By David G.
Maciejewski
December 13, 2018
Controversies and
plagiarism in Sad Hill
The places chosen for For a Fistful of Dollars, For a Few
Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly passed through Iberian
territory. The emblematic desert of Tabernas, in Almeria; the Sad Hill cemetery
rebuilt in Burgos (the recent Spanish documentary Unearthing Sad Hill) and La
Calahorra granadina hosted part of the sequences. The rest, the ones of the
interiors, were filmed in the studies of Italian Cinnecittà.
For a Fistful of Dollars came to theaters loaded with
controversy. Some critics accused Leone of plagiarizing part of the script of Yojimbo
(1961) and even sued the Italian producer. Akira Kurosawa's screenwriters won
the lawsuit and took 15% of the film's profits, more money than they collected
with Toshiro Mifune's films. Critics, who did not understand Leone's style at
the time, even accused him for decades of being a plagiarist of other films.
However, the talent of Sergio Leone, like that of Quentin
Tarantino, was to reconvert the schemes of the genre, adapt them to their style
and expose them from a different perspective than the public was accustomed to.
The cinema is an endless succession of creative references between artists, so
it is trivial (if not selfish and envious) to consider that the adaptation of
certain visual motives is cause for plagiarism. History has given the reason to
Leone: the cinema of the West cannot be understood without his influence.
Something that criticism had to accept after the premiere of The Good, the Bad
and the Ugly, his third installment of the trilogy starring the Nameless Man
(Eastwood).
The sunset of the
rider
After the undeniable success of the Dollar Trilogy, Leone
embarked on his most ambitious project: portraying the decline of the Far West
with Once Upon a Time in the West. The blood and violence of his previous films
were skillfully inserted into a plot marked by a melancholy family tragedy
(that of Claudia Cardinale, the first woman protagonist in his films) and a
brutal revenge story led by Harmonica (Charles Bronson). Henry Fonda, an actor
who always embodied a good-natured character (if you do not remember him in his
angelic role of 12 merciless men), became a ruthless assassin whose pulse does
not move when he has to shoot an unarmed kid who has seen hia face. No one
better than Leone could portray the brutality and savagery of the true West.
In order to emphasize this disappearance of the
conventional codes of the western and to break with the Trilogy of the Dollar,
Leone wanted to contract with Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef,
the trio of protagonists of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, to appear in the
initial sequence. As Eastwood refused, the idea was forgotten. In the end they
were Woody Strode, habitual actor in the westerns of John Ford; Jack Elam, a
minor celebrity from the North American Western, and Al Mulock, who had already
worked with Leone and who committed suicide in Guadix during the shooting, the
protagonists of the opening sequence, the longest in film history.
A new universe
ahead
The radicalism with which Sergio Leone cut short with his
previous works is evident with the unexpected death of the three malefactors.
Genius comes to say: "The Old West is gone forever. I killed it. You can
do nothing to remedy it. "The rest of the film is a sequal succession of
unforgettable sequences that are taken from Johnny Guitar (the female character
of Cardinale is inspired by that of Joan Crawford); the solo gunfighter before
the danger (the sequences of the persecution between Fonda and Bronson in the
town) and, especially, from the deep roots of the genre, that served as
inspiration seen in the massacre of the McBain family. The script was written
by Bernardo Bertolucci, Dario Argento and Sergio Donati.
The eruption of the Railroad and the decay of the Far
West, which leads to a rapid democratization of the wild territories, are the
main motive of OUATITW. His characters, on the verge of disappearance by the eruption
of modernization, seem to seek their last moment of glory before disappearing.
An idea that connects with the laconic memories of John Wayne in The Man who Killed
Liberty Valance. "The rhythm of the film sought to evoke the last rales of
a dying man," says Leone. And as Thoret recalls: "The extreme elongation
of time, the funereal hieraticism of the postures, procure the sensation of a
frozen and deserted world, already dead in short."
Revolutionaries
and gangsters
Duck You Sucker! and Once Upon a Time in America were the
last two works of Sergio Leone. The first, was little understood and almost
relegated to the background in the filmmaker's filmography, is contextualized
in World War I. Specifically, in a revolutionary Mexico where lives a bloody
class struggle. It has Rod Steiger and James Coburn in a masterful interpretive
duel: a bandit and an IRA terrorist who end up establishing a close friendship
relationship, like the buddy films of yesteryear. His beautiful interpretations
are only comparable to the extraordinary visual epic of most sequences (the
nightly performances in front of the headlights of the cars or the appetizer in
front of the cliff are anthological) and with the satirical-melodramatic melody
of Ennio Morricone.
In Once Upon a Time in America, that movie that already
premonized with its first script of 1948, Sergio Leone leaves the western for
the first time and honors the great films of the history of the black cinema.
He moves his characters to decadent suburban Manhattan. Once again, he rebuilds
it under his schemes and destroys the narrative line through a frame mounted on
flashbacks (a technique he had previously used). Forgotten by the Academy
Awards, which saw in it nothing more than another themed and incoherent
potpourri, Once Upon a Time in America, was really the best work of a filmmaker
in his creative heyday.
His next project, Leningrad, about 900 days from the site
to the Russian city, could never see the light: Sergio Leone died in 1989
during the pre-production of the film. A potential masterpiece that we will
never get to see.
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