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Scion of movie actress Francesca Bertini and pioneering Italian director Vincenzo Leone (aka Roberto Roberti), Sergio Leone merged his movie-made dreams of America with his own brand of epic myth-making to create a quartet of 1960s Westerns so exceptional that they earned their own generic moniker. Though initially derided as nihilistically violent spaghetti Westerns, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) galvanized the floundering genre, turning Leone into an international directorial star. Following his spectacular iron horse opera Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), however, Leone directed only two more movies before his death in 1989. Though he helmed a mere seven films, Leone's enormous influence was apparent from the late '60s onward, from Sam Peckinpah, John Woo, Quentin Tarantino, and of course Clint Eastwood, who dedicated his Unforgiven (1992) "To Sergio and Don."Born and raised in Rome, Leone adored Hollywood movies as a child. Despite his father's insistence that he study law, Leone began a parallel education in filmmaking at age 18 through family connections. After working on several films, including Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1947), Leone quit school to pursue a movie career full time. Buoyed by the peplum film vogue, Leone worked as an assistant director throughout the 1950s at Cinecitt |
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