Sergio Leone

Sergio Leone (Rome, January 3, 1929 - ibid., April 30, 1989) was an Italian screenwriter,
producer and film director. He is one of the most famous directors in the history of cinema
and is mostly known for his spaghetti westerns.
Sergio Leone died in 1989, when he was preparing the movie Leningrad, due to heart
problems he suffered from when he entered into lawsuits with Warner Bros for the movie
Once Upon a Time in America. The production company cut the film by more than an hour
and hired the Police Academy editor, Zach Staenberg, for this job.
Still very young, he entered the film industry and at twenty was assistant director on the
film Ladri di biciclette by Vittorio de Sica. He would later work on major American
productions shot in Europe, including Quo Vadis? by Mervyn LeRoy, Helen of Troy by
Robert Wise, Ben-Hur by William Wyler or A Nun's Story by Fred Zinnemann.
From here his most personal works begin, beginning with the famous western trilogy, also
known as the Dollar Trilogy. The spaghetti western, also known as European western or
eurowestern, is a particular subgenre of western created and developed by Italian
directors, which was fashionable in the 1960s and 1970s and is characterized by having
European productions, in contrast to traditional films. of the genre that were filmed in the
United States. Since most of these projects were financed by Italian or Spanish companies,
the genre quickly acquired the name spaghetti western when it came to Italian films1 or
chorizo western when it came to Spanish films. The spaghetti western is characterized by a
naturalistic aesthetic (abundance of detail shots and close-ups) and dirty as well as
stylized, and by characters apparently lacking in morals, rough and tough, exempt from the
chivalric romanticism of the classic American western (The man unnamed, Django,
Sartana, Ringo, Sabata, Garringo). Due to its high doses of violence, and the shady and
deceitful character of its main characters, the American film Veracruz (1954), by Robert
Aldrich, is considered one of the forerunners of this new subgenre.

Once Upon a Time in the West

Leone's masterpiece is one of the best westerns ever. The exploration of American
mythology and how a nation was forged in blood and iron. A legendary cast accompanies a
no less legendary soundtrack by maestro Morricone.
Once Upon a Time in the West takes a different approach to Western than Leone's earlier
works (For a Fistful of Dollars or The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, for example). In
previous installments Leone paints the Western in terms of comedy, with shrewd
characters and quick reflexes. But here the tone is eminently dramatic and with epic
features. The characters are still smart, but the fundamental difference is the timing: the
previous films had amazing agility, a constant back and forth. Here, however, Leone
spends a large part of the film creating atmosphere.