Corbucci’s devotion has a precise formulation: Tarantino presents him as the second great director of the Italian Western, behind Leone.
What does second place really mean
In the documentary Django & Django, directed by Luca Rea and released in 2021, Quentin Tarantino develops his admiration for Sergio Corbucci. The wording quoted by distributor Shameless Films places him as the second-best director of Italian Westerns. The adjective matters: it is not a proven ranking of all Western filmmakers in the world, nor a statement that automatically places him above every American director.
The preference also has an earlier record. In the list Tarantino submitted to The Spaghetti Western Database in January 2009, Django was in third place and The Great Silence was fourteenth. Both choices show sustained attention to Corbucci, even if a film’s position on a personal list does not by itself explain the reasons for the admiration. To understand them, it is worth looking at what kind of West his images build.
Corbucci opens the door to a territory where violence may be built into institutions, the economy and everyday life. The protagonist does not always arrive in a community capable of restoring balance simply by eliminating a villain. Sometimes the community is organised in such a way that cruelty is profitable. That difference alters the expectations with which the appearance of a gunman is viewed.
Django: the hero enters dragging a coffin
Django, released in 1966, shows Franco Nero crossing a muddy landscape with a coffin. The image defines a strange relationship between movement and burden: the character moves forward, but carries something that belongs to the world of death. Before we know his intentions, his presence already raises a question. The mystery does not depend on an immediate verbal explanation; it is built into a visible action and an object that cannot be ignored.
The mud also transforms the texture of the Western. The ground makes progress difficult, dirties the bodies and strips movement of nobility. The spaces seem worn and hostile. The landscape does not function as a promise of unlimited freedom, but as a weight bearing down on those who try to cross it. That physical experience prepares a story in which the hero’s superiority cannot be taken for granted either.
The violence of the opposing groups places the protagonist within a system of domination and opportunism. Intervening does not mean finding a morally transparent side to join without reservation. The viewer must follow the alliances and distinguish between what the character says and what he is trying to achieve. The solitary figure remains appealing, but his journey is crossed by interests that do not disappear with a display of skill.
The body’s vulnerability is essential. A gunman is usually defined by the speed and dexterity of his hands; threatening them is to call into question the identity the genre grants him. Corbucci makes violence have consequences for the very ability to act. The tension lies not only in waiting for the next duel, but in wondering what is left of a hero when he loses part of what made him formidable.
The Great Silence and the fragility of justice
The relationship between landscape and body makes it possible to compare both films without reducing the difference to their plots: walking through mud and moving over snow impose visibly different forms of resistance.
The Great Silence, from 1968, swaps mud for snow and sets Jean-Louis Trintignant against Klaus Kinski. The cold is not a pleasant backdrop to the action. It conditions movement, isolation and dependence on scarce shelter. The whiteness of the landscape also offers no equivalent moral clarity: a clean appearance can contain a deeply cruel order.
The bounty system turns death into a paid activity. Legality can serve as cover for those who profit from hunting vulnerable people. That mechanism makes the conflict harder to resolve through a simple opposition between representatives of the law and criminals. The viewer needs to see who gains power from the rules and who is left exposed to them.
The silent protagonist shifts attention towards gestures, looks and the relationships he establishes with others. His reserve does not eliminate emotion, but it forces us to perceive it without the constant help of explanatory speeches. Opposite him, the antagonist’s confidence is unsettling because it seems to rest on something more solid than his individual ability: an environment that tolerates and rewards his behaviour.
Without revealing the ending, the film allows us to measure the extent to which the Western needs to promise that justice will be possible. Corbucci stretches that expectation and forces us to recognise the gap between wanting redress and having the means to achieve it. Tarantino’s admiration finds here a cinema that can be spectacular and harsh, recognisable as adventure and difficult to take in as comfort. Watching Django alongside The Great Silence makes it possible to appreciate two variants of that harshness without reducing the director to a single image of violence.
See the selection of filmmakers and actors admired by Tarantino.