Sicilian Culture: The People: Sergio Leone

Sicilian Culture

The People, The History, The Culture

Sergio Leone

January 3, 1929 - - April 30, 1989

Sergio was born in Rome, the son of Vicenzo Leone, a silent film director. Sergio was an obscure film director when he was given $200k and surplus film and asked to make a western movie. He was given a script based on a samurai epic. He chose American television actor Clint Eastwood to star in the film, Per un Pugno di Dollari (A Fistful of Dollars). Along with Clint Eastwood, Ennio Morricone, a musical composer, and Massimo, the cameraman, he made a film which critics hated but audiences loved. It would be the first of his "spaghetti westerns", which were films produced by European film companies from the 60s and 70s which critics slammed and/or dismissed, after all, what did Italians know about the American West? What they knew was they could not get westerns so they made their own. And apparently they knew enough to make a captivating genere of movies which now is a classic institution.

Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars
Other films Sergio Leone Made Include:
A Fistful of Dollars
A Few Dollars More
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
Once Upon A Time in the West
A Fistful of Dynamite
Once Upon A Time in America

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