Spaghetti Western

In the mid-1960s Italian directors, shooting cheaply in Spain and Italy, took the American western and made it cynical, violent and stylised. Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars launched the cycle in 1964 and his Dollars trilogy and Once Upon a Time in the West set its look: sweat-streaked close-ups, long silences, huge landscapes and Ennio Morricone's unmistakable music. Sergio Corbucci and Sergio Sollima added darker and more political versions. More than 400 films followed before the cycle faded in the late 1970s, but its influence runs through Peckinpah, Tarantino and modern action cinema.

Where

Italy and Spain, with international casts

When

1964 to the late 1970s

Key figures

Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, Sergio Sollima, composer Ennio Morricone, actor Clint Eastwood

Landmark films

A Fistful of Dollars (1964), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Django (1966)

Legacy

Reshaped the western and gave modern cinema its taste for stylised, operatic violence

What to look for

• Extreme close-ups of eyes and faces against vast landscapes
• Anti-heroes, moral ambiguity and revenge
• Bold, dominant music and long, tense silences