Django

As 1964's A Fistful Of Dollars was a huge hit, director Sergio Corbucci answered with his own Spaghetti Western in 1966, the classic Django. Where Sergio Leone filled his films with beautiful sweeping vistas and made good use of the Spanish locations, Corbucci's look for Django was very nihilistic and bleak as was it's tone. Filmed in winter, the landscapes are barren and dead and the streets of the town are filled with mud and the sky seems mostly always gray. The films' heroes are different too as Eastywood's "Joe" is an opportunist who plays two rival gangs against each other in a dangerous game to profit from both. Franco Nero's Django, on the other hand, is a former soldier who returns to a small town dragging a coffin behind him and seeking vengeance for the loss of a loved one. Django is a man whose heart and soul have been torn out by the Civil War and the murder of his wife and he doesn't care how many have to die before he exacts his revenge on the evil Major Jackson (Eduardo Fajardo) for her death. And death is indeed what lies within the coffin he takes with him everywhere as Jackson and his men will soon find out. The loner gunslinger Django also plays two gangs against each other for his own gain but, his gain is far more personal then profitable. The film's graveyard shootout finale is also very bleak and makes one wonder if Corbucci is asking us whether Django's surrounding himself with so much death has made him an outcast amongst the living. Django is a hard and violent tale under Corbucci's direction and Franco Nero's Django is a hard and violent man who, unlike Eastwood's charming anti-hero, is a man on a path to hell and plans on taking as many with him as possible. His flashes of humanity are brief and seem only directed at the saloon girl Maria, who falls for the dark loner. But, even Maria is not immune to the violence that follows this man wherever he goes. Django is an interesting entry in the Spaghetti Western genre and seems to be the dark opposite of Leone's series with Eastwood. And as such has earned it's own classic status and is rightfully regarded as one of the genres best examples.