spagetti westerns
Which is the cheesiest? The answer is pretty obvious, but let's take a close look. "Spaghetti Westerns," as their called, are a genre of western films, that have been created or filmed in Italy and are meant to portray the "Wild West" of America. "Macaroni Westerns," as I'll call them, make up the traditional western genre, made in the United States. Let's take a look at the similarities and differences of these genres, and at two films in particular that represent each genre; The Good the Bad and the Ugly(1966) and Rio Bravo(1959), which most critics will agree, are great examples of each genre. Let's start with the most obvious aspect that differs in the two genres. "Macaroni Westerns" are the cheesiest. These films have are pure cheese. I can barely sit through one of them. They have the typical characters; the hero(s), the bad guy(s), the fair maiden, and the quirky sidekick(s). These characters spout out cheesy lines, demonstrating how good or how bad they are, but they language always remains basically clean. In the Spaghetti Westerns, the language is a lot more diverse(lots of cussing). This is because each of these genres play to a different audience.
Another great example would be the match between the horses legs on the street and the thugs legs as they walk down the hall toward one of our main characters. When we hear the horses legs stop, we see the thugs legs stop. This helps the audience make the connection that the thugs only move when there is noise to cover the sound of their steps. There are also many cliches that we need to discuss. First of all, let's talk about the names and nick-names. In Rio Bravo, all of the heros have "clever" little names. We have Chance, Colorado, Dude, and Stumpy. We see these type of names show up in The Good the Bad and the Ugly. In this film we have, Blondie, Angel Eyes, and Shorty(not present very long). Another cliche is the "bad guy gets shot and falls from high above the ground to his death." In both films we see this play true as bad guys fall from rafters and buildings. Both of these films use great amounts of continuity editing. That's about as far as Rio Bravo goes. The Good the Bad and the Ugly, goes much further with it's use of graphic editing. One sees graphic matches again and again in this film. One great use of graphic matching occurs when a character points his gun towards the camera, so that we stare down the barrel, then the film cuts to a cannon's barrel facing us and firing directly at us. Another piece of editing that we should take a look at are the fades. Fade in's and Fad out's are very typical in westerns, and we see them in both of these western genres, although there are significantly less fades in The Good the Bad and The Ugly, than in Rio Bravo.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Bad Ugly, Rio Bravo, Macaroni Westerns, Spaghetti Westerns, Eyes Shortynot, rio bravo, Rio Bravo1959, bad ugly, , United Let's, Bravo Sound, Westerns I'll, macaroni westerns, spaghetti westerns, bad guys, heros bad guys, bad guy, depth focus, film film, main characters, thugs legs, rio bravo traditional, ugly rio bravo, bad ugly rio,
Approximate Word count = 1420
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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