Django (1966)

Probably falls into the category of “more important than good”, although it’s still pretty good. It is hugely significant to the spaghetti western genre for a number of reasons: it introduced Franco Nero as a star, it introduced Django as a character (endless Westerns were retitled as Django) and it introduced an alternative muddier, dirtier and more bloodily violent version of the Western to compete with Leone’s.

The story is similar to A Fistful of Dollars (itself a retelling of Yojimbo) with two rival gangs and a hero that betrays them both (although not in quite the clear “use one against the other” way as seen in Leone’s film). This time round Django (Franco Nero) is more emotionally invested in the story – Major Jackson’s (Eduardo Fajardo) gang of KKK-like racists have kileed his wife, probably while Django was fighting for the North in the civil war. Mixed into this is Maria (Loredana Nusciak) who has somehow fallen foul of both gangs and who Django tries to protect, likely because her situation is similar to Django’s late wife. Their interaction is one of the more interesting parts of the film: Django is prepared to help her but won’t (and doesn’t) give up his revenge quest (or pile of gold) for a relationship with her, in contrast to the “equivalent” American western plot lines.

The other gang in town are some exiled Mexican bandits (claiming to be revolutionaries) who Django helps to steal some gold from an army base. Both gangs fall under the weaker aspects of the film: the red KKK-style hoods of Major Jackson’s gang just look little ridiculous, and the Mexican’s only really become important a little late in the day and their gold heist seems tangential to the main story.

The English dub is pretty bad (and worth skipping) – everything is delivered in a very flat macho manner. The Italian dub (with subtitles!) is much much better, with Franco Nero doing an excellent job of portraying the underlining sadness in what could otherwise have been an uninteresting action hero, allowing the viewer to care about his story despite the caricatured villains.

There are many different DVD releases, and I have the Blue Underground one and it looks pretty good (with some intermittent print damage). Blu-Rays also exist (and various releases are compared in detail on DVDBeaver). Based on the screenshots I don’t hugely like the Blue Underground Blu-Ray but the european ones look to look nice. (I haven’t seen any “in motion” though).

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