Django · reception & legacy
1966 · Sergio Corbucci
How Django has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Dismissed on release as gratuitously violent pulp — it was refused a certificate in the UK and didn't get an official release there until 1993 — Django is now canonised as the essential non-Leone spaghetti western, its stock boosted enormously by Tarantino's very public devotion.
What's debated
The perennial cinephile fight: is Corbucci the true equal of Leone, and within his own filmography, does Django deserve the crown or is The Great Silence actually his masterpiece?
Its footprint
The image of Django dragging a coffin through the mud is one of the most referenced in all of genre cinema, and the name itself became a franchise: dozens of unofficial 'Django' films borrowed the title, and Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012) — complete with a Franco Nero cameo — made it a household word again.
Where it stands
A cult object turned canon staple — the 'second pillar' of the spaghetti western on every Letterboxd genre list, and the gateway drug to Corbucci's muddier, meaner corner of the genre.