click to enlarge
For cultural cross-pollination, it’s hard to top an Italian director on Spanish locations remaking a Japanese samurai movie—inspired by an American detective novel—as a Western starring a Hollywood cowboy. But of this mixed parentage, the spaghetti Western was born—and with it the career of Sergio Leone, the man who put opera in the horse opera. Ending its summer-long Western series with a megaton bang, The Belcourt devotes every weekend in August to Leone’s mythic West, starting with his 1964 Yojimbo retooling A Fistful of Dollars and the first appearance of Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name” (though known here as Joe). Jeff Menne, who just received his Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt, will host a post-film discussion this afternoon. Coming soon: a rarer-than-rare Nashville screening of Leone’s 1971 epic Duck, You Sucker! and the return of one of the greatest widescreen spectacles of all time, 1969’s Once Upon a Time in the West.
Sat., Aug. 1; Sun., Aug. 2; Mon., Aug. 3, 2009
Sat., Aug. 1; Sun., Aug. 2; Mon., Aug. 3, 2009
