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'Sergio Leone' (January 3, 1929 – April 30, 1989) was an Italian film director.
Leone is well-known for his Spaghetti Western films, and his recognizable style of juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with extreme long shots. Despite only directing seven films, Leone is recognized as one of the greatest directors of all time. Of his seven films, he is best known for his The Man With No Name trilogy, which consists of ''A Fistful of Dollars'', ''For A Few Dollars More'', and ''The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly'', as well as ''Once Upon A Time In The West''.

Contents

Biography

1960s

1970s

1980s

Death

Trivia

Filmography

References

External links

Biography

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 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) 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 Pompeii'') 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 directorial 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.

1960s

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 upon Akira Kurosawa's Meiji-era samurai adventure ''Yojimbo'' (1961), it elicited 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 a 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 called 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 about the American West. He knew a great deal about the American West, and it was reflected in his films. It 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 mostly in Spain and Italy, and briefly Monument Valley, Utah, 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.

1970s

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 director Peter Bogdanovich, 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 stepped 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 Partners and a Dupe'' (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 "strong green", a pun referring to the three colours of the Italian flag and to the star and director of the film Carlo Verdone, 1981) and ''Troppo Forte'' (''Great!'', 1986). During this period he also directed various award-winning TV commercials for European television.

1980s

Leone had turned down the opportunity to direct ''The Godfather'' in favor of working on another gangster story he had conceived before the ''Godfather'' offer. Leone devoted ten years on this project, based on the novel ''The Hoods'' by Harry Grey, focused on a quartet of New York City Jewish gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s who had been friends since childhood. The finished film, ''Once Upon a Time in America'' (1984), starring Robert De Niro and James Woods, 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 (only for the American market) its four-hour running time drastically, losing much of the sense of the complex narrative. The recut version flopped and received much criticism.
The original version, projected in the rest of the world, had great appreciation by the public and by critics.
When the integral version of the film was released to DVD in the USA, it gained major critical acclaim, with many critical circles hailing the film as a masterpiece.

Death

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 becoming obese. This was no doubt a contributing factor in 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 to whom it was dedicated.
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 story about two soldiers during the American Civil War.
Critical opinion of Leone's film contributions was initially mixed, partly because the spaghetti western was initially considered a low-prestige genre. However, today Sergio Leone is widely acclaimed as a master film-maker, receiving a 94% average filmography rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Leone's largest fanbase, however, has always been fellow directors. Among the many film makers who have claimed reference or inspiration by Leone's films include: Sam Peckinpah, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, John Milius, George Lucas, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Gore Verbinski, and Stanley Kubrick (for his film ''Barry Lyndon''). The cultural impact of Leone's films, particularly his early Westerns, is also immense, with the showdown sequences, the amoral lead characters, and Ennio Morricone's musical scores having become icons of cinema and pop culture.

Trivia

★ When it was announced that Willem Dafoe would play Jesus Christ in Martin Scorsese's ''The Last Temptation of Christ'', Leone 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.

★ Leone's five westerns are famous for their post-production dubbing. One movie critic has said of them: "The guns sound like cannons, and the cannons sound like nuclear explosions."

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

★ After viewing the notorious Italian cannibal film, ''Cannibal Holocaust'', Leone sent a letter to the film's director, Ruggero Deodato; ''Dear Ruggero, what a movie! The second part is a masterpiece of cinematographic realism but everything seems so real that I think you will get in trouble with all the world.'' Deodato was subsequently arrested due to authorities believing it to be a real snuff film.

★ After completing the Dollars trilogy, Leone wanted to make in 1968 Once Upon a Time in America but fans wanted another western before that, so he made Once Upon a Time in the West, not managing to do the gangster film for almost twenty years.

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)

★ ''My Name Is Nobody'' (''Il mio nome è Nessuno'', 1973) (producer, uncredited co-director)

★ ''Once Upon a Time in America'' (''C'era una volta in America'', 1984)

References

External links

★ Fistful-of-Leone.com

★

★ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database

★ www.fistfulofwesterns.com A Fistful of Westerns

★ www.Spaghetti-western.net The Spaghetti Western Database

★ Biographical article at Once Upon A Time In America fansite

★ Photo