Spaghetti Westerns & American Myth: The Wild West Through Italian Eyes [Part 1 of 4]

The Collector

By Katrina Funk

October 4, 2025

The history of the American West has long been mythologized. In the 1960s, the work of Italian filmmakers subverted the myth and birthed a subgenre.

 

Spaghetti Western refers to a subgenre of Western films that emerged in the 1960s. These films, which utilized the themes of American Westerns, were Italian-made, low-budget, and filmed in Europe. Italian Westerns broke from the tradition of American Westerns, which were family-friendly, featuring battles between good and evil, with good always prevailing. Spaghetti Westerns blurred the lines between good and evil. These films depicted an American West, not as a place of heroes but as a place of violence, a portrayal more aligned with the West’s true history.

Tracing the Origins and Rise of the Spaghetti Western

 

In the opening scene of Sergio Leone’s 1964 post-Civil War epic, A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood, in his infamous role as the Man with No Name, rides into a sunbaked Mexican village. As Eastwood pauses to drink water from a well, he witnesses a small child run across a courtyard into a house. As he looks on, two men chase the child out of the house, shooting at the ground behind the boy as he flees. The scene is tense and disturbing, and the viewer is left wondering why Eastwood’s Man with No Name does not intervene.

 

A Fistful of Dollars was Rome-born director Sergio Leone’s first foray into the Western genre. Leone, son of silent-film actor and director Vincenzo Leone and actress Edvige Valcarenghi, began his film career working as assistant director on Biblical epics in the 1950s, the most popular film genre in Italy at the time. His directorial debut came in 1959 with The Last Days of Pompeii, when his mentor, director Mario Bonnard, was unable to complete the film.

Shortly thereafter, Leone turned to Westerns, eventually going on to birth the sub-genre of the Spaghetti Western, which led to his international recognition and success. Upon the sub-genre’s genesis, the term “spaghetti western” was commonly used by non-Italian film critics due to the fact these films were directed and produced by Italians.

[To be continued]