Il Messaggero
By Gloria Satta
April 27, 2019
The best gift we could give to Dad, the best way to
celebrate it in the year of the double anniversary: 30 years of his death and
90 years of his birth, "says Raffaella Leone, the producing daughter (in
tandem with her brother Andrea) of the great Sergio, who on April 30th 1989
left us at just sixty years of age, after having handed over to the history of
cinema seven films that remain mythical: “For a Fistful of Dollars”, For a Few
Dollars More”, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”, “Once Upon a Time in the
West”, “Duck You Sucker”, Once Upon a Time in America”. And the
"gift" mentioned by Raffaella is ‘Colt’, the western conceived by the
director but never made: in Cannes, at the full Festival (14-25 May), it will
be announced to the world that the film will finally become a reality, financed
by international capitalists, after years of failed attempts, enthusiasms,
obstacles and hopes.
HISTORY
The protagonist is a gun that passes from hand to hand.
Behind the camera there will be Stefano Sollima, also screenwriter with Luca
Infascelli, Massimo Guadioso and an American professional. "Dad had the
idea of Colt many years before he died, when we children were still
young," reveals Raffaella, "and to tell the truth he didn't want to
make a film about it: much ahead of his time, he was thinking of a TV
series." Why Sollima? "He is Sergio's heir. He has his own taste for
the epic tale and conceives cinema as something big, mythical. His raw style,
realistic and always accompanied by irony, is akin to that of my father. But
Stefano will know how to turn out the original project and make it totally
his”.
EXPOSURE
Leone was born in Rome on January 3, 1929 and on the
occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of his birth another great event will
celebrate his talent: the great exhibition “Once Upon a Time Sergio Leone” who,
after its debut at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris last October, December
12 will arrive in Rome, at the Ara Pacis, to stay there until Easter 2020.
"In France we have registered 60 thousand attendees, more than those that
had been counted at the exhibition on François Truffaut. Honestly, I did not
expect such great enthusiasm from the public, "explains Gianluca
Farinelli, the director of the Cineteca di Bologna (who restored For a Fistful
of Dollars in 2014) and curator of the exhibition, organized by Equa di Camilla
Morabito. "Leone's talent is still known and beloved." The exhibition
will unfold through the complete retrospective of the director's films
(including those he produced, such as the cult of Carlo Verdone “Un sacco bello”,
“Grande grosso” and “Verdone, Troppo forte”), photographs, documents,
documentaries, conferences, objects, a book. And, compared to the Paris event,
in Rome there will be a brand new section: “It will be dedicated to the
influence exercised by Leone on the collective imagination and on the work of
other directors such as Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Ang Lee, Guillermo
Del Toro and many others", Farinelli anticipates while the BiFest of Bari
is preparing to celebrate Sergio's father, the director Roberto Roberti (stage
name of Vincenzo Leone).
RUMOR
A gem: a film, never seen before, will be screened at the
Ara Pacis, in which Leone appears to be engaged in the post-production of one of
his films in the role of a sound effects specialist. In the pre-digital age, he
was the one who took care of the sound: to make the horses gallop he wore a
hoof on his hand and banged it on the table, to make the river flow he emptied
a basin of water with his glass. "For him, cinema was craftsmanship,"
says the director of the Cineteca di Bologna. Carlo Verdone also agrees:
"While cinema often forgets its masters, even today everyone loves
Sergio", explains the Roman director. "He had the merit of reinventing
a genre, the western. He put the myth at the center of his every story and
created the Clint Eastwood mask, he always thought big: his hair would stand up
if he knew that movies today are seen on
smartphones ...”. He adds: "I owe him everything. If Sergio had not
brought me to the producers Puccioni and Colajacomo I would never have existed.
And I would not have learned to be a screenwriter, director and protagonist of
my films”. Which cinema would you like today, Leone? "He would adore
Tarantino," replies Raffaella, "and the TV series: they have for a
long time his masterpieces. The siege of Leningrad, the massive project he had
in mind before he died, would have done so in installments”.
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