Sergio Leone by Ryan Haberman

After watching a few of his movies, and noticing the fact that each of them was anywhere from two and a half to three hours in length, it became very apparent to me that when it came to film making, Italian director Sergio Leone wasn’t going to settle for anything less than an epic. I quickly became aware that like many other directors, Leone was a man with a vision and he would not stop until he decided that his vision had been perfectly adapted to the screen. As a result of that, his films have lived on to become highly regarded amongst movie lovers and many of them are now considered to be classics of cinema.

                Leone was born in Rome, Italy on January 3^rd, 1929. Both his parents were part of the Italian film scene at the time, so Leone grew up being able to watch his father work on movies and when he was old enough, he decided to get into the film industry himself. He started at the bottom as a production assistant and worked his way up to the top. While working on the set of Last Days of Pompeii as an assistant director, he ended up finishing the film himself after the 1^st director got sick and dropped out. After that his directorial career took off and by the mid 1960’s, he was ready to direct his own films.

 He had a keen interest in a new sub-genre of cinema that would later be known as the “Spaghetti Western” and wrote a screenplay entitled A Fistful of Dollars which was an unofficial remake of Kurosawa’s film, Yojimbo. The film starred American actor Clint Eastwood who played a lone drifter who gets entangled in a dispute between two rival families who want control of a small Mexican town.

In this movie Leone developed a new style of cinema, in which the actors were made to look more dirty, rugged and worn, unlike previous American western films in which the actors looked like they had just walked out of a fashion magazine. I read that he got most of his inspiration from reading books about the American west and the civil war and often used pictures right out of those books to figure out the wardrobe for his actors. This was a new, more realistic representation of the Old American West, and it got a lot of fame, especially upon its release in the U.S. He went on to make a sequel, For a Few Dollars More, and then he made a third film, which became his most famous and is arguably the most original third installment in a trilogy ever, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

               This is the first film that I watched for this project and it focuses on three men on a quest to find a cache of confederate gold worth 200,000 dollars.

               Leone’s style has been something that he was conscious of, and he continued to develop it over his career. My opinion is that Leone is a man of extremes and he continues using them through out his many Westerns including his box office hit, Once Upon a Time in the West, which was the second movie that I watched. He frequently uses huge backed off shots to show off landscapes and the wide open spaces of the American west. Then during duel scenes, he gets up close and personal, right in the faces of his actors, filling the frames. Another thing he brought to the table was the use of extreme violence and many of the fighting scenes in his films were considered to be overly brutal, especially for the time. Another trait of his was these very long drawn out build up sequences right before his fight scenes, which would go on for five minutes or more most of the time, and would eventually build to a very quick scene of actual action.

               He pays an extraordinary amount of attention to detail as well. He’s one of those directors where you have to watch his films multiple times in order to take in everything, because there are so many little things you miss. He demonstrates this in his final film Once Upon a Time in America. This film follows a Jewish gangster played by Robert De Niro, who grows up into a life of crime in New York City during the prohibition. The movie is based on the novel The Hoods by Harry Grey. 

And of course, where would Leone be without the awesome musical scores of Sergio’s longtime friend and composer, Ennio Morricone? Leone’s directorial genius combined with Morricone’s creative, musical genius makes them into what I like to call, one of the great power-duos of the cinema world: much like that of Spielberg and Williams or Nolan and Zimmer. In a documentary about Leone, Clint Eastwood stated that Leone and Morricone worked so well together that often times, Sergio would have Morricone compose music for his scenes before he even filmed them, so they could play it on set. I truly believe that Leone wouldn’t have been as successful without Morricone’s music. Even if you haven’t seen The Good the Bad and Ugly, I’m sure you have probably heard the ridiculously catchy theme song for it.

 Overall, I think Leone is one of the most underrated directors in cinema. A lot of people tend to think of Spaghetti Westerns as being very cheesy, and a lot of them are, but I don’t know if I feel that way about Leones work. I think that his films, in relation to their genre and the fact that Leone is Italian, are quite literally a lot like a plate of spaghetti. They are filling, surprisingly tasteful, and from time to time may have a little bit of cheese.

- For this project I watched: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America.

 

Sources:

“An Opera of Violence”. Once Upon a Time in the West. Dir. Sergio Leone. Paramount. DVD. Disc 2

“Leone’s West, The Making-Of Documentary”. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Dir. Sergio Leone. MGM. DVD. Disc 2

“Once Upon a Time: Leone Profiling the making of his film”. Once Upon a Time in America. Dir. Sergio Leone. Warner Bros. DVD. Disc 2

Biography. Fistful- of- Leone. Com. Web. 2007. 19^th March 2012

Sergio Leone, Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 5 March, 2012. Web.19^th March 2012.

A Fistful of Dollars, Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 5 March, 2012. Web.19^th March 2012.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 5 March, 2012. Web.19^th March 2012.

Sergio Leone, 2012. IMDB. Web. 19^th March, 2012. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001466/

Directors Worksheet

Name: Sergio Leone

Year Born: 1929. died in 1989

Country: Italy

Background: Grew up in the film industry. Started as grunt and worked his way to the top. Wrote screenplays during the 1950’s and eventually became a director.

First Feature: Last Days of Pompeii (Unofficial), The Colossus of Rhoades

Most Famous Films: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, Once Upon a Time in America.

Genre’s explored: Spaghetti Westerns, Historical Dramas

Stylistic Tendencies: Lots of wide shots, big open spaces with depth of field, extreme close-ups (especially on actors), long-drawn out build up scenes that lead to quick action, observation of details, minimal dialog.

Typical Content: Fantastically detailed sets, very keen on realism, important role of music (by Ennio Morricone), very violent scenes.

Awards and accolades: David di Donatello award for Duck, You Sucker! – 1972,

Nomination for BAFTA and Golden Globe for Once Upon a Time in America - 1984

Long-Term collaborators: Clint Eastwood during the Dollars Trilogy

Mario Brega – Dollars Triolgy and Once Upon a Time in America

Aldo Sambrell, Benito Stefanelli and Antonio Molino – Dollars Trilogy, Once Upon a Time in the West, and A Fistful of Dynamite.

Ennio Morricone – Music for all his movies

Interesting facts:

He was originally selected to direct The Godfather but turned it down to direct Once Upon a Time in America.

Hardly ever used a script on set because he would already have the scene memorized in his head.