A seminal spaghetti Western and a source of inspiration for Quentin Tarantino, Sergio Corbucci’s visual treat has spawned dozens of unofficial sequels.
Somewhere in the Wild West, a lone gunman is dragging a coffin through the mud. Boots squelching, heels sinking in the wet sand, Django does not let go of his burden. On the U.S.-Mexican border, he sees Mexican revolutionary bandits whipping a woman and racist klansmen, their faces concealed by red masks, then attempting to kill her. Django rescues the woman and kills her persecutors from both camps with the weapon he has been carrying in his coffin.
Spaghetti Westerns were shot in huge numbers in 1960s Italy and, after quickly reaching peak popularity, almost disappeared in the 1970s. The traditional American Western underwent serious changes in a different country and a different political context, and Django is one of the most striking examples of these changes. Realism has given way to tomato-red blood and exaggerated cruelty, the myth of the hero and the struggle of good against evil to cynicism and the lust for money. Both the revolutionaries and the government troops, interspersed with klansmen, are anti-heroes. The only way to restore justice is through revenge. The Wild West through which Franco Nero’s loner Django wanders has little in common with the great prairies. The landscape of Corbucci’s film consists of endless mud and swampy marshes, cemetery crosses and dead trees.
The film will be screened in Italian with Russian subtitles.
Django
Director: Sergio Corbucci
Italy, Spain, 1966. 131 min. 18+