DJANGO

Django
directed by Sergio Corbucci
starring Franco Nero
1966

I must have seen this, the most stylised of the Italian westerns, at least twenty times, probably many more. I watch it several times a year and one such time was this morning when I fancied a little cinematic mayhem to help me relax after a week of real life mayhem.

Director Corbucci had made westerns before Django but none had made the massive impact on the screen that, this managed. In fact the film is regarded as important to the genre as the Sergio Leone movies. It's not as well know around the world as the film never even had a UK cinema release, thought actor, Jack Nicholson did try and buy the world rights in 1967 but the deal fell through.
The plot is simple as it always was in the best oaters - Django arrives in unknown muddy town. He is on foot and dragging a coffin behind him. The town is controlled by two gangs - A Mexican gang led by General Rodriguez and a band of Confederate Klansmen led by Major Jackson. Now Django wants to kill Jackson and he doesn't care who gets in the way.

The violence is played out in an operatic fashion and totally pushed to the limit - at one point Django pulls a machine gun from his coffin and wipes out the entire Klansmen in one go. He then goes off in pursuit of Jackson.

There were over a hundred sequels but the majority of these were unofficial and really just stole the character's name and situations but the official sequels number more than twenty.

The film has a surrealistic colour scheme which was the result of cameraman Enzo Barboni experimenting with the usually crisp Eastmancolour system. This effect gives the film a much more expensive look than the meagre budget would usually allow . We first see Django trudging through a muddy landscape, like a desert after a sudden deluge of rain and as the camera pulls back we notice he is dragging a coffin behind him and then, in

blood red letters, the title comes into view and we are then presented to the American sounding theme tune.

The film was released in April 1966 and was a phenomenon in its native Italy and turned Franco Nero into a superstar. The film went onto become popular all over Europe but it's extreme violence kept it out of UK cinemas and it quickly became a cult movie. When it was eventually shown on British television as part of BBC2's Moviedrome, respected film critic and director Alex Cox raved about the movie and went into what has become known as a Kermodian rant.

Below is the original trailer.
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