Berlioz-II

Over the past few months I've been busy going through the various Italian Westerns, better known as "spaghetti Westerns," I've accumulated over the years from various sources, but never really sat down to actually watch aside from the ones I have on DVD. So, finally I just decided to power through the whole collection and, while I was at it, write reviews of them (mostly to keep myself reminded of what happens in each film). I've accumulated 129 articles at present, but there's still several notable movies I want to see that have been a little elusive to get. But that's for the future down the line as with this little project having reached its initial goal, I can take things a little easier now.

The Western's somewhat inexplicable rebirth at the border of Italy and Spain in the early 1960s was much influenced by commercial considerations as a few things precipitated its sudden explosion into a highly profitable subgenre. For one, with the sudden plummeting of the historical Hollywood epic in popularity in the early '60s, precipitated by their huge production costs and them just not making enough money at the box office (e.g. "Cleopatra" and "The Fall of the Roman Empire), Americans suddenly bailed from Italy where many of them were filmed. It subsequently also caused the Italian peplum knockoffs to see a similar demise and left many movie professionals out of work. So as a means of finding something suitable as replacement, some filmmakers turned to making Westerns as these genre films were popular in Italy and, with American interest also showing sings of waning for them, it seemed like a perfect chance to fill in the holes with some of their own productions.

For this intent, considering the country was right next door to Spain, whose desert areas could easily double for those of the American Midwest, filled with cheap workforce and plenty of extras to make for a somewhat believable transposition of the American-Mexican border, it seemed fertile land to cultivate as the number of productions began to grow annually from 1961 onward. The very early movies were effectively cheap ripoffs of American B-Westerns, until in came Sergio Leone with his remake of Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo," called "A Fistful of Dollars," in 1964 and blew the bank. This film defined a style that was very different from Hollywood Westerns and showed a more operatic and gritty interpretation of anti-heroes and savage bad guys inhabiting a world of death, profiteering, and revenge. From thereon, seriousness and violence was the order of the day, with the genre as a whole beginning to shape into something completely original, which similarly had an echo effect back to Hollywood when more of their Westerns began to also exhibit greater levels of gray scales and exaggerated violence, eventually morphing into the revisionist Western of the 1970s.

Around the late-60s, though, things began to change and more lighthearted movies began to get increasingly more ground. This came to a head in 1970 when the full-on comedy "They Call Me Trinity" premiered to huge box-office smashing popularity, which effectively signalled the death knell of the Italian Western. With serious movies not getting much traction and comedies devolving into self-parody (wonderfully satirised in "My Name Is Nobody"), audience interest flickered until going completely out by the end of the '70s. And while there were still a few trickles here and there in the '80s, this unique chapter in cinema history saw its growth from cheap knockoffs to massive success and eventual self-destruction in just shy of two decades. But during that time it brought with it some unforgettable characters, made Clint Eastwood a star, bared a great influence in the shift of the Western style from its Golden Age of John Ford to what it is today, and spoke of a generation that was more prone to anarchism than playing it nice. It's a genre full of poorly made dreck, but also some shining gems. For anyone interested in delving deeper, enjoy reading here: Page one is a list of the movies, the second the reviews

Laukontori had its origins when the owner of the Laukko Manor, Adolf Törngren, started ferrying passengers on his boat, also named "Laukko," from the lower shore of Tampere to his manor a few kilometres away at Vesilahti in 1859. This in turn caused shipping traffic to increase around this place, leading to the shore being turned into a proper harbour and market plaza in 1866, appropriately named Laukontori (Laukko Market). But it wasn't until the late 1890s when the harbour received a stone retaining wall and became more functional for the frequent shipping commerce, even if the plaza's use as a market place decreased in the early 1900s (though this has since been much revived).

The plaza's surroundings mostly began forming in the early 1900s as large apartment buildings started popping up on the sides of the small square, the view for which hasn't seen a huge amount of chance since then. The first was "Laukonkulma" in 1901 by Arthur af Hällström (on the left), followed by the "Nykänen Building" in 1903 by Vihtori Heikkilä, "Laukonlinna" in 1907 by Birger Federley, and "Laukonhovi" in 1926 by Veikko Kallio. The other side of the area was dominated by various industrial facilities, like the Liljeroos broadcloth factory, the Peterson groundwood plant, and the large Tako paper factory, the last which is still operational of the old city centre factories.

The older picture dates from the 1910s, before Laukonhovi was built, though otherwise the view has remained relatively unchanged. The obvious big difference is the Nykänen Building in the middle, whose Jugend characteristics followed the trends of the day. In the 1930s, however, it was raised by one floor and at the same time its façade was modernised to a concurrent functionalist style. Eventually, though, even this wasn't ultimately enough to save the building as it was demolished in 1973 to make way for an incredibly ill-fitting standardised apartment block that makes no attempts to fit in with its older surroundings.

Harbour activity is no longer that frequent due to the decrease in the area's industry, and commercial boating is limited to small cruises to the isle of Viikinsaari during the summers. But with the opening of the historical Laukko Manor to the public this summer, a shipping route following the old Törngren path has once more been opened, as if completing a historical circle from 157 years ago. Also the plaza once more hosts a healthy amount of market stall activity and provides a nice little place to relax and take a breather.