April 2004

Sergio Leone: Bringing Opera Concepts to Film

I think I'm pretty good -- but my favorite director is Sergio Leone. Hands down, he's the one who's influenced me most. I think as time goes on, I can keep raising the ceiling of my talent. And I'm determined to do it to the end of my career, which isn't the case with most directors. . . . But I can't imagine doing something as perfect as the closing sequence in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. I will always try to reach that, but I don't think I will ever get there. It is just so cinematically perfect.
-- Quentin Tarantino

Sergio Leone was born in 1929, the son of a director and an actress. As a child, he fell in love with American films, especially gangster movies starring Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney. He followed along in the family business, and was already working in movies by the age of 12. About the same time, Mussolini banned American films -- Italians were permitted to see only the same 1930s films over and over. Leone’s concept of film was frozen in time. By the time Mussolini was overthrown, American films had changed. Leone was unimpressed with the results.

Leone’s other influence, though readily visible onscreen, for some reason rarely gets attention from critics. Today, it would be nearly impossible to make a film uninfluenced by music videos; it would also be impossible for an Italian director of Leone’s era to avoid being influenced by grand opera. Everything signals the influence of opera, from the murderous miscreants that populate his films to the musical leitmotifs. The traditions of opera seeped into Italian film on an almost unconscious level.

By the time Leone directed his first film, he had already served in the trenches, working on such sword-and-sandals epics as Ben-Hur, The Last Days of Pompeii, and Helen of Troy. His own first film was Il coloso di Rodi (1961, aka The Colossus of Rhodes). Italians were always happy to see American stars in their films, even if they were has-beens. Leone cast John Derek (mostly famous for the women he married: Ursula Andress, Linda Evens, and Bo Derek), who reportedly was such an ass that the first-time director fired him. Rory Calhoun, fresh from his run on the CBS TV series The Texan, ended up with the role. While the film evinces some inkling of Leone’s ascending talents, it was forced into distribution too quickly and made too cheaply.

Three years later, Leone forever changed the way films would be made with Per un pugno di dollari (1964, aka A Fistful of Dollars). With the exception of some of John Ford’s later westerns, no one had ever displayed such a gritty view of life on the frontier. In America, westerns had migrated from the movie theater to the TV set; there, the dominant programs were Bonanza, Wagon Train, and Rawhide, which closely resembled the Roy Rogers and Gene Autry films of the 1930s: good guy thwarts villains, gets girl. Comparing the characters in A Fistful of Dollars to Gene Autry or Little Joe Cartwright was like comparing Marilyn Manson to Justin Guarini.

Leone’s most subversive act was to use Clint Eastwood, the star of Rawhide, as the lead in A Fistful of Dollars. Eastwood’s characterization became the prototype for a whole new type of protagonist that critics called the "anti-hero." Constantly squinting, cigar planted in the side of his mouth, guns blazing, clever, and lacking any morals, Eastwood carved a niche for himself from which he continues to wield considerable influence today. Whether it’s Dirty Harry or The Unforgiven, Eastwood’s role as the man you don’t want to mess with has lasted a career. But Leone’s invention went far beyond giving us the tough version of Clint. He also brought a gritty realism aligned with operatic grandeur, a sort of verismo version of the western. Landscapes were sun-baked, supporting cast members were missing teeth and limbs, people sweated, horses foamed, lots of people died -- all played out against the lovely strains of Ennio Morricone’s music.

In A Fistful of Dollars, a drifter (Eastwood) wanders into a town in which two families are fighting to the death. He first takes one side, then the other, and finally destroys both. The story is familiar -- Leone lifted it almost wholesale from Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. (Leone was not the only one who loved the story enough to borrow it -- Walter Hill used it for Last Man Standing.) Kurosawa sued and won, and ended up making more money from Leone than he had from Yojimbo.

Critics railed, derisively calling the film a "spaghetti western." Audiences loved it. The unwritten producer’s creed is that if it made money once, make it again, which is exactly what Leone did the following year with Per qualche dollaro in più (1965, aka For a Few Dollars More). Eastwood returned, again filming during his summer break from Rawhide. In a scorching performance, Gian Maria Volonté returned from Fistful as a different and far more lethal character, the outlaw El Indio. Leone also brought Lee Van Cleef out of a financially ignominious retirement to play the bounty hunter, Col. Douglas Mortimer. Though Mortimer seems a cold-blooded killer, we find out at the end that he has some nobility. Morricone’s music takes a more substantial role, and we get our first glimpse of his use of leitmotifs in the music he uses for El Indio. This is an altogether better film than A Fistful of Dollars. Instead of being clever and violent, it covers themes of loyalty, grace, and valor. In fact, we’d have to wait until John Woo’s classic Hong Kong films Die xue shuang xiong (1989, aka The Killer) and Lashou shentan (1992, aka Hard Boiled) for as much non-verbal ruminating on honor and courage.

As good as For a Few Dollars More was, it didn’t prepare audiences for Leone’s leap to the big leagues the following year with Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966, aka The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly). Eastwood was back again as The Man With No Name. The roles of The Bad and The Ugly were offered to Charles Bronson, who demurred in favor of doing The Dirty Dozen. Leone was hesitant to give the role of The Bad to Lee Van Cleef because he’d been a reluctant good guy in Leone’s last film, but Van Cleef had done such a powerful job that he got the role. The Ugly was given to Eli Wallach, an actor capable of chewing more scenery than a Barrymore. Leone had a big budget this time, and he turned out a 161-minute masterpiece. With a breadth to make Gone With the Wind envious and an ending that would be relived in many films to come (especially those of John Woo), The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was so good and so popular that it killed the Gene Autry-style western. Every western since has borne Leone’s stamp.

Few directors can claim what Leone had accomplished: three classic films in three years. But while the director now wanted to make the film he’d always dreamed of -- a gangster film like those he’d grown up with in Italy -- what everyone else wanted was another western. This time Leone took two years, at the end of which he delivered his masterpiece. C'era una volta il West (1968, aka Once Upon a Time in the West) features Henry Fonda, playing against character as a man so vile he would kill children and rape grieving widows. Charles Bronson is another man with no name, Jason Robards is a criminal with a soul, and Claudia Cardinale is the object of every man’s lust. This sounds like the makings of a good film; what make it not merely good but great are Leone’s direction, one of Morricone’s greatest scores, and a script by Dario Argento (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Suspiria), Bernardo Bertolucci (Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor), and Leone. In the poll of directors published once per decade by Sight and Sound, the prestigious journal of the British Film Institute, Once Upon a Time in the West is picked as one of the top 50 films of all time. (I cover the film in detail in "Collector’s Corner.")

Three years later, the rising level of quality of Leone’s films took a turn downward with Giù la testa (1971, aka Duck, You Sucker and A Fistful of Dynamite). Leone tried hard to get another director for it, even hiring Peter Bogdanovich. But stars Rod Steiger and James Coburn staged a coup, demanding that Leone himself direct, which he did, halfheartedly. The film was originally to be titled Once Upon a Time, The Revolution, in keeping with Leone’s desire to make another trilogy: Once Upon a Time in the West, Once Upon a Time, the Revolution, and Once Upon a Time in America. But Leone was sabotaged by the producers’ cuts and Steiger’s hamminess. His original choices for stars, Jason Robards and Malcolm McDowell, would have probably done better jobs, but it’s also true that Leone’s direction here falls short of his other films. When the producers finally restored the film to Leone’s cut in 1996, we could finally see that it was as good as the Dollars films. Leone never had the chance to see the public’s upbeat reaction to the restored film. If he had, maybe he would not have taken so long to make his final film.

For the next 13 years, Leone disappeared from the movies. He did some producing, shot some commercials, turned down the opportunity to direct The Godfather (!), and planned a few other projects. When, in 1984, he finally came back to make his own film, he made as good a gangster film as has ever been made, including Coppola’s. Once Upon a Time in America covers the rise of the Jewish sector of the Mafia in the United States. Stars Robert De Niro and James Woods light the screen as complicated characters torn between loyalty and power. A brilliant second-line cast nearly steals the picture, with wonderful performances by Elizabeth McGovern, Treat Williams, and the very young Jennifer Connelly in her first film role. Morricone again offers a film score that illuminates the story, but Leone steals the show with his photography and his storytelling. The original cut of Once Upon a Time in America was hailed at Cannes as the work of a master.

All of this was lost on Leone’s American producers, who cut the film by nearly half and re-edited it: what had been a series of flashbacks was now a straightforward chronology. Leone, torn between suicide and mayhem, never directed another film and died five years later, before the world had caught on to the greatness of his final film. With the advent of laserdiscs and DVDs, Once Upon a Time in America was restored to its original running time and order.

At the time of his death, Leone was working on a film about the siege of Leningrad; Morricone was working up a film score based on Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, and Robert De Niro was set to star. The director was also working on a film about two brothers fighting on different sides in the American Civil War.

Sergio Leone had a lasting effect on many directors. Martin Scorsese, Walter Hill, Sam Peckinpah, John Carpenter, Brian DePalma, Quentin Tarantino, all have put moments on the screen that are straight out of Leone. Had he lived to see the respect he gets today, Leone might have decided to stick around long enough to complete those last projects. Instead, there are only seven Sergio Leone films -- three masterpieces, three excellent films, and one loser.

With the exceptions of Il coloso di Rodi and Giù la testa, all of Leone’s films are now available on DVD. All of The Man With No Name Trilogy is offered by MGM. The first two films are letterboxed, but the third is anamorphic. The quality of the mastering leaves something to be desired, and there are few extras, but this shouldn’t stop you from buying these films. What might stop you is the May release of the newest version of Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo in a remastered version with some deleted footage added.

C'era una volta il West was finally released on DVD last November, in a very good mastering from Paramount. They use the extended European version of the film and offer a large number of superb extras. Warner Bros.’ DVD of Once Upon a Time in America, released last June, is nearly perfect in both mastering and the quality of the extras. Someone with less taste than your average reality-show producer picked the split point between the two discs (the film runs 225 minutes), but other than that, this is a wonderful DVD.

If you’re new to Leone, begin with Once Upon a Time in the West, then watch Once Upon a Time in America, and finish with The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. But one nice thing about Leone’s having made so few films is that you can easily see them all. That is exactly what I recommend.

...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com   

Much of the factual information in this article was derived from the masterful biography Sergio Leone: Something To Do with Death (Faber and Faber), by Professor Sir Christopher Frayling, Rector of the Royal College of Art and Chairman of the Arts Council of England. Check here for information on obtaining a copy of this definitive book.

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