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Spaghetti Westerns at the Crossroads
Studies in Relocation, Transition and Appropriation
Edited by Austin Fisher
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Book Presentation:
A reappraisal of the cultural-political strands that fed into, and emanate from, the Spaghetti Western
What links Italian neorealism to Django Unchained, French comic books to Third-World insurgency, and Bollywood song-and-dance to Eastern Bloc film distribution? As this volume illustrates, the answers lie in the Spaghetti Western genre.
As the reference points of American popular culture became ever more prominent in post-war Europe, the hundreds of films that make up the Italian (or ‘Spaghetti’) Western documented profound shifts in their home country’s cultural outlook, while at the same time denying specifically national discourses. An object of fascination and great affection for fans, filmmakers and academics alike, the Western all¹italiana arose from a diverse confluence of cultural strands, and would become a pivotal moment in cinematic history.
Reappraising a diverse selection of films, from the internationally famed works of Sergio Leone to the cult cachet of Sergio Corbucci and the more obscure outputs of such directors as Giuseppe Colizzi and Ferdinando Baldi, this comprehensive study brings together leading international scholars in a variety of disciplines to both revisit the genre’s cultural significance and consider its on-going influence on international film industries.
Contributors include
• Lee Broughton
• Pete Falconer
• Christopher Frayling
• William Grady
• David Hyman
• Pasquale Iannone
• Thomas Klein
• Mikel J. Koven
• Ivo Ritzer
• Iain Robert Smith
• Rosemary Stott
• Aliza S. Wong
• Patrick Wynne
About the Author:
Austin Fisher is Associate Professor of Popular Culture at Bournemouth University. He is the author of Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western, editor of Spaghetti Westerns at the Crossroads and Grindhouse: Cultural Exchange on 42nd Street, and Beyond, and founding co-editor of the ‘Global Exploitation Cinemas’ book series. His main area of expertise concerns popular Italian cinema’s relationship with political movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
Press Reviews:
This collection of essays moves over territory and across borders previously uncharted and undocumented in existing accounts of the Western. In taking paths and routes less travelled, Fisher and his contributors show how rich and diverse the genre is in its many international, national and local guises. This is scholarship of high merit.– Peter Stanfield, University of Kent
An ambitious, interdisciplinary undertaking...all twelve of the studies in Spaghetti Westerns at the Crossroads are well-written, cogent, and topical discussions appropriate for students working at the graduate level and specialists working in the areas of film and cultural studies. The images which accompany them are well chosen and interesting.'– Sue Matheson, Journal of Popular Film and Television
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
> From the same author:
Blood in the Streets (2019)
Histories of Violence in Italian Crime Cinema
> On a related topic:
Spaghetti Westerns (2005)
the Good, the Bad and the Violent:A Comprehensive, Illustrated Filmography of 558 Eurowesterns and Their Personnel, 1961–1977
Hell-Bent for Leather (2025)
Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western
by Kerry Fine, Michael K. Johnson, Rebecca M. Lush and Sara L. Spurgeon
French Westerns (2024)
On the Frontier of Film Genre and French Cinema
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