Sergio Corbucci

A gunfighter drags a coffin through the mud behind him for most of Django, and what is in it does not disappoint. The westerns are filthier and more pessimistic than the ones that made the genre famous: mud instead of dust, snow in The Great Silence, and a hero whose hands are ruined so he cannot draw properly. Nobody is redeemed by the last reel. Compañeros and The Mercenary move the same cynicism into the Mexican revolution and let the politics show.

Signature

• Mud, snow and cold in place of the sunlit western landscape.
• Maimed or disadvantaged protagonists who win ugly, or lose.
• Grotesque, sadistic villains played broadly.
• Revolutionary politics worn openly in the Zapata films.