Once upon a time in the west cast
He then found work as a resident assistant director at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios, which he’d long-frequented with his father. He then penned a few screenplays for ‘sword and sandal’ epics, or ‘Pepla’, the most popular Italian genre in his native land during the 1950s. By the time he was 18, he’d dropped out of law school to work with Vittorio de Sica as an assistant director on The Bicycle Thieves (1948), in which he also made a brief appearance. They were ‘Once Upon a Time’ stories…Īs a 10-year-old, Sergio Leone had appeared in one of his father’s films, Man on the Street / La Bocca Sulla Strada (1941). But as he grew wiser, he understood that these idealistic Westerns were more akin to fairy tales. Perhaps he would have recognised some parallels with the Wild West as the pre-war order crumbled around him, and the post-war rise of Mafia rule replaced the dictatorial fascism of Benito Mussolini. To him it must have seemed an almost fantastical world of fabled heroes and stereotypical evil. Growing up in wartime Italy, there was a huge cultural disconnect with what he saw on the silver screen. He said it was film, above all else, that “nourished” him as a child, and most of his favourites were American Westerns.
#ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST CAST MOVIE#
So, young Sergio grew up against a cinematic backdrop of movie sets and matinees. His father, Vincenzo Leone (usually credited as Roberto Roberti), was an actor and writer who’d directed around 50 films and a baker’s dozen of shorts before 1930. I was just about to qualify that statement by adding “to come out of Italian cinema of the 1960s” but I realise that would only be a disservice to his standing! His mother, Edvige Maria Valcarenghi, was a popular actress of the silent age, best-known by her stage name Bice Valerian. Sergio Leone is certainly one of the most important film directors. Perhaps that’s why it was down to European filmmakers to re-invent and reinvigorate the genre just as it was falling from grace in the mid-1960s. It was a history to be proud of, but that was just the movies. There was a time when good Christian settlers were brutally victimised by the heathen redskins, the sheriff was always righteous, the good guys had square jaws and wore white hats, and the bad guys sported stubble and preferred black Stetsons.
Some Westerns could be accurately labelled as revisionist propaganda-a nation trying to get to grips with shameful episodes from its own history by pretending things were different. Claudia Cardinale was a good choice for the woman, but Leone directs her too passively in "Cartouche," she demonstrated a blood-and-thunder abandon that's lacking here.The Western genre has always dealt in mythologies. Henry Fonda is the bad guy for once in his career Charles Bronson is impressively inscrutable as the mysterious good guy and Jason Robards is a tough guy, believe it or not. Leone produces some interesting performances by casting against type. There's a sense of the life of the West going on all around the action (and that sense is impossible to obtain on small budgets). But this one was bankrolled by Paramount and looks like it: There's a wealth of detail, a lot of extras, elaborate sets. His third, " The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," was made with a few dollars more.
Leone's first two "spaghetti Westerns" ("A Fistful of Dollars," " For a Few Dollars More") were made with small budgets. Just when they finally seem prepared to shoot after all, Leone uses a flashback. A final shoot-out between Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson, for example, takes at least 15 minutes. These difficulties notwithstanding, "Once Upon a Time in the West" is good fun, especially if you like Leone's way of savoring the last morsel of every scene.