Sergio Leone was born on 3 January 1929 in Rome — where he died a bit more of 60 years later.
Leone didn’t direct many films. He worked extensively as an assistant and second-unit director. But he got a break on The Last Days of Pompeii. He was second-unit director on the film (and co-writer). The film’s director, Mario Bonnard, fell ill. So the producers hired Leone to finish the film.
He leveraged this and other fixer exploits to get his first feature film, The Colossus of Rhodes. It is a sword-and-sandal epic and quite good, especially if you like that kind of thing. The special effects are particularly good. The main problem is that it is far too long. Leone’s films usually suffered from this. But unlike later, it doesn’t feel padded.
I know! How can I say such a thing about this great director?! To be honest, I think critic’s love of Sergio Leone harmed him even more than they harmed Alfred Hitchcock. Producers really needed to rein in Leone. Most of his films are badly in need of cutting.
Once Upon a Time in America is the ultimate example of this. As with everything Leone did, it features lots of great moments. But regardless of the cut, it makes little sense and is generally boring. After Colossus, only A Fistful of Dollars plays like it was made for audiences not already convinced of his “genius.”
This is harsh, I know. But I’ve been watching his films for decades. The first adult film I liked was A Fistful of Dollars. And there are things I like in all of them. But in addition to the padding, his excessive flashbacks never work and his weird sexual hangups are displayed on the screen as pure misogyny.
Finally, he made very few films. I asked Google why he made so few films and it responded that it was “due to his perfectionist, slow-paced approach, focusing on immense artistic detail and long production times.” AIs are great at pumping out conventional wisdom. And that there is a great example of why Leone was allowed to make his bloated and excessively mean films.
Just the same, Sergio Leone made nothing but psychotronic films. And I admire that! I recommend watching The Colossus of Rhodes. But I know most people won’t, so let’s watch his masterpiece, A Fistful of Dollars.
Note: I wrote more about this on the anniversary of the US release of Once Upon a Time in the West.
Sergio Leone via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.
That’s an interesting Hitchcock/Leone comparison… but I’m not sure I 100% buy it. I don’t think Hitchcock got lazy because French critics overpraised him; I think he got lazy because he was old and very rich.
With Leone, it might not have been critical praise, either. It might have simply been ego. Kinda like David Lean. Once you commit to Going Big, it must be natural to want to Keep Going Bigger.
Like whatever this last Coppola thing was. Which, he insists, will never be available on video! Either streaming or DVD! Theaters only! His ORIGINAL VISION!
(Most serious artists will be happier for people to see their work on library DVDs than not see it at all. Unless they’re totally full of themselves.)
So I’m not sure it was critical praise which hurt Leone. I think it was just ego. He went big with Good/Bad, he went bigger with Once Upon West, he wanted to get bigger still. So it took forever to get Once Upon America financed, because producers (correctly) thought the script was a mess.
I do sympathize with filmmakers who want to make a Dream Project. But be realistic. As you’re sitting, for years, on waiting to get financing, think of ways you can simplify it. Get the budget more under control; make the movie more manageable. Pare it down to the most important points.
Ultimately I don’t believe Leone was capable of operating that way. To him, the movies weren’t the plots or the characters, they were the Big Moments. (He wasn’t exactly a deep thinker, as your excellent point about the bizarre sexual attitudes in his movies says very well.)
In an alternate universe, I wish Leone had taken his obsession with big movie moments and kinda poked at it a little — given us the big moments while chuckling at how silly they are. (Which I think the ending of Umbrellas of Cherbourg does.) But that wasn’t in his nature.
You could be right! It doesn’t really matter to me. These people get huge egos for reasons. And it hurts their work. I’d have to give Hitchcock the edge over Leone though. Hitchcock never lost sight of the fact that his films needed to be entertaining. I still love The Birds even though I don’t think it’s a very good film. I have no idea why anyone is supposed to find America entertaining. Look at Good/Bad/Ugly. The 3 men stand around for 5 minutes waiting for the shootout. That’s a big “Fuck you!” to the audience. He made a worse film because it was more important to him to be an asshole.
On a related matter, what’s the thing with Clint Eastwood. In the first film, he’s a Good Guy. That’s because his character is just a very limited Toshiro Mifune. But in the second two? He’s an asshole — especially in the second one. In GBU, at least Eli Wallach gets a backstory that explains why he is the way he is. But Leone was never big on motivation.
As for Coppola, same thing. A good filmmaker. I’m not sure he’s been harmed by adulation. But he’s full of himself. (Do you know why people hate Russian Dolls? Because they’re full of themselves.) His later films show an artist trying to do his best. But… There are few films in all of history as overrated as Apocalypse Now. But I think I know why. It’s a film loved by guys who avoided military service when they were young (quite rightly) but who now want to pretend that they are badasses and they totally would have gone to war if they could. But he at least used the success of The Godfather to make a truly great film, The Conversation.
We watched Hearts of Darkness, which Eleanor Coppola directed, and it’s a solid documentary; she was a skilled, smart filmmaker. But the movie operates from the presumption that Apocalypse Now was a masterpiece, born in suffering; a tormented artist compelled by genius to create greatness against all obstacles.
Actually, when you watch the documentary, it’s quite clear Francis had his head firmly up his own ass. While the film purports to show how brilliant and driven he was, it really shows everything wrong with the movie. Now, I’m glad for Hearts of Darkness, and I wouldn’t have liked it if the documentary was a hitpiece on a former friend; it’s better that it’s a loving tribute. Because, as a loving tribute, all the stuff which shows what a mistake the movie was isn’t mean-spirited. It’s not even meant to show the movie as a mistake.
Yet the movie WAS a mistake. Eleanor was too loving to see or show it that way, and that’s to her credit. But she did capture a film record of when Francis’s ego slipped the surly bounds of Earth. She didn’t know it, but she did — I suspect she had enough artistic instincts to know it was good footage, and too much love/loyalty to frame it that way. I wouldn’t recommend the whole documentary, you’d probably start throwing beer bottles at the screen. But it is worth skimming.
https://librarydvdlove.substack.com/p/hearts-of-darkness-a-filmmakers-apocalypse
That is exactly why I haven’t avoided it. I thought it would be too much about what a genius he is. And, of course, I really don’t think the film is that good as a whole. It does have lots of brilliant moments. But now I’ll have to see. I’ll ready your article!
One more thing! Heart of Darkness is a solid novel. But I have never understood why some people make such a big deal out of it. For a lot of filmmakers, it seems like it is The Great White Wale. And why? It’s a pretty simple plot. It’s basically just a road plot. The problem with filming it is that the plot isn’t that interesting. I just don’t see the fuss or why anyone would think it was a story so worth telling!
Agreed — and I LIKE Conrad. I liked The Secret Agent, and Lord Jim, and Chance. Although a lady friend once pointed out that Conrad’s main theme was kinda annoying to women. His main theme was men who are disappointed that they’re valued only for their surface qualities; their worth as someone valued by their employers, say. Who want to be valued for what’s inside, for their qualities as humans.
Well, that’s something most women have to deal with from the time they’re teenagers!
Yet I still like Conrad. I like his tormented wrestling side; how you can tell he had more in him than he could express (like Dreiser). But no, that particular story never exactly rocked my universe. Here’s a very amusing YouTube video summarizing it (quite well, despite the gimmicky act — and the gimmicky act is pretty funny): https://youtu.be/dmKEltYUy6k?si=hCuoy0Dd2rb08lgH
That’s actually a really good analysis! I don’t think Coppola understand most of it! Wisecrack used to be really great. I don’t remember why it went away. Probably the usual thing: rich assholes not making quite as much money as they think they should for doing literally nothing.
As for Conrad, I think it all comes down to the obvious: the vast majority of humans are beaten down because we have all accepted the lie that being an asshole is essential to support our lifestyles.
Too true…
I loved the part in the video where he goes, “‘Kurtz says, “the horror, the horror.” And then he dies like a b***h.'”