The sole director who influenced Sergio Leone: “There is only one”
For somebody who became one of the most influential directors in cinema history, Sergio Leone didn’t exactly helm a huge amount of movies.
What he lacked in quantity, he more than made up for in quality. The maverick Italian took the reins on just seven features between his 1961 debut, The Colossus of Rhodes, and his 1984 swansong Once Upon a Time in America.
It’s technically eight for anyone out there who wants to split hairs, although Leone did go uncredited on 1959’s swords-and-sandals adventure The Last Days of Pompeii, despite picking up the baton and steering the production across the finish line when director Mario Bonnard fell seriously ill during shooting.
Leone revolutionised the western genre by popularising its spaghettified evolution and turning Clint Eastwood into a superstar with A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which he followed up with Once Upon a Time in the West to achieve the remarkable feat of directing four consecutive classics that each exist as one of their chosen medium’s all-time greats.
His visual panache was often imitated but never bettered. Leone juxtaposed wide-open spaces and sweeping vistas with extreme close-ups and eye-catching compositions, while his ability to stage a set piece was a thing of beauty. He developed an aesthetic that was uniquely his own, which helps explain why he wasn’t influenced by any directors except one.
Explaining his perspective on cinema to Toronto Film Magazine, Leone pointed to himself as being an avid fan of the art form, but not necessarily the people behind the camera. “I must be honest and say that I was under the fascination of films,” he said. “I was fascinated by all films, even the words of them.”
Curiously, for a filmmaker who knew their way around a classic, Leone revealed that he was “more entertained by the bad films than the good ones,” pointing to the ways in which a noble misfire can be superior to a flawless masterpiece. “When something is beautiful, it is there; it is finished; it is done. It doesn’t have to be touched or be worked upon,” he elaborated. “But if it is badly realised and not completely expressed, sometimes that is more provocative and interesting.”
That doesn’t mean he refused to acknowledge the greats who came before, even if there was but a solitary name he felt compelled to celebrate. “But if there is one auteur who influenced me – and there is only one – that is Charlie Chaplin,” Leone revealed. “And he never won an Oscar.”
Not to split hairs with the maestro, but Chaplin had three. Sure, two of them were honorary awards for his contributions to the industry, and the other was a ‘Best Original Score’ statue for 1972’s Limelight, so he is technically correct in saying the iconic actor and performer never won a competitive prize for his filmmaking efforts. Leone never even got a nomination, not that it prevented him from taking his place in the history books.
