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Sergio Leone |
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Director / Screenwriter |
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1929 - 1989 |
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Born January 3,
Rome, Italy |
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Key
Production Country: Italy |
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Key Genres:
Spaghetti Western, Western, Epic Western |
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Key
Collaborators: Ennio
Morricone (Composer), Carlo Simi (Production Designer), Nino Baragli (Editor),
Clint Eastwood
(Leading Player), Luciano Vincenzoni (Screenwriter), Tonino Delli Colli
(Cinematographer), Lee Van Cleef (Leading Player), Gian Maria Volonte
(Leading Player), Alberto Grimaldi
(Producer), Fulvio Morsella (Producer) |
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Highly
Recommended: For a Few Dollars More
(1965), The
Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)*, Once Upon a Time in the West
(1968)*, Once Upon a Time in America (1984)* |
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Recommended: A
Fistful of Dollars (1964) |
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Worth a Look:
Fistful of Dynamite (1971) |
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* Listed in TSPDT's
1,000 Greatest Films
section. |
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Links:
[
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses
of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ]
[
Fistful-of-Leone ] [
Sergio
Leone.Net ] [
Once Upon
a Time in Italy: The Westerns of Sergio Leone ] [
The Dollars Trilogy ] |
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Books: [
Sergio
Leone: Something to do with Death ] [
Sergio
Leone ] [
Sergio
Leone: The Great Italian Dream of Legendary America ] [
Once Upon a Time in Italy: The Westerns of Sergio Leone
]
[
The Art Of Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West: A Critical
Appreciation
] [
Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone
] |
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"Not since
Franz Kafka's America has a European artist turned himself
with such intensity to the meaning of American culture and
mythology. Sergio Leone's career is remarkable in its unrelenting
attention to both America and American genre film. In France,
Truffaut,
Godard, and
Chabrol
have used American film as a touchstone for their own vision, but
Leone, an Italian, a Roman who began to learn English only after
five films about the United States, devoted most of his creative
life to this examination." -
Stuart
M. Kaminsky (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998) |
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"Working
against traditional concepts of heroism, his darkly troubled
protagonists are driven by greed, revenge, sheer malice or a rough
sense of justice, while his epic, flashback-heavy tales are often
dominated by set-piece tableaux of deadly conflict."
-
Geoff
Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999) |
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"The films
themselves are bloodbaths, full of sound, fury and sadism. Bullets
made round, black-edged holes, through which blood was seen to
gush. People were hit by them in painful places. Characters were
beaten, whipped, raped: the films were orgies of destruction of
life and property, often with slow, deliberate showdowns, full of
portentous close-ups of grime-encrusted faces." -
David
Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999) |
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"A satirist of the American West, Leone's Dollars trilogy
with
Clint Eastwood is funny,
violent, and reminiscent of the mythmaking dime novels of
yesteryear." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"I can't see
America any other way than with a European's eyes. It fascinates me
and terrifies me at the same time." -
Sergio Leone |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director
that we haven't seen include The Colossus of Rhodes (1960). |
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