Sergio Leone!

I guess if your nation was formerly the seat of empires and now changes governments annually, you'd dote on the past too. (plus Visconti was an aristo)

*actually 6 hours, i think

then i took a class about spaghetti westerns and italian horror in college. it didnt help that the class was four hours on thursday nights but most of the westerns would put me to sleep [morricone's music was a sweet lullaby somehow]. dario argento's horror movies were just so much more exciting to watch in class. it also ruined westerns to have to write lengthy papers breaking down their cultural significance while italian horror was much more sexual in nature...

still like leone but only when i have a whole afternoon free and plenty of popcorn.

what about those:

sabata
the great silence
man of the east
keoma
gunlaw
my name is nobody

all brilliant. the last one doesnt really count though because leone co-directed it (and because its a piss-take of "for a few dollars more")

http://www.lfb.it/fff/fumetto/aut/a/imm/aragones01x.jpg

also, i consider that film to have a stronger, more haunting feel to it, due mainly to the score and aspects like that hazey telephoto shot of a distant man walking towards the camera, his visage blurred by desert heat

say, does anybody know what kind of revolver makes that characteristic spaghettie western retort? that "Pyewwww!" sound? or is it just a recording of a richochet of a rifle-fired bullet?

The box is out this Tuesday!

jesus christ... Duck You Sucker kicks ass.

I just rented Colossus of Rhodes. It's Leone's first directorial feature and it's a epic set in ancient Greece.

Box made it seem awesome. I really should have translated that "cult" actually can mean "a very homo-erotic gladiator film". The acting and fight scenes are lousy too. Bummer.

didnt he just co-direct that?

It feels like he co-directed it with no one. I think the term "half-directed" is spot on. But no, Imdb just credits Leone. Disappointed because I really wanted this to be like another Jason and the Argonauts or Satyricon. Not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OspdJIxTYi4

(I'm so so sorry)

just finished a fistful of dollars. so amoral! love it

I love pretty much everything this guy did or touched except "Once Upon a Time in America," which I find a strange drag.

it was significantly cut and re-edited on release -- esp.the us version, which didn't have leone's approval -- and i'm not sure anyone has ever yet seen the original intended version: tho whether the full-length version would have been less draggy is obv a bit of a question

it sets itself lots of tricky technical conundrums -- multiple flashback structure involving multiple child actors playing characters when young , plus characters playing themselves when old slathered in latex, and hinges on a not-very-amazing reveal, if i recall correctly

also it turns urban new york in the 30s into somewhere as spaciously unpeopled as some of his westerns, though this is kind of amazing in its strangeness

i don't think de niro is that great in it, which is a problem: he'd entered his slump period round now, i guess

oth it has that terrific infolded multiple flashback montage with the ringing phone, which is one of my favourite coups de cinema (some of it set in the most spacious opium dens outside qing dynasty beijing)

den not dens

what was going on w/ this dude between 1971 and 1984?? anyone read a biography or somethin'?

p.s. i love how everybody in duck you sucker says "duck you sucker" like leone imagined it to be some kind of common american slang phrase.

anyone read a biography or somethin'?

Yeah this:

http://cache0.bookdepository.co.uk/assets/images/book/medium/9780/5711/9780571164387.jpg

... not that interesting tbh 'cos he wasn't that interesting. I think between 1971 and 1984, he was trying to make "Once Upon a Time In America", buying rights, raising money, arguing over money, writing scripts, rejecting scripts, hiring writers, fighting with writers, firing writers, filming far too much then being unable to decide what to leave in and what to leave out - pretty much what he did on all his films!

Prefer this Frayling bk to his actual biog -

http://www.boomerangbooks.com.au/bookImages/LARGE/439/9780500287439.jpg

but Frayling's commentary tracks for the Leone movies, especially the blu-ray only TGTBATU commentary, are some of the very best ever recorded - guy has done his research, is an excellent public speaker, has interesting things to say about the content.

Local indie cinema running a morricone season, man with no name trilogy, ouatitw, the mission. result.

http://diodatilodge.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/ad1.jpg

http://www.lushquotes.com/pics/sergio-aragones/The-Western,-when-I-do-one,-will-be-one-long,-continuous-story..jpg

The Dollars trilogy Blu-ray boxset keeps calling to me from the shelves in HMV

Charles Bronson in "Once Upon a Time in the West", Rod Steiger in "Giu la Testa" etc.

Oh, I knew they were often playing Mexicans or Native Americans. But I was always struck by how everyone in these movies seemed to have the same skin-tone (like Fonda above), no matter who they were playing. Like, Bronson in "West," is his character's ethnicity even stated?

It's not stated but you see him as a child in flashbacks - when you eventually find out where the harmonica playing comes from, for instance - and he doesn't look Lithuanian!

You're right though, even Fonda, of all people, is brown as a berry in that film!

https://hotcorn-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2019/06/27123618/The-Good-The-Bad-And-The-Ugly-Clint-Eastwood.jpg

Lee Van Cleef is Dutch:

Here's Jason Robards as Manuel "Cheyenne" Gutiérrez:

http://www.filmmusicnotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Cheyenne_Robards.jpg

And then Claudia Cardinale (who is Italian) playing the presumably Scottish or something "Jill McBain":

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DTraHI1YJbs/WtsauCwD4rI/AAAAAAAACdI/m5c7Dg-PPVky-aoWAOuIbO2SKSrgWb6aQCLcBGAs/s1600/once-upon-a-time-in-the-west-1968-008-claudia-cardinale-close-up-angry-look.jpg

I always thought the name Jill McBain was hilarious for someone with the look of Claudia Cardinale. Italians playing Confederate soldiers makes me snicker as well.

Franco Nero was believable but some of the other guys…

She's called McBain because she took her husband's name tho! Frank Wolff, of German descent.

He's supposed to be Irish, so of course he has bright red hair.

(xp) I notice Frank Wolff committed suicide in 1971, while another actor in the film, Al Mulock, committed suicide by jumping out of window, in costume, during the shooting. Leone is supposed to have said, on hearing the news, "Get the costume, we need the costume".

show must go on!

It's like something from Fassbinder's "Beware of a Holy Whore".

Good observation

watched A Fistful of Dollars for the first time in eons the other night. it's far more violent than i initially remembered, definitely goes far beyond any other western of its era. it's not shocking to anyone who's seen westerns from The Wild Bunch and after, but for 1964 it pushes some limits. i read a lot of contemporaneous reviews which consider it pretty bad but no, it's amazing. just the beautiful stark look of the town and the colors of the fire and blood, the dirt and sweat covering everyone at all time. and it's kind of remarkable how Eastwood immediately settled into the role without any growing pains, and how that role really informed the rest of his acting career so much. the absolute expert delivery of his lines when he confronts the men from the Baxter clan, asking them to apologize to his mule (after asking the undertaker to prepare three coffins), his almost tongue-in-cheek amorality masking his ability to do the right thing at the right moment in his own particular manner (i.e. getting Marisol and her family out of town after rescuing her from the Rojos), etc. overall it's a film that feels very contemporary and pitiless in a way that isn't intentionally feel-bad, but simply a brutal tale told well.

I just watched it recently too and agree with the above. I think I'd seen it before but honestly I don't remember. If so, it was years and years ago. I've seen reviews call it the punk-rock western and that seems appropriate. I think Quentin Tarantino stole almost all of his ideas from this movie. And of course the soundtrack is all-time.

Setting aside any antipathy toward the company itself, Amazon currently has Christopher Frayling's hefty Leone coffee table tome for 83% off, less than $10:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1909526967

Related, there is a 4k restoration of "Once Upon a Time in America" finally coming to 4K/blu-ray via 4Kult that Amazon Italy is selling:

https://www.amazon.it/-/en/CEra-Una-Volta-America-4Kult/dp/B0FWCFMS6K

There's a giant collector's set version, too, but that seems gratuitous (and twice as much).

The thing I remember the most from that Frayling book was his never realised project of making a film about the siege of Stalingrad.

He planned to open it on a shot of Moscow's premier concert hall with a full orchestra playing, then do this insane tracking shot that travels in both space and time, so as you got to the fields you'd see the death and destruction, and finally it would loop back to the concert hall, where you would now see the sole member of the orchestra not to have been conscripted and killed yet finishing the performance.

Sounds like Russian Ark, lol

Setting aside any antipathy toward the company itself, Amazon currently has Christopher Frayling's hefty Leone coffee table tome for 83% off, less than $10

Thank you so much for the tip off on this! Bought a copy immediately before the price crept back up