Like its culinary counterparts, the spaghetti western is incredibly popular – safe, reliable and enjoyed by generations across all cultures. However, its also an acquired taste, and like any genre, it’s going to have its share of successes and failures. I’m certainly not someone who advocates heavily for this kind of western, despite having enjoyed quite a few over the years. One of the more resonant ones that I had not seen was Django, which is even more bewildering considering how the film is related to the name of my writing site. However, there’s very little that can be said about Django other than it being a success to the extent it deserves to be. The cult status of this film is certainly earned, but so is the controversy that has surrounded it for half a century, a kind of dismissal that doesn’t quite allow it to live up to the expectations it hoped it would. The devotees to the spaghetti western undoubtedly indicate this as one of the genre’s more interesting entries, a sentiment that certainly does have some truth to it, even if it was a film that I found was keeping the viewer at a distance through the questionable logic, strange narrative choices and bizarre approach to telling the story, which ultimately doesn’t work as well as it should have, especially for a film that has been bolstered to having a reputation that far supersedes its quality. By no means a bad film, Django is one that takes its time to make a point, by which point you have been entirely enraptured by its delightfully unhinged style, or drawn away through its more incomprehensible ideas to a fascinating premise.

While it may tell a very simple story that mercifully avoids the convolution far too many films in the broader genre tended to suffer from during this period, Django is a difficult film to completely understand on a deeper level. Narratively, it’s not a challenging film – it’s relatively in terms of following a renegade protagonist who is caught between two feuding groups, trying to get vindication for a loss he suffered years before at the hands of a perpetrator he is now seeking to wreak vengeance upon. There’s also an innocent woman constructed as the archetypal object of desire for good measure. Sergio Corbucci was a filmmaker who did have a clear understanding of how to make a compelling film – and Django certainly has a myriad of exciting moments that lead the viewer to believe that it is actually a brilliant, subversive work. The director also managed to include a more nuanced storyline that looked at some historical issues of race and division during the period in which it takes place, with overtures of the post-Civil War era pervading the film and giving it some slightly unexpected depth. In this regard, the film is a great success, and we can easily excuse some of its more puzzling narrative choices by noting how this was never supposed to be the definitive text on the subject it’s conveying – it’s designed as a thrilling western filled with peril and excitement, and it succeeds at doing just that. The reason why Django is such a beloved cult classic is that it doesn’t demand too much from the viewer, and it manages to tell its story in a wonderfully lucid way, which is rare for the more overly complex entries into the western genre that came about during the same cinematic era.

However, when we look further into the film, we realize some of its more notable flaws, which speak directly to both the weaknesses of the western genre (which was slowly retreating from favour, with the revival of neo-westerns still being a few years away), and the challenges that many making films under the spaghetti western genre had to endure, obstacles put on them by executives who demanded the same kind of sweeping epics made popular by John Ford and Howard Hawks, but affording them a fraction of the time and resources to realize these near-impossible concepts. Structurally, Django doesn’t adhere to any consistent formula – the film has a terrific first act, a strong second act that is far too short, and a third act that consists of about six different logical endings. It is not the first to suffer from this problem, as many westerns tend to drag out their final act in unnecessary ways – how, considering this film is a mere ninety minutes, there’s simply not enough space for the constant plot movement, and it would’ve either benefitted from streamlining some of the more unnecessary narrative details that the director tries to resolve by the end, or having actually been long enough for each of these ideas to get the attention they deserve. The production background of this film indicates how Corbucci had very limited time to put the film together, so it only makes sense that Django would consist of heavy exposition, an entertaining but limited central conflict, and far too many false conclusions. Every time we are lead to believe that the film is winding down, it comes back with another challenge – and while the western has often made use of this kind of narrative structure, for a film this short, it doesn’t quite benefit it in any way. The only aspect more disappointing is that the real ending is so anti-climactic and against the more interesting progression that had recently occurred. It’s an unfortunate end to a very interesting film that deserved a bit more than it received.

There are certainly some elements of Django that did work – the film contains one of two elements that persist as positive aspects across most spaghetti westerns. The first being the central performance, with Franco Nero taking on the role with furious gusto. He is terrific as the title character, playing Django as the mysterious loner who is both adept at firing a gun as he is planning a cunning escape from danger but still differentiating the role from other actors who have played similar characters. Nero’s performance is quite compelling, and he never resorts to pandering in the way less-skilled actors (even those in this very film) tended to do during this period. Defiantly nature, but still dashingly heroic in how he interprets the character, Nero goes a lot further in playing a role that is rarely given the attention it deserves outside of being a likeable gunslinger with a heart of gold and a finger on the trigger at all times. The second resounding success of this film is the score –     Luis Enriquez Bacalov was a maestro in terms of film composing, and the musical score in Django can rival the very best in history. From the title track the bookends the film and lends it a sense of soaring gravitas, to the exhilarating instrumental music that occurs through the film’s most exciting moments, it supplements Corbucci’s visual style with unexpectedly wonderful results. The intense chords of “Django” still resonate long after the film has ended, and while this is a relatively minor aspect to give such immense praise to, there are few films that find visual and auditory stimuli in such perfect synchronicity.

While my own feelings towards the film may be far more subdued than most, it’s understandable why Django is so beloved. It combines classical western sensibilities with a thrilling plot, and adds in a more modern style of excessive, but not unbearable, violence as a tool to tell the story. It has many merits, and it contributes a lot to a sub-genre that always struggled with the concept of quantity superseding quality, especially considering how nearly all of them were made to be commercial entities rather than artistic achievements. This film sits between the two, being a victim of a rushed schedule that forced certain elements of the story to falter, such as structural inadequacies based on technical limitations in terms of resources and time, and a general feeling of not being made with the passion that many filmmakers at the time seemed to neglect in favour of capitalizing on a genre that was on the wrong side of its peak. The film isn’t entirely a failure, as it serves the exact purpose it intended to – its a thoroughly entertaining affair, with exciting violence and a riveting tale of heroism and facing adversity, even if it ultimately just composes itself from fragments of other films that may not have done any better than this, resulting in something that is enjoyable in the moment, but inspires not much other than ambivalence in its aftermath. Despite the thrilling violence that persists throughout, Django truly ends on a whimper rather than a bang, which is unfortunate for a film that so prominently features a machine gun as its most compelling plot device.