The Spaghetti Western

A craft study of the genre Sergio Leone and his contemporaries built between 1964 and 1978 — the two-perforation Techniscope frame that halved the negative and doubled the grain, the Almeria desert standing in for the American frontier, the directors, the recipe, and the films worth watching in order.

It exists to separate the myth from the mechanics. 'Spaghetti Western' is usually a vibe — dust, squints, a whistled theme — this study is the actual grammar underneath the vibe: the film stock, the lens choices, the standoff staging, named and explained.

What to take from it: a genre is a set of specific, learnable technical decisions, not just a mood. Name the decisions and you can see exactly what later films are quoting, and why the quote works.