Sergio Leone

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Sergio Leone (3 January, 1929 – 30 April, 1989) was an Italian film director considered to be one of the greatest western directors of all time. Born in Rome, he was the son of the cinema pioneer Vincenzo Leone (known as director Roberto Roberti), and the actress Edvige Valcarenghi (Bice Waleran), and started working in the film industry himself at the age of eighteen. He was also credited as Bob Robertson. Sergio Leone is well-known for his Spaghetti Western films, and his signature use of extreme close-up shots.

Contents

1 Biography
2 Trivia
3 Filmography
4 External links

Biography

He began writing screenplays in the 1950s, primarily for the so-called "sword and sandal" or "peplum" historical epics which were popular at the time. He also worked as an assistant director on several large-scale, high-profile Hollywood productions, a.k.a. runaway productions, filmed at Cinecittà Studios in Rome, notably Quo Vadis (1951) (in which a teenaged Sophia Loren appeared in a small role) and Ben-Hur (1959).

When director Mario Bonnard fell ill during the production of the 1959 Italian epic Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (The Last Days of Pompei) starring Steve Reeves, Sergio Leone was asked to step in and complete the film. As a result, when the time came to make his solo directoral debut with The Colossus of Rhodes (Il Colosso di Rodi, 1961), he was well equipped to produce low-budget films which looked and felt like Hollywood spectaculars.

In the early 1960s, demand for historical epics collapsed, and Leone was fortunate enough to be at the forefront of the genre which replaced it in the public's affections: the Western. His A Fistful of Dollars (Per un pugno di dollari, 1964) was an early trend-setter in a genre which came to be known as the "spaghetti western". Based closely enough on Akira Kurosawa's Meiji-era samurai adventure Yojimbo (1961) to elicit a legal challenge from the Japanese director, the film is notable for its establishment of Clint Eastwood as a star. Until that time, he had been an American television actor with few roles to his name.

The look of the film was established partly by its budget, partly by its Spanish locations, and it presented a gritty, violent, morally complex vision of the American West which paid tribute to traditional American Westerns, but significantly departed from them in storyline, plot, characterization, and mood. Leone deservedly gets credit for one great breakthrough in the Western genre that is still followed today: in traditional Western films, heroes and villains alike looked like they had just stepped out of the fashion magazine and the moral opposites were clearly drawn, even down to the hero wearing a white hat and the villain wearing a black hat. Leone's characters were, in contrast, more "realistic" and complex: usually "lone wolves" in their behaviour, they rarely shaved, looked dirty, and there was a strong suggestion of body odour and a history of criminal behaviour; they were morally ambiguous and often either generously compassionate or nakedly and brutally self-serving as the situation demanded. This sense of realism continues to affect Western movies today, and has also been influential outside this genre. Many have said it ironic that an Italian director who could not speak English and had never even seen the American west could have almost single handedly redefined the typical vision of the American cowboy. According to Christopher Frayling's book Something to do with Death, Leone was an avid reader of the American West. He knew a ton of information about it, and it was reflected in his films. It had fascinated him as a child, and that carried into his adulthood and his films.

His next two films—For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)—completed what has come to be known as the Dollars trilogy, with each film being more financially successful and more technically proficient than its predecessor. All three films featured scores by the prolific composer Ennio Morricone: Leone had a personal way of shooting scenes with Morricone's music ongoing. Critics have often said that The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was the finest of the trilogy.

Based on these successes, in 1967 he was invited to America to direct what he hoped would be his masterwork, Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una volta il West) for Paramount. Filmed in Monument Valley, Utah as well as in Spain and Italy, and starring Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, and Claudia Cardinale it emerged as a long, violent, dreamlike meditation upon the mythology of the American West. It was scripted by Leone's longtime friend and collaborator Sergio Donati.

The story was written by Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, both of whom went on to have significant careers as directors. Before its release, however, the film was ruthlessly edited by Paramount, which perhaps contributed to its poor box-office results in America. Nevertheless, it was a huge hit in Europe and highly praised amongst North American film students, and it has come to be regarded by many as Leone's best film.

After Once Upon a Time in the West, Leone directed A Fistful of Dynamite (Giù la testa, 1971). Leone was originally producing the film, but due to artistic differences between its stars and director Gian Carlo Santi, Leone was asked to step in. The film is a Mexican Revolution action drama starring James Coburn as an Irish revolutionary, and Rod Steiger as a Mexican bandit who is conned into becoming a revolutionary.

Leone continued to produce, and on occasion step in to re-shoot scenes. One of these films was My Name is Nobody (1973) by Tonino Valerii (though true participation of Leone in shooting is disputed), a comedy western film which poked fun at the spaghetti western genre. It starred Henry Fonda as an old gunslinger who watched 'his' old west fade away before his very eyes and Terence Hill as the young stranger who helps Fonda leave the dying west with style.

His other productions included, A Genius, Two Friends and A Dupe, (Un genio, due compari, un pollo, (1975), another western comedy starring Terence Hill. The Cat (Il gatto) (1977) starring Alberto Sordi, The Toy, (Il giocattolo, 1979) starring Nino Manfredi, and three comedies by actor/director Carlo Verdone, Fun Is Beautiful (Un Sacco Bello, 1980), Bianco, Rosso e Verdone (White, Red and Verdone - Verdone means "green", the referring to the three colours of Italian flag, 1981) and Troppo Forte (Great!, 1986). During this period he also directed various award winning TV commerials for European television.

Leone had turned down the opportunity to direct The Godfather, but spent the ten years developing a new epic project, this time focusing on a quartet of New York City Jewish gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s who had been friends since childhood. This work, Once Upon a Time in America (1984), was a project he had conceived before Once Upon a Time in the West, and it was for this very reason he turned down the offer to direct The Godfather.

Based on the novel The Hoods by Harry Grey, starring Robert De Niro and James Woods, Once Upon a Time in America was a meditation on another aspect of popular American mythology, the role of greed and violence and their uneasy coexistence with the meaning of ethnicity and friendship, and like the earlier film, it was too long and stately for the studio to stomach. The studio cut its four-hour running time drastically, losing much of the sense of the complex narrative. The recut version flopped and received much criticism. When the original version of the film was released to DVD, it gained major critcal acclaim, with many critical circles hailing the film as a masterpiece.

At the time of his 1989 death at the age of 60, Leone was part way through planning yet another epic, this time on the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War. Leone was infamous for his compulsive eating which led him to be borderline obese. This is no doubt contributed to his early death of a heart attack. In his later years, Leone had a falling out of sorts with Clint Eastwood, his most famous actor. When he directed Once Upon a Time in America, he commented that Robert De Niro was a real actor, unlike Eastwood.

However, the two made amends before Leone's death. In 1992, Clint Eastwood directed Unforgiven, a revisionist Western for which he won the Oscar for best director. Leone was one of the people he dedicated it to.

In 2004 his son Andrea published a long treatment for a new film entitled A Place Only Mary Knows written by Sergio Leone, Luca Morsella and Fabio Toncelli. It is a fascinating story about two soldiers during the American Civil War.

Critical opinion of Leone's film contributions were initially mixed due to the negative bias towards spaghetti westerns. However, today Sergio Leone is universally acclaimed, receiving a 94% average filmography rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Trivia

When it was announced that Willem Dafoe would play Jesus Christ in Martin Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ, he reportedly exclaimed "This is the face of a murderer, not our Lord!"

On the set of A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood nicknamed Leone "Yosemite Sam" because of his often belligerent temper.

Even though the two had a falling-out in the 1980's, Eastwood still dedicated his western opus Unforgiven to Leone as well as Don Siegel.

According to Christopher Frayling's biography, Leone wanted to do a remake of "Gone With the Wind."

Filmography

The Last Days of Pompeii (Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei) (1959) (Mario Bonnard is the credited director; Leone served as assistant director and reportedly took over completion of the film when Bonnard became severely ill during production)
Il Colosso di Rodi (1961)
A Fistful of Dollars (Per un pugno di dollari, 1964)
For a Few Dollars More (Per qualche dollaro in piu, 1965)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, 1966)
Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una volta il West, 1968)
A Fistful of Dynamite (Giù la testa, 1971)
Once Upon a Time in America (C'era una volta in America, 1984)

External links

[Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database]
http://www.fistful-of-leone.com/
[www.Spaghetti-western.net] The Spaghetti Western Database
[10kbullets] Feature Article: [Sergio Leone]

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