Items related to Any Gun Can Play: The Essential Guide to Euro-Westerns
The full, vibrant history of the Euro-Western, offering everything any fan of Euro-Westerns could ever want to know. The success of Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy in the 60s sparked a gold rush, as a legion of European film-makers, many of them sharing the get-rich-quick mentality of Leone's mercenary anti-heroes followed the master's lead to create some of the wildest Westerns ever made.
Cynical and stylish, bloody and baroque, Euro-Westerns replaced straight-shooting sheriffs and courageous cowboys with amoral adventurers, whose murderous methods would shock the heroes of Hollywood Westerns.
Any Gun Can Play explores the films' wider reaches, their recurrent themes, characters, quirks and motifs. It examines the American models and explores the mechanics of the Italian film industry.
* Features the genre's leading lights, including Franco Nero, Giuliano Gemma and Gianni Garko, writer Sergio Donati, and directors Sergio Sollima and Giuliano Carnimeo
* Foreword by Euro-Western legend Franco Nero
This stunningly illustrated reference guide demonstrates why these films became box-office sensations around the world, and their influence can still be felt today.
Cynical and stylish, bloody and baroque, Euro-Westerns replaced straight-shooting sheriffs and courageous cowboys with amoral adventurers, whose murderous methods would shock the heroes of Hollywood Westerns.
Any Gun Can Play explores the films' wider reaches, their recurrent themes, characters, quirks and motifs. It examines the American models and explores the mechanics of the Italian film industry.
* Features the genre's leading lights, including Franco Nero, Giuliano Gemma and Gianni Garko, writer Sergio Donati, and directors Sergio Sollima and Giuliano Carnimeo
* Foreword by Euro-Western legend Franco Nero
This stunningly illustrated reference guide demonstrates why these films became box-office sensations around the world, and their influence can still be felt today.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
is a freelance journalist and film writer with a passion for exploitation movies. A fan of Westerns since childhood, he has contributed to a range of publications including Flesh & Blood, Delirium, Blood, Money and Vengeance, Hotdog and European Trash Cinema. This is his first book.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
PREFACE
European Westerns captured my imagination from the moment I first saw the animated credits of A Fistful of Dollars cantering across the television screen when I was eight years old, and they have never relinquished their grip. This book is distilled from many years spent seeking and viewing as many of Fistful's stablemates as possible, as well as countless hours of research and interviews. From the outset there seemed a number of possible avenues of approach. Euro-Westerns can easily be appreciated - or dismissed - as nothing more than rugged adventures or escapist exploitation flicks. Like other popular forms, however, they also reward closer examination. They can be treated as violent, liberating fantasies or Mediterranean amorality tales; a mishmash of ancient myths and contemporary mores; as vehicles for cult actors or diversions for writers and directors of subsequent renown. They can be considered as pastiches of American Westerns, or in relation to their own domestic film traditions. They can be regarded as part of the Sixties vogue for deconstruction and stylisation, viewed as socio-political commentaries or simply, en masse, as the correlative to some great music. All these interpretations are valid - and these are just the most common ones - but only in combination can they convey a sense of the genre's development from something imitative to something inspiring in its own right.
This evolution is the subject of this survey. The focus is not on Sergio Leone's accomplishments, which have been extensively studied elsewhere, although as the prime mover behind most of the Euro-Western's finest qualities, he remains a source of reference throughout. To fully appreciate the genre's diversity and strength in depth, one must follow a parallel path, meeting the many other filmmakers who were drawn into its orbit and either adapted Leone's themes and ideas, expanded on them or steered this exciting new vehicle into previously uncharted terrain. While mapping this journey I inevitably acquired a great deal of baggage, much of which was jettisoned along the way. The purpose is to paint what is, from my point of view, as complete a picture of the Euro-Western's core characteristics as practicable. I hope this will prompt a reconsideration of established works as well as stimulate interest in the neglected majority, to dispel the lingering notion that the genre has little to offer beyond the Leone films and a fistful of others.
European Westerns captured my imagination from the moment I first saw the animated credits of A Fistful of Dollars cantering across the television screen when I was eight years old, and they have never relinquished their grip. This book is distilled from many years spent seeking and viewing as many of Fistful's stablemates as possible, as well as countless hours of research and interviews. From the outset there seemed a number of possible avenues of approach. Euro-Westerns can easily be appreciated - or dismissed - as nothing more than rugged adventures or escapist exploitation flicks. Like other popular forms, however, they also reward closer examination. They can be treated as violent, liberating fantasies or Mediterranean amorality tales; a mishmash of ancient myths and contemporary mores; as vehicles for cult actors or diversions for writers and directors of subsequent renown. They can be considered as pastiches of American Westerns, or in relation to their own domestic film traditions. They can be regarded as part of the Sixties vogue for deconstruction and stylisation, viewed as socio-political commentaries or simply, en masse, as the correlative to some great music. All these interpretations are valid - and these are just the most common ones - but only in combination can they convey a sense of the genre's development from something imitative to something inspiring in its own right.
This evolution is the subject of this survey. The focus is not on Sergio Leone's accomplishments, which have been extensively studied elsewhere, although as the prime mover behind most of the Euro-Western's finest qualities, he remains a source of reference throughout. To fully appreciate the genre's diversity and strength in depth, one must follow a parallel path, meeting the many other filmmakers who were drawn into its orbit and either adapted Leone's themes and ideas, expanded on them or steered this exciting new vehicle into previously uncharted terrain. While mapping this journey I inevitably acquired a great deal of baggage, much of which was jettisoned along the way. The purpose is to paint what is, from my point of view, as complete a picture of the Euro-Western's core characteristics as practicable. I hope this will prompt a reconsideration of established works as well as stimulate interest in the neglected majority, to dispel the lingering notion that the genre has little to offer beyond the Leone films and a fistful of others.
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- PublisherFAB Press
- Publication date2012
- ISBN 10 1903254604
- ISBN 13 9781903254608
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages480
- Rating
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Bookplate on front leaf signed by author Kevin Grant and Actor Franco Nero. Numbered 24 out of 500. 2017. Seller Inventory # 99295477
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