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Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western: Politics, Violence, and Popular Italian Cinema Austin Fisher. London: I. B. Tauris, 2011.
The major transformative process described throughout this fascinating volume has been aptly summed up by James Clifford as one of "cultural import-export." Fisher described in detail how filmmakers in the post-1945 era took a familiar Hollywood genre - the western - and reshaped it as a means of commenting on Italian and European politics. Conventions such as the winning of the West, Manifest Destiny and inexorable progress were set aside in favor of local issues - banditry, stylish gunfighters, disrespect for authority, and explosive action (75). Violence was celebrated for its own sake as an expression of the strength of countercultural movements. Sergio Sollima's Faccia e Faccia (Face to Face) (1967) offers a good example as an elderly history professor is shot dead by dropout Solomon Bennet (Tomas Milian). He has no reason for doing this other than "It was what [he] had to do." Not an especially coherent message, but one with particular resonance...