Spaghetti Western Pietrastornina, Marco Tullio Barboni remembers the genius of E. B. Clucher

 Avellino Today

August 28, 2024

It was 1970, on the second channel Mike Bongiorno hosted the Italian version of the American Jeopardy!, the Liverpool Four launched a new single, Let it be, also destined to become a milestone in world musical culture, while, in Mexico City, Valcareggi's Azzurri in front of 102 thousand spectators gave life to what will go down in history as "The match of the century".

The unpredictability of Mike's program, which will be proposed to Italians with a name that seems to want to summarize the intentions of E. B. Clucher, the Rischiatutto, the Beatles' invitation to dare, to "let it be", and the courage of Facchetti and his companions seem to come together in a single idea: a western comedy, a parody of the most serious and bloody Spaghetti Westerns.

E. B. Clucher, born Enzo Barboni, is decided: the exteriors will be shot on the Camposecco plateau while for the protagonists the self-candidacy of a couple formed a few years earlier on the set of "God Forgives... I Don't!". Barboni had found his Trinity and Bambino.

As assistant director E. B. Clucher called his son Marco Tullio who would follow, both as assistant director and as author of the subject and scenography, the many other works born from his father's artistic partnership with Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. From "... they kept calling him Trinity" to "Born with the shirt".

On Saturday September 7, as part of the third edition of "Spaghetti Western Pietrastornina" we will remember the genius of E. B. Clucher through the stories of his son. Marco Tullio Barboni who will deliver the public and private image, as director and father, of one of the greatest innovators of the western genre, without missing the personal contribution that he too, in the first person, contributed to provide to the reality of the "western beans".

Because "They Call Mr Trinity" represents in its uniqueness an innovation of spaghetti westerns. A parodic subgenre that has entered the collective imagination as a cinematic reality of the same level.

And that, in an event like the one to be held on 6-7 and 8 September in Pietrastornina (AV), absolutely cannot be missing even less in an event that sees the "Camposecco Far West" group involved in the front line, which has a visceral and immediate bond with it.

Enzo Barboni's films represent the bridge but also the terminus of the western genre. No blood, ironic, suitable for families: a film watching yes but with doubt because "you get to page 30 and no one dies".

And yet without that semi-serious baptism, perhaps many would never have sought – along an ideal line of cinematic life – something similar but more decisive, more bloody. Bambino and Trinity are basically nothing more than ideal Charons. Ferrymen to the hottest fiery middays.