‘Death, sometimes, has its price’: how Douglas Davies and Sergio Leone cope with capitalism and change

The works of Douglas Davies and Sergio Leone have much in common. Death features strongly as a main theme for both, both reflect on the social function of money, and both interpret social behaviours in light of these interests. It might, therefore, be expected that the sociological and anthropological work of Davies can shed further light on the increasingly investigated work of Leone’s films – and, indeed, vice versa. What I will attempt here is a speculative application of some of Davies’ work on social behaviour to an understanding of historical change while implicitly suggesting that such a reading of Leone’s westerns can provide a complementary economic dimension to Davies’ analyses.