Cinema between Fable and Political Mythology

This chapter discusses the theoretical and critical substance of Sergio Leone’s filmography, referencing modern and postmodern thinkers. It argues that the conceptual foundation of Leone’s cinema is a postmodern attempt to deconstruct complexity through the collapse of universal narratives (Enlightenment, Idealism, and Marxism), using irony and allusions to catastrophic events such as concentration camps, war, and revolution. The chapter illustrates Leone’s approach to cinema in relation to his experience between popular and political film, labeling his work “political spectacle.” It then elaborates Leone’s politics in relation to the two major thinkers who most influenced the director: Antonio Gramsci and Ernst Jünger (including Gramsci’s “national-popular” concept). This chapter analyzes Leone’s work—his début, The Colossus of Rhodes (1961), the “Dollars Trilogy,” and the “Once Upon a Time Trilogy”—chronologically, indicating the evolution of his work and its references to Italian and American history, from Fascism to the Vietnam War.

Sergio Leone’s Short Century

This chapter focuses on the eccentric and heterogeneous experiences, interests, and influences that contributed to the development of Sergio Leone’s authorial identity, particularly in the sword-and-sandal and Spaghetti Western genres. It investigates the exceptional intersection of cultural, technical, stylistic, and ideological influences coming from different, often contradictory, directions, creating a complete portrait of the artist. The chapter provides an overview of Leone’s career, and it also emphasizes his experience in roles other than that of film director, from assistant director on De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and many Hollywood epics, to producer of films such as My Name is Nobody (1973) by Tonino Valerii and Fun is Beautiful (1980) by Carlo Verdone. The chapter therefore reconstructs Leone’s background and puts it into communication with the historical, cultural, and cinematic national and international contexts from Fascism up to the director’s death in 1989.

Three Sequences

This chapter focuses on Leone’s aesthetic and cinematic language. In order to highlight the continuity and evolution of the director’s eye, it deconstructs and analyzes three famous sequences from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Duck, You Sucker! (1971), and Once Upon a Time in America (1984). The analysis of composition, mise-en-scène, and cinematography unveils the political and ethical symbolism of Leone’s cinema. It also references film theory (Sergei Eisenstein, among others) and critical contributions on Leone’s works tracing out the visual construction of his political perspective, and demonstrating the continuity and evolution of his unique style.