Emancipation all’italiana: Giuseppe Colizzi and the Representation of African Americans in Italian Westerns

This chapter offers an alternative take on representations of ethnicity in the Spaghetti Western. In particular, it examines its representations of African Americans, and asks what this might tell us about the politics of race in Italy and the USA in the 1960s. It focuses on the content of two Italian Westerns directed by Giuseppe Colizzi: Ace High (I quattro dell'Ave Maria, 1968) and Boot Hill (La collina degli stivali, 1969). It argues that local historical, cultural, and political circumstances resulted in the Italian Western introducing progressive representations of African Americans out West that prefigured the appearance of similarly progressive representations in American Western.