Sergio Donati: the art of storytelling

Snaporaz

By David Pulici

August 26, 2024

In September 2007, at the Venice Film Festival, as part of a retrospective on the Italian Western, which was to be blessed with Tarantino's chrism – which, however, broke down – I had the good fortune to carry out a long interview with Sergio Donati, who passed away last August 13. Sergio Donati, a screenwriter whose surname, often, if not always, was associated in hendiades with that of Luciano Vincenzoni: Donati & Vincenzoni. This time, however, Sergio was traveling alone, and he had a great desire to tell his story. He had the desire and the skills, because he was a fantastic storyteller, as well as in cinema just as much in life: one of those who, speaking, ipso facto script. I asked him four or five questions. Feedings, cues, pulls, hook throws, but so, after which it was the one man show, to hold court for over three hours, with a speech at the same time calm, controlled, but funny, ironic and flamboyant. That day Donati presented himself with a cadeau: the screenplay that he had recently digitized, from the original, of Once Upon a Time in the West. I don't remember if he was also generous with that delightful memoir of his entitled Once Upon a Time in the West (but I was there too) – I don't think so, because it should have been released after 2007, by Omero. The bulk of the stories that Donati told me focused on Sergio Leone, on his relationship with the man, brilliant, controversial, changeable, now and always a great director and just as great an "asshole" (to be understood with the Roman good-naturedness of the definition, as it sounded in Donati's mouth). Sergio put his talent, first as a "nigger", then finally "credited", at the service of those films that were entitled For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West and Down the Head (Down with the Head, Asshole! to quote it as it was originally conceived). But Donati, in the rest of his life, would write just under eighty films, of all kinds, of each of which it was electrifying to hear him bear witness, since, as I have already said, in his words the man was a screenwriter and the screenwriter was a man.