7. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
Though this isn’t a blaxploitation movie or a spaghetti western in any sense, it’s a movie that Quentin Tarantino himself holds in particularly high regard (despite the fact that he was put off watching it for years because he hated the inaudible dialogue in the first scenes). McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a western, though, and the best film that Robert Altman ever made. It’s a revisionist western in the sense that the origins of the genre are deconstructed and played around with: there is no room for happy ends or heroes here. It’s a haunting story, brilliant told, and one of very few westerns that genuinely seems like a snapshot from history.
Django Unchained seems to have borrowed a lot of McCabe and Mrs. Miller‘s aesthetic qualities, especially its shots of snow-covered plains and muddy makeshift towns. Although it probably won’t have heavily influenced the narrative technique of Tarantino’s movie, McCabe and Mrs. Miller is one of the best westerns ever made and (if you haven’t seen it) deserves your attention nonetheless.