Sergio Leone Quotes - Page 2

You see in Once Upon a Time in the West the whole film moves around her [Claudia Cardinale]. If you take her out, there's no more film. She's the central motor of the entire happening.

In my childhood, America was like a religion. Then, real-life Americans abruptly entered my life - in jeeps - and upset all my dreams.

When I used a woman in my films or wrote a woman into my film, I wanted her to be a central point and a motivating point or a catalyst to function in the film.

If there is an auteur who influenced me - and there is only one - that is Charlie Chaplin. And he never won an Oscar.

America interests me above all because it is so filled with contradictions, interesting contradictions, which change constantly. Even if you've decided that you don't want to deal with that subject again, before you know it, the desire comes back to do it yet again.

An important Italian critic once gave Fistful of Dollars a very bad review when it came out. Then he went to the university here [Rome] with Once Upon a Time in America. We showed it to 10,000 students. And while the man was speaking that day to the students, with me present, he said, "I have to state one thing. When I gave that review about Sergio's films, I should have taken into account that on Sergio Leone's passport, there should not be written whether the nationality is Italian or anything else. What should be written is: 'Nationality: Cinema.' "

I was born with this bow tie made of celluloid on my collar.

I have to be honest about one thing. When I want to America, no on asked me how I was. Everyone always asked me, "How much do you make?"

From Ennio [Morricone] I ask for themes that clothe my characters easily. He's never read a script of mine to compose the music, because many times he's composed the music before the script is ever written.

Especially in gangster films, with the gangster's moll - she would always be more or less of an object. And I'm not convinced of this theory. Because I think even gangsters' women have brains. They think and even, as we say, have balls.

Sometimes, I even recite the role to the actor if it's not clear. And I beg them not to imitate me, because I'm not a good actor.

It's a little hard to avoid putting both war and politics in, in that they both come into the activity, but on their own. My basic idea is to do a great love film set in the hell of 1942. At that moment, hell was Leningrad. Underneath all this, of course, is a film about dissension between the two most important countries in the world, the United States and the Soviet Union. I think it is a must at this point to talk about cooperation instead of the rancor and hatred and competition between nations.

I'm terrified by young people who are doing what they think is film making. What they're really doing is taking that convulsed, fast rhythm of commercials. It's not film making.

It [film-making] really just has to do with my own ghosts and phantoms. And I have to say, in the end, it's just my way of seeing things.

My films are often characterized by the lack of women present in them, except for this last one [Once Upon a Time in America].

Even when I read a book, if the book leaves me the possibility of finding certain solutions or working on my own toward a solution, I prefer that much more than if the book fills me with the answers, gives them to me directly.

When one goes to see Modern Times, for instance, one understands much more about socialism than listening to the man who was then head of the Socialist movement in Italy.

What I do is give Ennio Morricone suggestions and describe to him my characters, and then, quite often, he'll possibly write five themes for one character. And five themes for another. And then I'll take one piece of one of them and put it with a piece of another one for that character or take another theme from another character and move it into this character.... And when I have my characters finally dressed, then he composes.

I consciously chose a person like the bounty killer [of the Fistful trilogy] because he was the street sweeper of the desert, a man who put his life at risk exclusively for the money. I'm not saying that he went against the law, but he put himself within the wings of the law only when it was something that he could profit by.

All the people I've met, many outside of cinema, knew everything perfectly about one thing or one subject or one area.

As far as commercials were concerned, I did very few, and I did them only when they gave me carte blanche to them the way that I wanted to. And I did them as an exercise, because I, who do very long films, never thought I would be able to tell a story in 30 or 40 seconds - you come across a whole new system and manner of approaching a subject.

When I used Claudia [Cardinale] for example, in Once Upon a Time in the West, she represented the birth of American matriarchy. Because women had enormous weight in America.

My discussion is one that has gone all the way from Fistful of Dollars through Once Upon a Time in America. But if you look closely at all these films, you find in them the same meanings, the same humor, the same point of view, and, also, the same pains.

I don't enter into particulars with [Ennio Morricone]. I give him the feeling and the suggestions of the characters.

I never worry about what they think about me. Because I feel so far away from what my Italian colleagues have done that I almost automatically become an isolated director.