Sergio Leone, Father of spaghetti westerns2

Throughout his career as a direc­tor, Sergio Leone directed a total of 8 films and major­ity were spaghetti west­erns. On top of it, it was he who pio­neered the spaghetti west­ern genre. He was best known for the dol­lars tril­ogy: A fist­ful of dol­lars (1964), A fist­ful of dyna­mite (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly(1965). He was born in Rome on January 3, 1929. As his father, Vincenzo Leone was an artis­tic film direc­tor ; he had the oppor­tu­nity to roam around and watched his father direct in Cinecitta stu­dios when he was only 12. He joined the film indus­try in 1946, despite of his father’s opin­ions. He worked in minor roles in sev­eral pro­duc­tions before he directed Colossus of Rhodes is his first direc­to­r­ial debut. He died on April 30,1989 at the age of 59 due to a heart fail­ure. As much as Sergio Leone was an sig­nif­i­cant inspi­ra­tion for con­tem­po­rary film­mak­ers such as Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino, he too has his own muses dur­ing his hey­days. They were John Ford and Akira Kurosawa. John Ford played a major influ­ence in the spaghetti west­erns films that Leone directed. The sev­eral styles of John Ford were appar­ent in Sergio Leone’s films. “Leone (has a) pen­chant for com­po­si­tion through doors and win­dows is, as it was for Ford.” (Fawell,2005,p.123) Ten years after Ford’s death, Leone went on to ded­i­cate an arti­cle in an Italian news­pa­per titled: To John Ford from one of His Pupils to him. In the arti­cle, he indi­cated that if John Ford hasn’t open the door, for the young him, to the Arizona desert where the scorch­ing hot wooden-made towns sit while soak­ing under a strong and astound­ing light, Once Upon A Time in The West or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly would not have been made. (Frayling, 2005,p.168) Having watched Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961), it prompted him to direct a remake of it, A fist­ful of dol­lars. Having unable to earn the rights for the remake of Yojimbo, Leone and his pro­duc­tion com­pany were sued; post­pon­ing release of Fistful in United States was post­poned for three years. The Man with No Name in the dol­lars tril­ogy was also con­ceived indi­rectly from Yojimbo. Interestingly enough, Yojimbo’s style and plot were inspired by west­erns. Sergio Leone has a cou­ple of fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tors. The notable ones are Clint Eastwood, an American actor and Ennio Morricone, an Italian com­poser. For both of them, Leone’s films jump-start their long and suc­cess­ful careers in Hollywood. A fist­ful of dol­lars was Clint Eastwood’s shot to star­dom. Clint Eastwood played the Man With No Name in the Dollars Trilogy. Prior to that, Clint Eastwood had a role in Rawhide (1959−1966), a west­ern tele­vi­sion series. To pre­pare him­self for the role, he devel­oped a dishev­elled appear­ance and ragged facial hair to hint to the audi­ence of his uncon­ven­tional hero per­son­al­ity. Believing in the power of music in film, he roped in Ennio Morricone to com­pose his films’ sound­track. Initially, he has his doubts of Morricone’s music as he found his music too con­ven­tional. Hence, Morricone decided to give him some­thing exper­i­men­tal, adding in cow­bells, chant­ing of men and whistling. This imme­di­ately won Leone over. Fascinatingly, Morricone and Leone attended the same school before. A west­ern is also a cen­tury old lit­er­a­ture genre. From the first and old­est west­ern film is The Great Train Robbery (1903) to the most recent west­ern being 3:10 to Yuma (2007), it has been America’s form of fan­tasy, where the care­free vig­i­lantes going on adven­tures. The old­est west­ern plot opens with a town being ter­ror­ized by a group of ban­dits. The nomadic gun­slinger would then come to the res­cue. It would always end off with a show­down between the pro­tag­o­nist and the antag­o­nist and the result pre­dictable. Westerns branch off to sev­eral sub-genres rang­ing from Revisionist west­erns to Science-fiction west­erns. Revisionist west­erns ques­tion con­ven­tional ele­ments in west­erns and por­tray more bal­anced depic­tion of American Indians, rather than their biased labels of sav­ages and etc. Revisionist west­erns high­lighted the grow­ing matu­rity in the west­erns genre, evolv­ing from roman­ti­cism to real­ism. It also injected moral ambi­gu­ity into west­erns. Science-fiction west­erns either embody west­erns set­tings or nomadic west­ern adven­tures. Examples of Science-fiction west­erns are Serenity (2005) and Back to the future Part III (1990). Spaghetti west­erns are also a sub-genre of west­erns. From the word “ Spaghetti west­erns”, it is infer to inex­pen­sive west­ern films that were made by Italian stu­dios, using non-professional actors. It is usu­ally vio­lent in con­tent yet beau­ti­fully pho­tographed. Despite of the many spaghetti west­erns films been made, all of Leone’s spaghetti west­ern films have been con­stantly and highly com­mended. Leone’s films can be dis­tin­guished from other west­erns through these fol­low­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics, in terms of cin­e­matog­ra­phy: long takes, extreme wide shots, extreme close-ups and com­po­si­tion in depth. Leone wanted long takes for slow rhythm it brings. Sometimes, these long takes are accom­pa­nies with moments of silence and still­ness to empha­sis the inten­sity of the par­tic­u­lar scene. Following a say­ing “ The calm before the storm”, long takes with silence works effec­tively in stand­offs. It allows the audi­ence to eithe admire the still­ness of the desert, pay close atten­tion to the character’s body lan­guage or, rel­ish Morricone’s music play­ing in the back­ground. It is almost a must to have a vista of the arid desert in west­erns. Leone’s films are no excep­tion. This stressed fur­ther when Leone optioned to shoot The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (GBU) in CinemaScope, which has twice the length of a stan­dard tele­vi­sion aspect ratio of 4 by 3. With CinemaScope’s panorama view of the desert, it unleashes the max­i­mum glory of the actual spec­ta­cle. “Leone’s recur­rent use of close-ups in this film (Once a upon a time in the West) reminds us that his homage to clas­sic Western so far, though Leone car­ries the pro­cliv­ity to the greater extremes.” (Fawell, 2005,p.138) Extreme close-ups (ECU) used as a recur­ring shot size in Leone’s films. Leone was able to achieve such a tight shot with the help of def­i­n­i­tion in new colour film stock. The ECU of the character’s eyes is able to cap­ture the slight­est move­ment of the face and eyes. As a say­ing goes “ The eyes are the win­dows to a person’s soul”, ECU let the view­ers read into the move­ment in the facial expres­sion and get into the mind of the char­ac­ters. Leone is a man of extremes, sup­ported by this quote “ Leone car­ries the pro­cliv­ity to the greater extremes.” (Fawell, 2005,p.138) He would cut from an extreme wide shot of the desert and jump right into an extreme close-up of the character’s eyes. For exam­ple, dur­ing the show­down between Frank and Harmonica in Once Upon A Time in America, it was an extreme wide shot of Harmonica to a tight shot of his face as Frank paces around him. “Leone … shares Ford’s taste for com­po­si­tion in depth.” (Fawell,2005, p.125) Composition in depth gives a three-dimensional look in two-dimensional film. Composition in depth inten­si­fies cli­maxes such as a show­down. When shoot­ing in trains, he would steer clear of shoot­ing it at one side; instead he would shoot along the same axis as the train runs. The audi­ence senses the actual tight­ness of the train, with the roof and the walls con­fin­ing them in. Composition in depth also works stun­ningly in the wilder­ness as it cap­tured its expan­sive­ness. By merg­ing long takes and com­po­si­tion in depth, Leone effec­tively allows the char­ac­ters con­vers­ing within the same frame. For exam­ple, Leone posi­tion Harmonica at the right of the fore­ground and Jill at the left back­ground while they are con­vers­ing. Leone has two crit­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics for direct­ing, he uses music on set and slow rhythm edit­ing. Morricone’s music was just not meant for the audi­ence but for those involved in the pro­duc­tion as well. The music Morricone are com­posed before pro­duc­tion and played on set. The actors would act to the Morricone’ beau­ti­ful music and the cam­era would move accord­ing to the music. The music also has an impact on the crew when even grips wept to the music played dur­ing the funeral scene in Once Upon A Time in the West. Morricone’s music help to sim­u­late the actors into the character’s frame of mind. Some actors work­ing with Sergio Leone ini­tially expressed dif­fi­culty act­ing to the music, how­ever, toward end of pro­duc­tion, they enjoy his unortho­dox rit­ual. Morricone even per­son­alised each character’s theme music, occa­sion­ally alter­ing to reflect the change in char­ac­ter or emo­tions. Leone felt that it made lit­tle sense to let dia­logue dis­tract the music, thus he ensure dia­logue and music never over­lap each other, allow­ing the audi­ence to fully appre­ci­ate Morricone’s music. Leone shoots in large blocks within each sequence, prov­ing it to be an impos­si­ble task for an edi­tor to cut. Each block is entan­gles to one another as Leone set the rhythm with the music being played on set. Due to such cir­cum­stances, when Leone short­ens the length of his film, he would rather remove the entire sequence than to butcher his desired rhythm. Recurring themes appeared for sev­eral of his films, for exam­ple: des­tiny. As west­erns themes and motifs are being recy­cling over and over again, they become pre­dictable and clichéd. Leone per­ceived each clique as each step that the char­ac­ters inevitably take, despite aware of the out­come. In Once Upon A Time In The West , the audi­ence knew Harmonica would defeat Frank in the stand­off at the end­ing. Similarly, deep down, Frank knew he would receive his just desserts with his past deeds. Frequently, Leone’s pro­tag­o­nists are anony­mous, for exam­ple, Clint Eastwood played as the Man With No Name and Charles Bronson as Harmonica. Harmonica earned his nick­name Harmonica, as he would play the har­mon­ica to announce his pres­ence. Being anony­mous, it casts the air of mys­tery around them. Audience finds it hard to relate name­less char­ac­ters; anony­mous makes the char­ac­ters dis­tanced and cold, no dif­fer­ent from a stranger. Leone blurs the line between good and evil through instill­ing moral ambi­gu­ity in his heroes. In Once Upon A Time In The West, Harmonica wanted to exact revenge for the mur­der of his older brother. Man With No Name works as a bounty hunter and looks out for his per­sonal gains. In GBU, he was in search of buried gold. His real­is­tic pro­tag­o­nists falls short of the ide­al­is­tic and tra­di­tional stan­dards of the main­stream on-screen heroes. They are come to known as anti-heroes in movies. As a stu­dent film­maker, I learned plenty from him and these lessons are not just lim­ited to only Hollywood pro­duc­tions. For exam­ple, music can be a pow­er­ful film tool, neglected by many film­mak­ers. Music eas­ily sets the mood and the rhythm of the film. Leone under­stands and took full advan­tages of this. In films, some­times it is the way you tell the story can mat­ters more the plot itself. Leone took the old­est plots in the book and infuses his own style into it, cre­at­ing a seem­ingly new and unique prod­uct. Shooting with a low bud­get in hand, his films still hold the sense of grandeur and beau­ti­ful cin­e­matog­ra­phy. Written by Marylin Wong

Reference: Fawell , J. (2005). The Art of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West . Jefferson,North Carolina: McFarland & Company,Inc.,Publishers. Hughes, H. (2004). Once Upon A Time In The Italian West. London,Great Britain: I.B Tauris & Co Ltd. Frayling, C. (2005). Sergio Leone: Once Upon A Time in Italy . New York, New York: Thames & Hudson Ltd.