some dollars for django (cinema history class)

As we got back in the saddle (or Keith's basement, anyway), Keith continued an age old tradition of his cinema history class. What tradition? Starting every year with a month of spaghetti westerns. It's a sacred rite dating back to 2016.

Anyway, his theme this time is Clint Eastwood wannabes. That's my paraphrase -- not his words. And he kicked it off with Some Dollars for Django, starring Anthony Steffen as Django. Scratch that. Steffen's character was named Regan. There wasn't a Django to be seen.

I was surprised by that, though I shouldn't have been. I was already familiar enough with the facts: Sergio Corbucci's Django (which is among my favorite spaghetti westerns, was so popular and influential that many other movies of the genre were branded or rebranded as Django films even if there was no relationship. Going into this class I was naively thinking that they would have named the character Django to be consistent. Apparently this was made before Django, and so didn't have that name for the character. But then given the name to cash in.

And, while we're at it, the marketing (as you can see from the above trailer) was designed to evoke Sergio Leone's "man with no name" trilogy that starred (and made the career of) Clint Eastwood. And many of Django's -- uh, I mean Regan's -- manners are clearly meant to remind us of Eastwood in thos movies.

But Steffen is no Eastwood. He's good looking in that rugged way. Keith noted that he had fought with the Italian partisans during World War II, so some of his toughness may have come from that. At any rate, despite his good looks he lacks the charisma. So what we got was a poor man's Clint.

The movie itself wasn't bad. The plot, thin though it was, was engaging enough. But it lacked the complexity of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, The Mercenary or even Django. But I think the thing that disappointed me the most was that this didn't feel like a spaghetti western. My line about the genre is that American Westerns have good guys and bad guys while spaghetti westerns have bad guys and worse guys. Regan didn't have the purity of an American western hero -- he was bounty hunter -- but his character was more on the good side than I am used to seeing in these. Add to that the fact that the ending was much more positive and hopeful than I wanted it to be, and you have a western that's much more American than I wanted it to be.

Of note also was that Keith welcomed a new guy to the class. That brings it up to six people (not counting Keith). And I think that he's closing it at this level. Six still works, but much more than that and it would be too unwieldy. Oh, and the new guy brought beer (Raging Bitch Belgian IPA), which was nice. One thing that surprised me is that, despite this being his first night with us, Keith went to him first for commentary. I would have thought that he should have a chance to hear how the rest of us comment before being called on. That way he'd have a template to work from. But I suppose Keith's approach made more sense. It forced him to define his own identity rather than feel he had to fit his commentary into some framework based on what the rest of us do. Each one in class has his own unique interests and style, and it comes through in the way we approach our comments differently. So hats off to Keith for a bold move.

This, by the way, is the fifth movie I have seen with "Django" in the title. The others (in the order that I saw them were:

• Django (the original)
• Django Strikes Again (the only actual sequel)
• Django Kill...If You Live, Shoot! (not a sequel, but branded as if it were one)
• Django Unchained (more an homage than anything else)