West and Soda

1965 Italian film

1 October 1965 (1965-10-01) (Italy)

17 August 1966 (1966-08-17) (USA)

Running time

86 minutesCountryItalyLanguageItalian

West and soda (also known as The West Way Out) is a 1965 Italian animated Western comedy film directed by Bruno Bozzetto. It is a parody of the traditional American Western.^[1]

In an interview, Bozzetto claimed to have invented the Spaghetti Western genre with this film, an achievement usually attributed to Sergio Leone with his A Fistful of Dollars which was released the year before, but whose development started later and was faster than the traditionally animated West and Soda.^[2]

Plot

The plot of the film follows the traditional stranger arriving in a small western town. The stranger finds a pretty woman holding out from selling her uniquely green land to the local big shot, who is harassing her in hope of seducing her/buying her land. There is an ongoing mystery about how the stranger got a hold of the gold nugget he possesses, though at the end of the film it is revealed that he found it in a soap box (it is fake).

Cast

Character	Original	English
Johnny	Nando Gazzolo	Unknown
Clementine	Vittoria Febbi
The Boss	Carlo Romano
Ursus	Luigi Pavese
Slim	Willy Moser
Esmeralda	Lydia Simoneschi
The Boss's Horse	Ferruccio Amendola

DVD

A PAL R2 DVD of the film has been released in Italy. It contains 40 minutes of extra material, including interviews, a completely restored version of the film as well as English subtitles.

References

^ Bendazzi, Giannalberto (23 October 2015). Animation: A World History. CRC Press. ISBN 9781317519911. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
^ Iondini, Massimo (3 October 2015). "Bozzetto: "Così ho inventato lo spaghetti western"" [Bozzetto: «So I invented spaghetti western»]. Avvenire (in Italian). Milan. Retrieved 1 October 2019.