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“I’m convinced that I created “Once upon a time in my cinema”, rather than “Once upon a time in America.” Who better than the director himself to enclose in a handful of words the deeper meaning of one of the most talked about films in the history of cinema?  “Once Upon a Time in America” was initially a flop, then re-evaluated by critics, especial...

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There’s really no understating the stardom of actor-turned-director Clint Eastwood beginning in the mid-’60s. After a tenure on the long-running TV series Rawhide and a few notable Hollywood movies, it took a stint in Italy to turn him into a megastar. Three films under director Sergio Leone changed his career forever; the films he made in the wake...

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Sergio Leone's work with Clint Eastwood changed the landscape of Westerns, as well as the landscape of world cinema. After the overwhelming success of 1964's A Fistful of Dollars, a new subgenre was born: The Spaghetti Western. The resulting films represent a now-gone era of stylish filmmaking. The Spaghetti Western differentiates itself from tradi...

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Winner of two Academy Awards, three Golden Globes and four Grammy Awards, Ennio Morricone, one of the greatest Italian composer and conductor, has given to the entire world an inestimable music heritage that will probably make the future generations remember him forever. His death, a few days ago, on the 6th of July, has left a big hole in the hear...

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The most reprehensibly violent movie ever made came to America at the end of 1967: “must be the most expensive, pious, and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre,” wrote New York Times critic Renata Adler. “If 42d Street is lined with little pushcarts of sadism, this film . . . is an entire supermarket.” One character, Adler informed...

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Once upon a time there were the Western movies. Then came Sergio Leone and he created the Spaghetti Westerns. Actually, he is acknowledged as one of the most influential directors in the history of cinema. To celebrate him and his powerful cinematic narration, his hometown Rome hosts an exhibit that opens today at the Ara Pacis Museum. In 2019 it's...

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With 1964's A Fistful of Dollars, Italian screenwriter and director Sergio Leone brought an entirely new sensibility to the Western, incorporating ideas from other genres within the framework of a tale set in the Old West. In doing so, he not only created a new type of film, the Spaghetti Western, but also launched the film career of its star, Clin...

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The years between 1950 and 1960 were difficult for the great Hollywood film industry. A sentence of the Supreme Court of the United States decreed the end of the studios' productive and distributive oligopoly and, at the same time, TV began to become very popular. The significant drop in films produced created problems for the programming of many m...

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Italy’s Leone Film Group, the company founded by Spaghetti Western master Sergio Leone, has been on a roaring roll since 2012. That’s when his children, Raffaella and Andrea, who now run the company, spotted a theatrical distribution gap left open by Medusa and Rai Cinema and stepped in to swiftly sign an output deal with DreamWorks. This, in turn,...

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The Italian post office issued a stamp Tuesday to mark the 30th anniversary of great director Sergio Leone. The stamp shows the baddie from his masterpiece One Upon A Time In The West played by Henry Fond. Leone, who died on April 30, 1989 aged 60, was credited as the inventor of the Spaghetti Western genre starring Clint Eastwood. Leone's pioneeri...

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