Sergio Corbucci was born on December 6, 1927 in Rome, Italy. He entered grade school with thoughts of becoming a businessman, but after earning a college degree in economics, he took an abrupt detour into the world of cinema. Corbucci began his career as a film critic first for the Italian film journal magazine Schermi del Mondo and later for the newspaper Stars and Stripes during World War II for the US Army.
Corbucci made his directorial debut with the film Salvate mia figlia (1951) and quickly made a name for himself as a capable and efficient filmmaker. His professional ability to make large-scale action sequences with a minimal budget kept him in demand as as assistant director as well. It was on one such assignment, while filming with a second unit in Spain for friend and director Sergio Leone on The Last Days of Pompeii (1959), that Corbucci claims that the idea for the so-called Speghetti Western was born. Seeing the landscape of Spain with its wild horses, extraordinary canyons, and semi-desert landscapes which looked a lot like Mexico or Texas, which Corbucci suggested making an American Wild West-themed film in Spain. Corbucci then directed his first western in Spain just before Sergio Leone completed the ground-breaking A Fistfull of Dollars in 1964.
Corbucci found early success in Italy by directing a number of different genres, with films as disparate as Totò, Peppino e... la dolce vita (1961), a slapstick comedy spoof of Frederico Fellini's box office hit, as well as Romolo e Remo (1961) (Duel of the Titans), and Maciste contro il vampiro (1961). He also wrote the screenplay for a few seminal horror films such as Danza macabra (1964) (Castle of Blood) which starred Barbara Steele. But it was his 1964 film Massacro al Grande Canyon that he began a new path to his career to direct more Spaghetti Westerns. Massacre at Grand Canyon, which Corbucci co-directed under the pseudonym Stanley Corbett with Albert Brand, differed little from the American Wild West films at that time, but his subsequent films would set a new bold standard for on-screen violence and establish him as one of the most influential Italian directors of the Spaghetti Western.
Minnesota Clay (1965), starring Cameron Mitchell, was Corbucci's next film in the genre and and first Spaghetti Western to be distributed in the United States under the director's own name. This picture was a moderate success, but Corbucci's next Spaghetti Western would break box office records worldwide and brand his name in Western history alongside Sergio Leone. A Fistfull of Dollars may have sparked the international popularity of the Spaghetti Western, but Sergio Corbucci's Django (1966) brought an entirely new level of stylization with the genre. The ultra-violent masterpiece not only signaled a move toward an even grittier and more nihilistic brand of Western, but the picture established a lasting relationship between Corbucci and the film's star Franco Nero.
After the success of Django, Corbucci then embarked on a trail of directing more Western films and quickly became the more prolific filmmakers in the genre. His subsequent Spaghetti Westerns, Johnny Oro (1966), I crudeli (1967), and Navajo Joe (1966) were filmed and released in quick succession to great box office success in Italy. His next Western was Il grande silenzio (1968) (The Great Silence) which referred to Django as an "anti-Western" with the hero moving though cold rather then heat and fighting in the mud and snow rather then sweat and dust which starred Jean-Louis Trintignant as a mute gunslinger and Klaus Kinski as a sadistic bounty hunter. The innovative script, which was co-written by Corbucci, makes great use of mountain locations which was filmed in northern Italy in the snow-covered area of Cortina, and showed Corbucci edging close to the new type of political Westerns where he is best known for.
His next Western film was Il mercenario (1968) which would began his semi-genre with what he called the "Zapata-Spaghetti Westerns" or proletarian fables were the bad guys are on the right and the good guys are on the left. By setting the story in Mexico and fleshing out his characters with political awareness, Corbucci's intent became more clear and his political statements became more explicit. After directing the semi-successful Gli specialisti (1969), Corbucci re-teamed up with Franco Nero again with Vamos a matar, compañeros (1970), which was his last box office success and it stands as the most accomplished Spaghetti Westerns by any director which holds a combination of humor, pathos, comic book style action, and political commentary.
During the 1970s, Corbucci made three more Western movies as the popularity of the genre began to die out. Of the three, only La banda J.S.: Cronaca criminale del Far West (1972) stands out as one of the best late series genre Westerns. Che c'entriamo noi con la rivoluzione? (1972) is almost a parody of his Zapata-Spaghetti Westerns, while Il bianco il giallo il nero (1975) is married by racial stereotypes and was not well received.
By the late 1970s, with the era of Spaghetti Westerns over, Corbucci turned his filmmaking career to comedy and found some success with directing the films, Bluff storia di truffe e di imbroglioni (1976), and Poliziotto superpiù (1980). He continued to work off and on during the 1980s with comedies until his death from a sudden heart attack on December 2, 1990. His last film was the made-for-Italian-TV-movie Donne armate (1990) (TV) which was completed a few months before his death as his health was starting to fail. Sergio Corbucci is remembered for revolutionizing the Spaghetti Western genre which was popularized by his friend Sergio Leone who passed away a little over a year before Corbucci.
