92-429: Sergio Leone ( / l i ˈ oʊ n i / lee- OH -nee , Italian: [ˈsɛrdʒo leˈoːne] ; 3 January 1929 – 30 April 1989) was an Italian filmmaker, credited as the pioneer of the spaghetti Western genre. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential directors in the history of cinema. Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots . His films include
184-556: A Colt revolver that passed from owner to owner throughout the Old West, similar to Anthony Mann 's film Winchester '73 (1950). Donati indicated that Leone was interested in a more revisionist take on the genre than his earlier works, wanting to show the Old West "like it really was". Leone abandoned this project in favor of A Place Only Mary Knows , though Donati wrote a treatment and the project remained in gestation for years after Leone's death. An adaptation based on Leone's subject
276-568: A magnum opus . According to biographer Sir Christopher Frayling , Leone was deeply hurt by the studio-imposed editing and poor commercial reception of Once Upon a Time in America in North America. It was his last film. In 1988, he was head of the jury at the 45th Venice International Film Festival . Leone died on 30 April 1989 at his home in Rome of a heart attack at the age of 60. He
368-676: A Dish Served Cold , Renegade Riders , and others, while Beyond the Law has a bandit infiltrate society and become a sheriff. There would be a flamboyant Mexican bandit ( Gian Maria Volonté from A Fistful of Dollars , otherwise Tomas Milian , or most often Fernando Sancho ) and a grumpy old man, often an undertaker, to serve as sidekick for the hero. For the love interest, ranchers' daughters, schoolmarms and barroom maidens were overshadowed by young Latin women desired by dangerous men, for which actresses, such as Nicoletta Machiavelli or Rosalba Neri , carried on Marianne Koch 's role of Marisol in
460-509: A Few Dollars More , brought a larger box-office success, the profession of bounty hunter became the choice of occupation of spaghetti Western heroes in films, such as Arizona Colt , Vengeance Is Mine , Ten Thousand Dollars for a Massacre , The Ugly Ones , Dead Men Don't Count , and Any Gun Can Play . In The Great Silence and A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die , the heroes instead fight bounty killers. During this era, many heroes and villains in spaghetti Westerns began carrying
552-520: A Time in the West emerged as a long and violent dreamlike meditation upon the mythology of the American Old West, with many stylistic references to iconic Western films. Audience tension is maintained throughout this nearly three-hour film by concealing both the hero's identity and his unpredictable motivation until the final predictable shootout scene. Perhaps unsurpassed as a retribution drama,
644-400: A Time in the West , Leone directed Duck, You Sucker! ( Giù la testa , 1971). Leone was intending merely to produce the film, but due to artistic differences with then-director Peter Bogdanovich , Leone was asked to direct the film, instead. Duck, You Sucker! is a Mexican Revolution action drama, starring James Coburn as an Irish revolutionary and Rod Steiger as a Mexican bandit who
736-439: A Western parody with a marked spaghetti Western-theme; despite having been released a year after Sergio Leone's seminal spaghetti Western, A Fistful of Dollars , development of West and Soda actually began a year earlier than Fistful' s, and lasted longer, mainly because of the use of more time-demanding animation over regular acting. For this reason, Bozzetto claims to have invented the spaghetti Western genre. Because there
828-543: A cast of Italian, Spanish, and (sometimes) West German and American actors. Most spaghetti Westerns filmed between 1964 and 1978 were made on low budgets, and shot at Cinecittà Studios and various locations around southern Italy and Spain. Many of the stories take place in the dry landscapes of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico , thus, common filming locations were the Tabernas Desert and
920-510: A commemorative postage stamp honoring Leone. Critical reception to Leone's directorial features. Spaghetti Western The spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone 's filmmaking style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most of these Westerns were produced and directed by Italians . The majority of
1012-538: A con-man ( The Dirty Outlaws ), an outlaw posing as a sheriff and a bounty hunter ( Man With the Golden Pistol aka Doc, Hands of Steel ), and an outlaw posing as his twin and a bounty hunter posing as a sheriff ( A Few Dollars for Django ). The theme of age in For a Few Dollars More , in which the younger bounty killer learns valuable lessons from his more experienced colleague and eventually becomes his equal,
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#17327810043911104-418: A contemporary adaptation of Cervantes ' 17th-century novel Don Quixote with Clint Eastwood in the title role and Eli Wallach as Sancho Panza . He had discussed doing the project throughout the 1960s–1970s, and he started seriously considering it toward the end of his life. In 1987, Sergio Leone contacted his old collaborators Sergio Donati and Fulvio Morsella, pitching an idea for a TV miniseries about
1196-437: A fashion magazine, with clearly drawn moral opposites, even down to the hero wearing a white hat and the villain wearing a black hat (except for the most successful of the "traditional western cowboys" – Hopalong Cassidy , who wore a black outfit upon a pale horse). Leone's characters were, in contrast, more "realistic" and complex: usually lone wolves in their behavior; they rarely shaved, looked dirty, and sweated profusely, with
1288-481: A legal challenge from the Japanese director, though Kurosawa's film was, in turn, probably based on the 1929 Dashiell Hammett novel, Red Harvest . A Fistful of Dollars is also notable for establishing Clint Eastwood as a star. Until that time, Eastwood had been an American television actor with few credited film roles. The look of A Fistful of Dollars was established by its Spanish locations, which presented
1380-465: A musical watch, after its ingenious use in For a Few Dollars More . Spaghetti Westerns also began featuring a pair of different heroes. In Leone's film, Eastwood's character is an unshaven bounty hunter, dressed similarly to his character in A Fistful of Dollars , who enters an unstable partnership with Colonel Mortimer ( Lee Van Cleef ), an older bounty killer who uses more sophisticated weaponry and wears
1472-545: A pair of heroes in three earlier spaghetti Westerns, God Forgives... I Don't! , Boot Hill and Ace High , directed by Giuseppe Colizzi . The humor started in those movies, with scenes with comedy fighting, but the Barboni films became burlesque comedies. They feature the quick but lazy Trinity (Hill) and his big, strong and irritable brother, Bambino (Spencer). The stories lampoon stereotypical Western characters, such as diligent farmers, lawmen and bounty hunters. There
1564-483: A post-Trinity Western, My Name Is Nobody , with Henry Fonda, and a caper-story Western, A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe . The following year, Franco Nero achieved a similar draw as a Django-style hero in Keoma . However, by the end of the 1970s, the different types of spaghetti Westerns had lost their following among mainstream cinema audiences, and the production ground to a virtual halt. Belated attempts to revive
1656-640: A pun referring to the three colors of the Italian flag, the star and to director Verdone, 1981) and Troppo Forte ( Great! , 1986). During this period, Leone also directed various award-winning TV commercials for European television. In 1978, he was a member of the jury at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival . Leone turned down the offer to direct The Godfather , in favor of working on another gangster story he had conceived earlier. He devoted 10 years to this project, based on
1748-421: A ragged, laconic hero with superhuman weapon skill, preferably one who looked like Clint Eastwood: Franco Nero , John Garko , and Terence Hill started out that way; Anthony Steffen and others stayed that way throughout their spaghetti Western careers. Whoever the hero was, he would join an outlaw gang to further his own secret agenda, as in A Pistol for Ringo , Blood for a Silver Dollar , Vengeance Is
1840-485: A remake of. Although the written treatment never got turned into a full screenplay, Leone's son Andrea had it published in a June 2004 issue of the Italian cinema magazine Ciak . It is not certain if the treatment's publication will ever lead to a full production in America or Italy. While finishing work on Once Upon a Time in America in 1982, Leone was impressed with Harrison Salisbury 's non-fiction book The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad , and he planned on adapting
1932-405: A strong suggestion of criminal behavior. The characters were also morally ambiguous by appearing generously compassionate, or nakedly and brutally self-serving, as the situation demanded. Relationships revolved around power and retributions were emotion-driven rather than conscience-driven. Some critics have noted the irony of an Italian director who could not speak English, and had never even visited
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#17327810043912024-549: A suit, and, in the end, turns out to also be an avenger. In the following years, there was a deluge of spaghetti Westerns with a pair of heroes with (most often) conflicting motives. Examples include a lawman and an outlaw ( And the Crows Will Dig Your Grave ), an army officer and an outlaw ( Bury Them Deep ), an avenger and a (covert) army officer ( The Hills Run Red ), an avenger and a (covert) guilty party ( Viva! Django aka W Django! ), an avenger and
2116-464: A type of hero molded on the Mortimer character from For a Few Dollars More , only without any vengeance motive and with more outrageous trick weapons. Fittingly enough Sabata is portrayed by Lee Van Cleef himself, while John Garko plays the very similar Sartana protagonist. Parolini made some more Sabata movies, while Giuliano Carnimeo made a whole series of Sartana films with Garko. Beside
2208-573: A villain in Blindman and French rock 'n' roll veteran Johnny Hallyday as the gunfighter and avenger hero in Sergio Corbucci 's The Specialists . The story of A Fistful of Dollars was closely based on Akira Kurosawa 's Yojimbo . Kurosawa sued Sergio Leone for plagiarism, and was compensated with the exclusive distribution rights to the movie in Japan, where its hero, Clint Eastwood,
2300-524: A violent and morally complex vision of the American Old West . The film paid tribute to traditional American Western films, but significantly departed from them in storyline, plot, characterization, and mood. Leone gains credit for one great breakthrough in the Western genre still followed today; in traditional Western films, many heroes and villains looked alike as if they had just stepped out of
2392-549: Is Giorgio Capitani 's The Ruthless Four (in effect a gay version of John Huston 's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre ), in which the explicit homosexual relation between two of its male main characters and some gay cueing scenes are embedded with other forms of man-to-man relations through the story. In the 1960s, critics recognized that the American genres were rapidly changing. The genre most identifiably American,
2484-460: Is Giulio Questi 's Django Kill . Other "cult" items are Cesare Canevari 's Matalo! , Tony Anthony 's Blindman , and Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent 's Cut-Throats Nine (the latter among gore film audiences). The few spaghetti Westerns containing historical characters such as Buffalo Bill , Wyatt Earp , Billy the Kid , etc., appear mainly before A Fistful of Dollars had put its mark on
2576-411: Is a priest who espouses Liberation theology . The film concerns oppression of poor Mexicans by rich Anglos, and ends on a call for arms, but it does not fit easily as a Zapata Western , for it lacks the typical hero pair of a flamboyant Latin revolutionary and an Anglo specialist. The Price of Power serves a political allegory about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and racism. The movie concerns
2668-408: Is conned into becoming a revolutionary. Leone continued to produce, and on occasion, step in to reshoot scenes, in other films. One of these films was My Name Is Nobody (1973) by Tonino Valerii , a comedy Western film that poked fun at the spaghetti Western genre. It starred Henry Fonda as an old gunslinger facing a final confrontation after the death of his brother. Terence Hill also starred in
2760-464: Is currently in production. Appointed director is Italian film-maker Stefano Sollima . Leone was also an avid fan of Margaret Mitchell 's novel Gone with the Wind and the 1939 film adaptation . His relatives and close friends stated that he talked about filming a remake that was closer to the original novel, but it never advanced beyond discussions to any serious form of production. In 1969, Leone
2852-434: Is no real consensus about where to draw the exact line between spaghetti Westerns and other Eurowesterns (or other Westerns in general), it cannot be said which film is definitively the first spaghetti Western. However, 1964 saw the breakthrough of this genre, with more than twenty productions or coproductions from Italian companies, and more than half a dozen Westerns by Spanish or Spanish-American companies. Furthermore, by far
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2944-522: Is taken up in Day of Anger and Death Rides a Horse . In both cases, Lee Van Cleef carries on as the older hero versus Giuliano Gemma and John Phillip Law, respectively. One variant of the hero pair was a revolutionary Mexican bandit and a mostly money-oriented American from the United States frontier. These films are sometimes called Zapata Westerns. The first was Damiano Damiani 's A Bullet for
3036-604: Is to enroll men into the Union Army . The other is Richard Burns, a Southern shady businessman transplanted to the North after a successful heist with his ex-lover and partner, Mary. They try searching for the buried treasure left behind in an unmarked grave outside Atlanta in "A Place Only Mary Knows". Joined by a freed slave and an Italian immigrant , Francesco, who arrives via the Port of Boston , they try desperately to avoid
3128-601: The Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park , an area of volcanic origin known for its wide sandy beaches, both of which are in the Province of Almería in Southeastern Spain. Some sets and studios built for spaghetti Westerns survived as theme parks, such as Texas Hollywood , Mini Hollywood , and Western Leone , and continue to be used as film sets. Other filming locations used were in central and southern Italy , such as
3220-823: The Dollars Trilogy of Westerns featuring Clint Eastwood : A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966); and the Once Upon a Time films: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Duck, You Sucker! (1971), and Once Upon a Time in America (1984). Born on 3 January 1929 in Rome , Leone was the son of the cinema pioneer Vincenzo Leone (known as Roberto Roberti or Leone Roberto Roberti) and silent film actress Edvige Valcarenghi (known as Bice Waleran). His mother
3312-716: The West German Winnetou films and the Eastern Bloc Red Western films. Taking its name from the Spanish rice dish, " Paella Western" has been used to refer to Western films produced in Spain. The Japanese film Tampopo was promoted as a " Ramen Western". The majority of the films in the spaghetti Western genre were international coproductions by Italy and Spain, and sometimes France, West Germany, Britain, Portugal, Greece, Yugoslavia, and
3404-408: The (supposedly) Navajo village is wiped out by bandits during the first minutes, and the avenger hero spends the rest of the film dealing mostly with Anglos and Mexicans until the final showdown at a Native American burial ground. Several spaghetti Westerns are inspired by classical myths and dramas. Titles, such as Fedra West (also called Ballad of a Bounty Hunter ) and Johnny Hamlet , signify
3496-499: The 1963–1964 spaghetti Westerns. For example, in Sergio Corbucci 's Minnesota Clay , that appeared two months after A Fistful of Dollars , an American style "tragic gunfighter" hero who confronts two evil gangs, one Mexican and one Anglo, with (as in A Fistful of Dollars ) the leader of the latter being the town sheriff. In Johnny Oro , a traditional Western sheriff and a mixed-race bounty killer are forced into an uneasy alliance when Mexican bandits and Native Americans assault
3588-458: The American market, abandoning its flashback structure for a linear narrative. This version suffered heavy criticism and flopped. The original version, released in the rest of the world, achieved somewhat better box office returns and a mixed critical response. When the original version of the film was released on home video in the US, it gained major critical acclaim, with some critics hailing the film as
3680-651: The American studios. When director Mario Bonnard fell ill during the production of the 1959 Italian epic The Last Days of Pompeii ( Gli Ultimi Giorni di Pompei ), starring Steve Reeves , 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), Leone was well-equipped to produce low-budget films that looked like larger-budget Hollywood movies. Italian : Il cinema deve essere spettacolo, è questo che il pubblico vuole. E per me lo spettacolo più bello è quello del mito. Cinema must be spectacle, that's what
3772-551: The Bad and the Ugly ( Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo , 1966), completed what has come to be known as the Man with No Name trilogy (or the Dollars Trilogy ), with each film being more financially successful and more technically accomplished than its predecessor. The films featured innovative music scores by Ennio Morricone , who worked closely with Leone in devising the themes. Leone had a personal way of shooting scenes with Morricone's music ongoing. In addition, Clint Eastwood stayed with
Sergio Leone - Misplaced Pages Continue
3864-570: The Bad and the Ugly and Duck, You Sucker! but his idea of adapting the novel itself never got past the planning stages. Leone was an early choice to direct Flash Gordon (1980). Leone was a fan of the original Alex Raymond comic strip, but turned down the film because the script did not resemble Raymond's work. He received the America Award from the Italy–USA Foundation posthumously in 2014. In 2019, Poste Italiane issued
3956-604: The Black , Johnny Hamlet and also Seven Dollars on the Red . Another type of wronged hero is set up and must clear himself from accusations. Giuliano Gemma starred in a series of successful films carrying this theme— Adiós gringo , For a Few Extra Dollars , Long Days of Vengeance , Wanted and, to some extent, Blood for a Silver Dollar —in which his character is most often called "Gary". The wronged hero who becomes an avenger appears in many spaghetti Westerns. Among
4048-666: The East and A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe ), Spencer ( It Can Be Done Amigo ) and a pair of Hill-Spencer lookalikes in Carambola . A spaghetti Western old hand, Franco Nero , also worked in this subgenre with Cipolla Colt , and Tomas Milian plays an outrageous "quick" bounty hunter modeled on Charlie Chaplin 's Little Tramp in Sometimes Life Is Hard, Eh Providence? and Here We Go Again, Eh, Providence? . Terence Hill could still draw large audiences in
4140-662: The French horse country of Camargue (1911–1912). In Italy, the American West as a dramatic setting for spectacles goes back at least as far as Giacomo Puccini 's 1910 opera La fanciulla del West ( The Girl of the West ), which is sometimes considered to be the first spaghetti Western. The first Western movie made in Italy was La voce del sangue , produced by the Turin film studio Itala Film . In 1913, La vampira Indiana
4232-483: The General and then followed Sergio Sollima 's trilogy: The Big Gundown , Face to Face , and Run, Man, Run . Sergio Corbucci 's The Mercenary and Compañeros and Tepepa by Giulio Petroni are also considered Zapata Westerns. Many of these films enjoyed both good takes at the box office and attention from critics. They are often interpreted as a leftist critique of the typical Hollywood handling of
4324-462: The Leone film. The terror of the villains against their defenseless victims became just as ruthless as in A Fistful of Dollars , or more, and their brutalization of the hero when his treachery is disclosed became just as merciless, or more—similar to securing the latter's retribution. In the beginning, some films mixed some of these new devices with the borrowed U.S. Western devices typical for most of
4416-758: The Mexican Revolution, and of imperialism in general. In Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly there is still the scheme of a pair of heroes vs. a villain but it is somewhat relaxed, as here all three parties were driven by a money motive. In subsequent films such as Any Gun Can Play (whose Italian title, " Vado... l'ammazzo e torno ", is itself a quote from Leone's film), One Dollar Too Many , and Kill Them All and Come Back Alone several main characters repeatedly form alliances and betray each other for monetary gain. Sabata and If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death , directed by Gianfranco Parolini , introduce into similar betrayal environments
4508-440: The United States, let alone the American Old West, almost single-handedly redefining the typical vision of the American cowboy . According to Christopher Frayling 's book Something to do with Death , Leone knew a great deal about the American Old West. It fascinated him as a child, which carried into his adulthood and his films. Leone's next two films, For a Few Dollars More ( Per qualche dollaro in più , 1965) and The Good,
4600-432: The United States. Over six hundred European Westerns were made between 1960 and 1978. These movies were originally released in Italian or with Italian dubbing , but, as most of the films featured multilingual casts, and sound was post-synched, most western all'italiana do not have an official dominant language. The typical spaghetti Western team was made up of an Italian director, an Italo-Spanish technical staff, and
4692-611: The West ) and Fernando Cerchio 's Il bandolero stanco , starring Erminio Macario and Renato Rascel , respectively. After World War II, there were scattered European uses of Western settings, mostly for comedy, musical or otherwise. A cycle of Western comedies was initiated in 1959 with La sceriffa and Il terrore dell’Oklahoma , followed by other films starring comedy specialists, such as Walter Chiari , Ugo Tognazzi , Raimondo Vianello , and Fernandel . An Italian critic has compared these comedies to American Bob Hope vehicles. The first American-British Western filmed in Spain
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#17327810043914784-521: The Western, seemed to be evolving into a new, rougher form. For many critics, Sergio Leone 's films were part of the problem. Leone's Dollars Trilogy (1964–1966) was not the beginning of the "spaghetti Western" cycle in Italy, but for some Americans, Leone's films represented the true beginning of the Italian invasion of an American genre. Christopher Frayling , in his noted book on the Italian Western, describes American critical reception of
4876-468: The assassination of an American president in Dallas, Texas, by a group of Southern white supremacists who frame an innocent African-American. They are opposed by an unstable partnership between a whistleblower ( Giuliano Gemma ) and a political aide. Although it is intimated in some films, such as Django Kill and Requiescant , open homosexuality plays a marginal part in spaghetti Westerns. An exception
4968-435: The battles of the ongoing war between the states. The film was to have been a homage to classic writers from literature such as Edgar Lee Masters ( Spoon River Anthology ), Ambrose Bierce ( An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge ), Mark Twain ( The Private History of a Campaign that Failed ), Stephen Crane ( The Red Badge of Courage ), and Margaret Mitchell ( Gone with the Wind ), whose novel he had wanted to film
5060-525: The book as a war epic. Although no formal script had been completed or leaked, Leone came up with the opening scene and basic plot. According to the documentary Once Upon a Time, Sergio Leone , the film opened in medias res as the camera goes from focusing on a Soviet hiding from the Nazis ' artillery fire to panning hundreds of feet away to show the German Army Panzer divisions approaching
5152-439: The change to a lighter and more sentimental mood. The Trinity-inspired films also adopted this less serious and often-maligned style. Some critics deplore these post-Trinity films and their soundtracks as a degeneration of the "real" spaghetti Westerns. Indeed, Hill's and Spencer's skillful use of body language was a hard act to follow, and it is significant that the most successful of the post-Trinity films featured Hill ( Man of
5244-486: The cigarillo, the poncho, etc. The spaghetti Western was born, flourished and faded in a highly commercial production environment. The Italian "low" popular film production was usually low-budget and low-profit, and the easiest way to success was imitating a proven success. When the typically low-budget production, A Fistful of Dollars , turned into a remarkable box-office success, the industry eagerly lapped up its innovations. Most subsequent spaghetti Westerns tried to get
5336-453: The connection to Greek myth , the plays by Euripides and Racine , and the play by William Shakespeare , respectively. The latter also inspired 1972's Dust in the Sun , which follows the original more closely than Johnny Hamlet, in which the hero survives. The Forgotten Pistolero is based on the vengeance of Orestes . There are similarities between the story of The Return of Ringo and
5428-479: The conventions of traditional U.S. Westerns. This was partly intentional, and partly the context of a different cultural background. In 1968, the wave of spaghetti Westerns reached its crest, comprising one-third of the Italian film production, only to collapse to one-tenth in 1969. Spaghetti Westerns have left their mark on popular culture, strongly influencing numerous works produced in and outside of Italy. According to veteran spaghetti Western actor Aldo Sambrell ,
5520-555: The end, the cameraman dies on the day of the liberation of the city, when he is currently filming the surrender of the Germans. And the girl is aware of his death by chance seeing a movie news: the camera sees it explode under a shell". By 1989, Leone set the film's budget at $ 100 million, and had secured half of that amount in financing from independent backers from the Soviet Union. He had convinced Ennio Morricone to compose
5612-555: The film as the young stranger who helps Fonda leave the dying West with style. Leone's other productions included A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe (1975, another Western comedy starring Terence Hill); The Cat ( Il Gatto ; 1977, starring Ugo Tognazzi ), and A Dangerous Toy ( Il Giocattolo ; 1979, starring Nino Manfredi ). Leone also produced three comedies by actor/director Carlo Verdone , which were Fun Is Beautiful ( Un Sacco Bello , 1980), Bianco, rosso e Verdone ( White, Red and Verdone – Verdone means "strong green" –
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#17327810043915704-455: The film score, and Tonino Delli Colli was tapped to be the cinematographer . Shooting was scheduled to begin sometime in 1990. The project was canceled when Leone died two days before he was to officially sign on for the film. Alex Cox offered to replace Leone as director, but was unable to secure the remaining $ 50 million required to produce the film. According to Frayling's biography of Leone, Something to Do with Death , he envisioned
5796-681: The film series, joined later by Eli Wallach , Lee van Cleef , and Klaus Kinski . Based on the success of the Man with No Name trilogy, Leone was invited to the United States in 1967 to direct Once Upon a Time in the West ( C'era una volta il West ) for Paramount Pictures . The film was shot mostly in Almería , Spain, and Cinecittà in Rome. It was also briefly shot in Monument Valley , Utah . The film starred Charles Bronson , Henry Fonda , Jason Robards , and Claudia Cardinale . Once Upon
5888-608: The film's script was written by Leone and his longtime friend and collaborator Sergio Donati , from a story by Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento , both of whom went on to have significant careers as directors. Before its release, it was ruthlessly edited by Paramount, which perhaps contributed to its low box-office results in the United States. Nevertheless, it was a huge hit in Europe, grossing nearly three times its $ 5 million budget among French audiences, and highly praised among North American film students. It has come to be regarded by many as Leone's best film. After Once Upon
5980-565: The films in the spaghetti Western genre were international co-productions by Italy and Spain, and sometimes France, West Germany, Britain, Portugal, Greece, Yugoslavia, and the United States. Over six hundred European Westerns were made between 1960 and 1978. Most spaghetti Westerns filmed between 1964 and 1978 were made on low budgets, and shot at Cinecittà Studios and various locations around southern Italy and Spain. Leone's films and other core spaghetti Westerns are often described as having eschewed, criticized or even "demythologized" many of
6072-618: The films, performed by Eastern actors—for example, Chen Lee in My Name Is Shanghai Joe , or Lo Lieh teaming up with Lee Van Cleef in The Stranger and the Gunfighter . Some spaghetti Westerns incorporate political overtones, particularly from the political left . An example is Requiescant , featuring Italian author and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini as a major supporting character. Pasolini's character
6164-400: The first three spaghetti Westerns by Leone, a most influential film was Sergio Corbucci 's Django starring Franco Nero . Django was one of the most violent spaghetti Westerns. The titular character is torn between several motives—money or revenge—and his choices bring misery to him and to a woman close to him. Indicative of this film's influence on the spaghetti Western style, "Django" is
6256-430: The genre included the comedy film Buddy Goes West and a Spanish-American coproduction, Comin' at Ya! , which was shot in 3D , and Django Strikes Again . Some movies that were not very successful at the box office still earn a "cult" status in some segment of the audience because of certain extraordinary features in story and/or presentation. One "cult" spaghetti Western that has also drawn attention from critics
6348-407: The genre. Likewise, and in contrast to the contemporary German Westerns, few films feature Native Americans . When they appear, they are more often portrayed as victims of discrimination than as dangerous foes. The only fairly successful spaghetti Western with a Native American main character (played by Burt Reynolds in his only European Western outing) is Sergio Corbucci 's Navajo Joe , in which
6440-416: The hero's name in a plenitude of subsequent Westerns. Although his character is not named Django, Franco Nero brings a similar ambience to Texas, Adios and Massacre Time , in which the hero must confront surprising and dangerous family relations. Similar "prodigal son" stories followed, including Chuck Moll , Keoma , The Return of Ringo , The Forgotten Pistolero , One Thousand Dollars on
6532-518: The hero), and pathos (terror and brutality against defenseless people and against the hero after his doublecross has been revealed). Ennio Morricone's innovative score expresses a similar duality between quirky and unusual sounds and instruments, and sacral dramatizing for the big confrontation scenes. Another important novelty was Clint Eastwood's performance as the man with no name —an unshaven, sarcastic, insolent Western antihero with personal goals in mind, and with distinct visuals to boot—the squint,
6624-427: The last canto of Homer 's Odyssey . Fury of Johnny Kid follows Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet , but (again) with a different ending; the loving couple leave together while their families annihilate each other. Some Italian Western films were made as vehicles for musical stars, such as Ferdinando Baldi 's Rita of the West , featuring Rita Pavone and Terence Hill . In non-singing roles were Ringo Starr as
6716-539: The meaning of ethnicity and friendship. It received a raucous, record-breaking ovation of nearly 20 minutes at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival (reportedly heard by diners at restaurants across the street from the Palais ), at a time in Cannes's history before marathon applause became a regular occurrence. Despite such a fawning reception, Warner Brothers felt it was too long. The studio drastically recut it down to two hours for
6808-416: The more commercially successful films with a hero dedicated to vengeance— For a Few Dollars More , Once Upon a Time in the West , Today We Kill... Tomorrow We Die! , A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die , Death Rides a Horse , Django, Prepare a Coffin , The Deserter , Hate for Hate , and Halleluja for Django — those with whom he cooperates typically have conflicting motivations. In 1968,
6900-532: The most attention is arguably Luis Trenker's Der Kaiser von Kalifornien about John Sutter . Another Italian Western is Girl of the Golden West . The film's title alludes to the opera The Girl of the Golden West , by Giacomo Puccini , but is not an adaptation of it. It was one of a handful of Westerns to be made during the silent film and Fascist Italy eras. Forerunners of the genre were also Giorgio Ferroni 's Il fanciullo del West ( The Boy in
6992-400: The most commercially successful of this lot was Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars . It was the innovations in cinematic style, music, acting and story of Leone's first Western that decided that spaghetti Westerns became a distinct subgenre and not just a number of films looking like American Westerns. In this seminal film, Leone used a distinct visual style with large face close ups to tell
7084-425: The novel The Hoods by former mobster Harry Grey , which focused on a quartet of New York City Jewish gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s who had been friends since childhood. The finished four-hour film, Once Upon a Time in America (1984), featured Robert De Niro and James Woods . It was a meditation on another aspect of popular American mythology, the role of greed and violence and their uneasy coexistence with
7176-761: The parks of Valle del Treja (between Rome and Viterbo ), the area of Camposecco (next to Camerata Nuova , characterized by a karst topography ), the hills around Castelluccio , the town of Wuustwezel and the area around the Gran Sasso mountain, and the Tivoli 's quarries and Sardinia . God's Gun was filmed in Israel. European Westerns are as old as filmmaking itself. The Lumière brothers had their first public screening of films in 1895, and already, in 1896, Gabriel Veyre shot Repas d'Indien ( Indian Banquet ) for them. Joe Hamman starred as Arizona Bill in films made in
7268-548: The phrase spaghetti Western was coined by Spanish journalist Alfonso Sánchez in reference to the Italian food spaghetti . Spaghetti Westerns are also known as Italian Westerns or, primarily in Japan, Macaroni Westerns . In Italy, the genre is typically referred to as western all'italiana (Italian-style Western). Italo-Western is also used, especially in Germany. The term Eurowesterns has been used to broadly refer to all non-Italian Western movies from Europe, including
7360-471: The production for the movie Bicycle Thieves in 1948. Leone began writing screenplays during the 1950s, primarily for the " sword and sandal " (or peplum ) historical epics, popular at the time. He also worked as an assistant director on several large-scale international productions shot at the Cinecittà Studios in Rome, notably Quo Vadis (1951) and Ben-Hur (1959), financially backed by
7452-540: The public wants. And for me the most beautiful spectacle is that of the myth. In the mid-1960s, historical epics fell out of favor with audiences, but Leone had shifted his attention to a subgenre which came to be known as the " spaghetti Western ", owing its origin to the American Western . His film A Fistful of Dollars ( Per un pugno di dollari , 1964) was based upon Akira Kurosawa 's Edo -era samurai adventure Yojimbo (1961). Leone's film elicited
7544-502: The story of a hero entering a town that is ruled by two outlaw gangs, and ordinary social relations are nonexistent. The hero betrays and plays the gangs against each other to make money. He uses his cunning and exceptional weapons skill to assist a family threatened by both gangs. His treachery is exposed, and he is severely beaten, but in the end, he defeats the remaining gang. The interactions in this story range between cunning and irony (the tricks, deceits, unexpected actions and sarcasm of
7636-569: The town. In A Pistol for Ringo , a traditional sheriff commissions a money-oriented hero played by Giuliano Gemma (as deadly but with more pleasing manners than Eastwood's character) to infiltrate a gang of Mexican bandits whose leader is played typically by Fernando Sancho . As with Leone's first Western, the Dollars Trilogy strongly influenced the further developments of the genre, as did Sergio Corbucci's Django and Enzo Barboni's two Trinity films, as well as some other successful spaghetti Westerns. After 1965, when Leone's second Western, For
7728-611: The walls of the city. The plot was to focus on an American photographer on assignment (whom Leone wanted to be played by Robert De Niro) becoming trapped in Leningrad as the German Luftwaffe begin to bombard the city. Throughout the course of the film, he becomes romantically involved with a Soviet woman, whom he later impregnates, as they attempt to survive the prolonged siege and the secret police , because relationships with foreigners are forbidden. According to Leone, "In
7820-437: The wave of spaghetti Westerns reached its crest, comprising one-third of the Italian film production, only to collapse to one-tenth in 1969. However, the considerable box-office success of Enzo Barboni 's They Call Me Trinity and its pyramidal follow-up, Trinity Is Still My Name , gave Italian filmmakers a new model to emulate. The main characters were played by Terence Hill and Bud Spencer , who had already cooperated as
7912-663: Was The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw , directed by Raoul Walsh . It was followed by Savage Guns , a British-Spanish Western, again filmed in Spain. It marked the beginning of Spain as a suitable film-shooting location for any type of European Western. In 1961, an Italian company coproduced the French Taste of Violence , with a Mexican Revolution theme. In 1963, three non-comedy Italo-Spanish Westerns were produced: Gunfight at Red Sands , Implacable Three , and Gunfight at High Noon . In 1965, Bruno Bozzetto released his traditionally animated feature film West and Soda ,
8004-517: Was a wave of Trinity-inspired films with quick and strong heroes, the former often called "Trinity", or coming from "a place called Trinity", and with few or no killings. Because the two model stories contained religious pacifists to account for the absence of gunplay, all of the successors contained religious groups, or, at least, priests, sometimes as one of the heroes. The music for the two Trinity Westerns (composed by Franco Micalizzi and Guido & Maurizio De Angelis , respectively) also reflected
8096-637: Was already a huge star due to the popularity of the TV series, Rawhide . Leone would have done far better financially by obtaining Kurosawa's advance permission to use Yojimbo' s script. Requiem for a Gringo shows many traces from another well-known Japanese film, Masaki Kobayashi 's Harakiri . When Asian martial arts films started to draw crowds in European cinema houses, the producers of spaghetti Westerns tried to hang on, this time not by adapting storylines, but rather by directly including martial arts in
8188-478: Was buried in the cemetery of Pratica di Mare . A treatment for an "Americanized" Western was written by Leone, Luca Morsella, and Fabio Toncelli. It is speculated to have been Leone's last Western and was to have starred Mickey Rourke and Richard Gere as the two main leads. Set during the height of the American Civil War , the story focused on a Union drafter, Mike Kutcher from Georgia , whose job
8280-516: Was contracted to direct 99 and 44/100% Dead with Marcello Mastroianni and Charles Bronson starring. He was replaced as director by John Frankenheimer , while Mastroianni was recast with Richard Harris . Leone was a fan of Louis-Ferdinand Céline 's novel Journey to the End of the Night and was considering a film adaptation in the late 1960s; he incorporated elements of the story into The Good,
8372-465: Was of Milanese and remote Austrian descent. During his schooldays, Leone was a classmate of his later musical collaborator Ennio Morricone in third grade. After watching his father work on film sets, Leone began his own career in the film industry at the age of 18 after dropping out of law studies at the university. Working in Italian cinema , he began as an assistant to Vittorio De Sica during
8464-547: Was released; a combination of Western and vampire film. It was directed by Vincenzo Leone , father of Sergio Leone , and starred his mother, Bice Valerian , in the title role as the Indian princess Fatale. The Italians also made Wild Bill Hickok films, while the Germans released backwoods Westerns featuring Bela Lugosi as Uncas . Of the Western-related European films before 1964, the one that attracted
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