#spaghetti-western

#spaghetti-western

It was no surprise, when Federico Fellini cast Claudia Cardinale in 8 (1963), that she played the dream girl of his alter ego on screen. By that time, Cardinale, who has died aged 87, had already emerged as a major Italian film star. In the same year, she appeared as the ravishing Sicilian courted by Alain Delon's handsome Garibaldi officer in Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), Luchino Visconti's great adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel.

In 1975, Indian cinema released one of its greatest films, Ramesh Sippy's "Sholay." For this young grade-schooler, watching it with my parents in Chicago's Arie Crown theater, it was among the most captivating movie experiences of my life. Fifty years later, I'm sure every South Asian man of my generation still remembers "Sholay" with the most fondness. A local officer, Inspector Thakur Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar), hires two small-time convicts, Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) and Veeru (Dharmendra), to capture the renegade scoundrel Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan).