Film festival featured the Old West made new

Route 1 hosted its first film festival today.
We viewed a trio of films that shook the Western genre out of its doldrums:
* Sergio Corbucci's "Django."
* Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch."
* Sergio Leone's "Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly)."
By the 1960s, the Western seemed in danger of extinction. Television was partly to blame, but so were moviegoers who wanted more than the black-and-white characterizations of the traditional Western. With assassinations and unpopular foreign wars the staple of the day, guys in white hats just didn't seem to matter anymore.
That's when the three films we saw today come into the frame.
Italians shooting Westerns in Spain were untethered to the traditional requirements of Hollywood. If they wanted to exchange unnaturally majestic scenery for the grit and grime of the Old West they imagined was closer to the truth, all they had to do was muddy the ground of their Spanish locations.
They bent or broke cinematic rules, and in doing so, breathed life into a stagnant genre.
Directors such as Peckinpah took cues from the Sergios.
The new vanguard of Hollywood Western directors enjoyed new-found freedom to create -- no longer bound by the old ways -- thanks to the efforts of their overseas peers.
As a result, American Westerns began to emulate their European cousins, with sometimes violent and almost always exciting visions replacing the mannered, clichéd approach of the past.
Those in attendance today learned about the emergence of a new sensibility in Westerns. We also dined on some MIGHTY FINE HOMEMADE PIZZA, thanks to local film enthusiast and Route 1 reader Rob K.
Mmm...