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I'm guessing that Man of the West and The Searchers will do particularly well, as these films appeal to aherents of both the classical and revisionist approach.

zedz - Cuncho has just seen his brother killed in front of him (to save his own life). He's got the guilt of leaving the villagers to their fate on his conscience. He's been tricked and used by Nino into helping assassinate the general - given all of these things, I don't think his final realisation is so unconvincing. As for Nino's motivations... perhaps Sausage's homosexual reading does have some merit in that regard.

The Mercenary will make my list, although I don't like it as much as Quien Sabe or Tepepa. Initially written by Solinas for Pontecorvo, who pulled out and the two of them went off to make Burn! instead (also called The Mercenary in Canada), Corbucci took over and the film was re-written by Vincenzoni (The Good the Bad & the Ugly, For a Few Dollars More, Gui la Testa!) and produced by Grimaldi on a fairly decent budget with partial funding from United Artists. In its final form, the film is a lot sillier than Quien Sabe, with an extremely convoluted plot, a film about revolutionary characters that never really convinces you of its own revolutionary intent - or any other intent really, other than to entertain and make money, although undoubtably achieving on both fronts (Quien Sabe had ironically demonstrated that there was big money to be made from this subject a the time!). It's most reminiscent of The Good, the Bad & the Ugly - not surprising, perhaps, given Vincenzoni's involvement - although Nero and Musabe don't share quite the same chemistry as Eastwood and Wallach. The happy ending rings somewhat false as well - and, boy, does Corbucci overuse that zoom lens! Still, there are some iconic scenes, like the arena duel between Musabe and Jack Palance, and great music from Morricone (ripped off in Kill Bill). Enough to keep me happy The German DVD is very good btw, strong anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer, English audio with optional German subs, English subs on the accompanying documentary, and fairly cheap as well.

A little gimmick on 'Il Mercenario': Here's a link to the cover of a German leftist magazine, which has been published in 1969 (It's title reads 'Black Bandits, Red Bandits, Antiauthoritarianism & Mao Tse-Tung') and inside of which there's an ongoing debate on armed struggle and so on, based on texts, Mao wrote in the 1920/30s. Btw, in 1970, for a short span of time the magazine has been taken over by a group of former film students (Gerd Conradt etc.), who, like Harun Farocki and so on, had been thrown out of the Berlin film school in the previous year.

What a pity. About 10 westerns short, I am running out of time ...

So what are your favourite Spaghettis? I would say, probably...

1/ Once Upon a Time in the West, Leone, 1969
2/ El chuncho, quien sabe?, Damiani, 1966
3/ Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Leone, 1966
4/ Giù la testa!, Leone, 1971
5/ Tepepa, Petroni, 1968
6/ Il Grande silenzio, Corbucci, 1966
7/ Vamos a matar, compañeros, Corbucci, 1970
8/ Faccia a faccia, Sollima, 1967
9/ Per qualche dollaro in più, Leone, 1965
10/ Da uomo a uomo, Petroni, 1967

Wu.Qinghua - the definition of western that we've been using here is pretty loose, so don't forget stuff like The New World, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Gold Rush, El Topo, Black God White Devil, Antonio das Mortes, Days of Heaven (arguably), Viva Zapata! (arguably too I guess), Deadwood ( \:D/), etc...

At the moment I would chose those:

1 C' era una volta il West Once - Upon a Time in the West -Leone, Sergio
2 Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo - The Good, the Bad, the Ugly- Leone, Sergio
3 Il mercenario - The Mercenary -Corbucci, Sergio
4 Il grande silenzio - The Great Silence- Corbucci, Sergio
5 Une corde, un colt- Cemetery Without Crosses- Hossein, Robert
6 Il mio nome e Nessuno - My Name is Nobody -Leone, Sergio/Valerii, T.
7 Per un pugno di Dollari - A Fistful of Dollars- Leone, Sergio
8 Per qualche dollaro in piu - For a Few Dollars More- Leone, Sergio
9 La taglia e tua ... l'uomo l'ammazzo io - El Puro -Mulargia, Edoardo
10 Vamos a matar, companeros - Companeros -Corbucci, Sergio
11 Django - Django -Corbucci, Sergio
12 La collina degli stivali- Boot Hill- Colizzi, Giuseppe
13 Quien sabe? - A Bullet for the General -Damiani, Damiano
14 Blindman - Blindman- Baldi, Ferdinando
15 Giu la testa- Duck, You Sucker! / A Fistful of Dynamite -Leone, Sergio
16 Se sei vivo spara - Django Kill…If You Live, Shoot!- Questi, Giulio
17 La resa dei conti - The Big Gundown -Sollima, Sergio
18 Matalo! - Matalo! - Canevari, Cesare
19 L'ultimo killer - The Last Killer -Vari, Giuseppe
20 Requiem para el gringo - Duel in the Eclipse- Merino, Jose Luis
21 Corri, uomo, corri - Run Man, Run -Sollima, Sergio
22 Dio perdona ... Io no!, -God Forgives…I Don't- Colizzi, Giuseppe
23 Quei disperati che puzzano di sudore e di morte - A Bullet for Sandoval -Buchs, Julio
24 I quattro dell' Ave Maria - Ace High -Colizzi, Giuseppe
25 10 000 dollari per un massacro- 10 000 Dollars Blood Money -Girolami, Romolo

Oh, hey, I was asking about My Name is Nobody a few pages ago, and Nothing thought it was fairly mediocre- can you explain your view on it?

Nothing wrote: ... the definition of western that we've been using here is pretty loose ...

I know, but unfortunately I have not only been unable to get hold of quite a few of the films, that I wanted to watch in this matter, but also lost most of my notes on those westerns, which I watched some months ago. In some cases, I'm even unsure whether I've seen the film in its complete form or not. Tsss ...

Well, maybe I will be able to submit a complete list until Sunday, but having accidentally deleted my 30s list today, I doubt that pretty much. Btw, you may rest assured, that I've already thrown in a range of obscure and disputable 'westerns' from all over the world ...

You should do what I do and just use IMDB as a catalog. If I can't remember what I thought of a film just a few mon ths later it's probably not worth it.

Google docs works well for that as well, since it makes it more or less impossible to lose things.

Holy shit... a page ago I said Terror in a Texas Town was the closest Joseph H. Lewis came to the highs of Gun Crazy. Well, with The Halliday Brand, I think he may have surpassed it. This takes the study of obsessive, self-destructive characters, and the critical view of the patriarchy, apparent in The Big Combo, and runs with it in a way that film never allowed him to go. A major discovery, and another reason to regret how little new viewing I did for this project.

Aaaaah and just when I was totally confident in A Lawless Street as my highest placing Lewis...will I have time before the deadline? Let us find out!

The Last Sunset - oh boy!... Only Aldrich (or possibly an on-form Sirk, which this occasionally resembles) could give us a western where

Spoiler

the protagonist commits suicide after realising that he's fallen in love with (and fucked?!) his fifteen year old daughter.

Jack Elam's entrance, with his line about selling the women to a Dutchman in Vera Cruz for $1500 each, is also memorable. No wonder this one has remained relatively obscure... Anyway, the film is strong and atmospheric as well as unusually frank. As has been noted in the past, it was clearly an influence on Once Upon a Time in the West and, in particular, the final duels are remarkably similar, almost shot for shot. Aldrich does make one huge and irretractable blunder by killing off Joseph Cotten early on, stripping an important layer of tension and interest from the narrative, conveniently allowing Hudson to move in on Malone without moral ambiguity. A shame. The DVD transfer is superfcially strong, yet they make a huge grading blunder at the end, timing the final sunset duel for midday (...)

matrixschmatrix wrote:Oh, hey, I was asking about My Name is Nobody a few pages ago, and Nothing thought it was fairly mediocre- can you explain your view on it?

It is an intelligent end-of-the-west film only marred by some unnecessary comedy scenes, especially when the story stops for some slapstick excesses, which on the other hand were of course the main reason for the film's big success (in Europe). But it destroys the balance between comedy and melancholia for some parts of the film.

Nobody is also another example for an often brilliantly directed SW, and even most of the comedy things are very well shot. MNIN is for me doubtless the 6th Sergio Leone western, even if Leone had been completely responsible for the film he most likely would have done several things different. But he has controlled MNIN to such an extent that the Leone style is visible in nearly every scene. It is still debatable which scenes Leone shot himself and which not, but most of the involved people say that he was the real filmmaker, just like every comic written by Alan Moore is an Alan Moore comic, whoever has drawn it.

Just watch the opening scene of Nobody. It is on par with the best things in the previous Leone westerns, while Valerii, a pretty unimaginative director, never made anything half as good in his previous 4 westerns.

Leone only directed a couple of short scenes according to Frayling, no? Who also takes the view that Nobody is pretty typical of Valerii's approach.

Oh come on, watch the first scene, the wild bunch battle (especially the parts with Fonda beginning to accept his fate), the New Orleans scenes, watch in these the camera movements, the acting, the shared looks, the cuts, Valerii never did anything like this. Watch the Films Valerii did before (A Reason to Live, A Reson to Die, also with Gastaldi) and after (Sahara Cross), both are incredibly dull. And even his better westerns (Day of Anger, The Price of Power) are not more than pale Leone copies.
After Nobody I was eager to see some more Valerii westerns, but they were all more or less disappointing and visually pretty flat.

We don't know exactly what Leone directed, he self claimed the above mentioned scenes for himself, only Valerii said that he only directed a few comedy scenes with Terence Hill.
Set photos show him very actively showing the actors how to play their roles. Hill said that it was Leone who made every major decision, and here is a quote of a forum friend who talked with Neil Summers:

"All I can contribute is what actor/stuntman, Neil Summers (who portrayed Squirrel) told me about his experiences working on the film. Neil swears that Leone directed absolutely all of the sequences he was in and that Valerii seemed to be "just hanging around", for the most part, when these scenes were shot.
Granted Neil was only in a few segments of the film; but, he said he stayed on while they were shooting in Spain--and he never saw anyone truly directing anything apart from Sergio Leone and the credited assistant director, Stefano Rolla."

But maybe Leone only conceived most of these scenes just like he tried to make Bogdanovich shooting a Leone film, or like he said to Rod Steiger that Santi will shoot Giu la testa "like I am behind the camera".

So the list is done and delivered.

No half-westerns considered, and apparently none before 1939, and none after 1976 made it into my list. Even Eastwood's best western Unforgiven had no chance. Maybe Dominic's Jesse James film, if I had re-watched it.

Phew, it wasn't easy. Too much films I really like which I would liked to have in.

Nothing wrote: the definition of western that we've been using here is pretty loose, so don't forget stuff like [. . .] Antonio das Mortes

I rewatched this late last week to see whether I wanted to include it and even though it's a direct sequel to Black God, White Devil, I think Rocha pushes it so hard into the present day at various points (while retaining a lot of the traditional / 'ancient' aspects elsewhere) that it goes outside the genre. (Not that it would have been top 50 material for me anyway.)

Anyway, my list's in now, even though a few straggling purchases have yet to arrive and there are a number of films I ought to have re-watched (since just about all of those that I did moved definitively up or down).

Ten lists now, with 106 eligible films. It's going to be a heart-breaker for one film which has appeared on half of the lists, but all in the single digits-- shed a tear, sensitive western fans. Surprisingly, no film has appeared on every list, or every list save other either. Some very big films have underperformed and some surprising favorites have emerged.

Have any pre-stagecoach films made a good show? Of all the titles I voted for none being an orphan would disappoint me more than The Invaders considering how many here have seen it.

It could be worse-- one submitter's number one pick is an orphan (as of now)

Poor fellow, I hope it turns around for him.

A participant who hasn't PMed me their list has expressed fondness for their pick, so I think it'll turn around. However, there are several more posters with orphan top ten picks whose futures look less bright (myself among them)

In other agonizing tease news, there are five films which have appeared on eight of the ten lists. Three of these five films are by the same director.

The Searchers, Stagecoach, and maybe Liberty Valance?

I'd swap Clementine for Valance, but I wish we could assume we're talking about Anthony Mann instead.

I was thinking Mann myself, but I have a feeling that Ford will dominate. I'm just going through my own prejudices, but I doubt Clementine will make the strongest showing. It will (unfortunately) show up, but I doubt too strongly.