciation of the auteur, or a kosher snuff film, but I digress.)
Whether you buy into QT’s cinematic bouillabaisse (steeped specifically in the films of Sergio Leone) or not, there is no denying that long past the genre’s heyday, an apotheosis arguably reached in 1968 with Leone’s Once upon a Time in the West, Spaghetti Westerns continue to fascinate and influence viewers and filmmakers alike.
One such filmmaker is Alex Cox, director of Repo Man and Sid and Nancy. In 1987 he made his own Spaghetti Western pastiche Straight to Hell, and, more recently, has written an assessment of the genre in 10,000 Ways to Die. To this task, Cox brings a lifelong appreciation of all Westerns, as well as experience behind the camera, both of which give him a unique perspective to the genre.
Instead of going for the academic approach (such as that typically exercised by film scholar Christopher Frayling), or exhaustively thorough (see Howard Hughes’s Once upon a Time in the Italian West), Cox takes a more cut-and-dried approach, presenting a chronological listing of films, cast and crew, and synopses, along with his critical appraisals. This more laid back style frees Cox to give his opinion and to point out shortcomings while finding enjoyment in these films that were dismissed as vulgar trash when first released (one critic, on Fistful of Dollars, wrote that "Brutality is piled unskillfully on brutality in what appears to be a blatant plea for the X-certificate the censor has awarded it.").
Cox’s critical writings here are relaxed and conversational (even in his footnotes), and free from unnecessary jargon or posturing. What’s appealing is …
