The Anchorless Postmodern Experience within an Ahistorical Filmic Space: Django Unchained (2012)

This chapter considers the way in which Django Unchained (2012) is specifically positioned by the director within a well-defined historical period but is then constructed very clearly as a cinematic fantasy. It is argued that this film, despite genuine concerns on the part of those involved in its making for the ramifications of slavery, does not look to exist in relation to a real space and time but instead within an intense matrix of film references. The relationship of this film to Hollywood classics, such as Gone with the Wind (1939), as well as to spaghetti Westerns and blaxploitation (and sexploitation) movies is examined with reference to specific details from the films. The intense background historical research undertaken by Tarantino is acknowledged. Ultimately, however, the film is seen as a postmodernist text, which because of its ahistorical form is able to escape the need to fully address historical reality.

Confronting Domestic Violence and Familial Abuse: Once Were Warriors (Lee Tamahori, 1994)

This chapter points to the presence of three often-overlooked coming-of-age narrative strands in Lee Tamahori’s Once Were Warriors, in what is ostensibly a social problem film. A comparison with Alan Duff’s autobiographical novel from which the film was adapted, reveals strategies that Tamahori adopted to invest the story with a more standardized generic complexion that relates it to the Hollywood action films of filmmakers like Robert Aldrich and Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns for the sake of enlarging its box office appeal for an international audience. Finally, the discussion shows how Tamahori changed the ideological underpinnings of the story by converting Duff’s neoliberal vision of self-help into an assumption that a return to the values of traditional Māori culture is the remedy for the ills of socio-economically deprived Māori who have migrated to the city.

Era uma vez... a revolução: a trajetória de Sergio Leone nas páginas da Cahiers du Cinéma

A maior parte dos críticos cinematográficos dos anos 1960-70 minimizou ou despre- zou o valor estético dos filmes vinculados ao ciclo de spaghetti westerns, produzidos naquela época no eixo Itália-Espanha. No entanto, Sergio Leone, principal cineasta a emergir do ciclo, rompeu essa barreira ao longo dos anos e se tornou um diretor respeitado pela crítica. Mapear como ocorreu essa trajetória e avaliar os motivos que levaram a essa mudança no estatuto de valor associado ao trabalho de Leone são os objetivos deste artigo, que toma como estudo de caso a coleção de todos os textos sobre os filmes do diretor publicados, a partir de 1964, na revista Cahiers du Cinéma, referência obrigatória na crítica cinematográfica internacional.

Introduction: Western Film and the Epic Tradition

Drawing on a wide range of cinematic productions spanning from The Virginian in 1929 to Golden Age and spaghetti westerns to recent popular TV series like Deadwood and Longmire, this chapter establishes the close connection between Western film and ancient epic, showing that like the poems of Homer and Virgil, Western film places invented or fictionalized characters in a foundational period from history, and thus offer enough truth to be relevant, but enough fiction to provide a comfortable distance. Works from both genres also delineate fundamental values and beliefs and provide models both virtuous and cautionary for male and female behavior while helping to justify national self-image. At the same time, the best productions from both genres complicate the ideologies they promote through devices such as depictions of excessive violence, positioning protagonist and enemy as alter egos, and the hero’s ultimate exclusion from the society he has redeemed. And much as epic both reflected and influenced notions of honor, justice, and manhood in antiquity, the imprint of Westerns on our own belief systems is so powerful that it continues to shape and reflect our own values and ideologies today.

Spaghetti Westerns at the Crossroads

This comprehensive study brings together leading international scholars in a variety of disciplines to both revisit the Spaghetti Western genre's cultural significance and consider its ongoing influence on international film industries. The book provides a range of innovative perspectives on this discrete and perennially popular topic. The book consists of four sections: Trans-Genre Roots; Ethnic Identities, Transnational Politics; Asian Crossovers; and Routes of Relocation, Transition, and Appropriation. Its rigorous historical, cultural, and political enquiry engages with current scholarly trends and balances specialized contextual knowledge with recognition of the instability of national/local identities. The book provides fresh interrogations of the myriad ways in which the Spaghetti Western has influenced contemporary filmmaking practice across national industries.