Ever more popular in the age of DVDs, eBay and online fandom, the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s have undergone a mainstream renaissance which has nevertheless left their intimate relationship to the troubled politics of 1960s Italy unexamined. Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western reappraises the genre in relation to the revolutionary New Left and the events of 1968 to uncover the complexities of a cinematic milieu too often dismissed as formulaic and homogeneous.
Establishing the backdrop of post-war Italy in which the Roman studio system actively blended Italian and American...

Though 1960s European cinema frequently reflected the shifting ideological tides which now characterize the era in the popular imagination, the complex and extensive relationship of the Italian -- or ""Spaghetti"" -- Western to these political ferments has gone almost entirely unnoticed. Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western fills this gap as the first in-depth analysis of militant political trends in the Italian Western. Providing a detailed, historically-grounded examination of the films of Damiano Damiani, Sergio Sollima and Sergio Corbucci, Austin Fisher reveals how and why...

This comprehensive study brings together leading international scholars in a variety of disciplines to both revisit the Spaghetti Western genre's cultural significance and consider its on-going influence on international film industries.