Consistency is key for filmmakers. Consistency means making a good film, so that you can get funding for your next project. Or, if you're Michael Bay, consistency is ensuring your film makes money, so that you can make more films and more money. Whilst there is an argument that Bay may well be one of Hollywood's most consistent directors, instead I want to focus on all genuine movie quality.
What directors always come through? Christopher Nolan is the immediate choice: ten movies, seven in the IMDb Top 250 (Following, Insomnia and Dunkirk do not make it, and the seven that do make it are all in the top 124), a huge following and the ability to turn original stories into big money makers. Martin Scorsese is another easy option; he has yet to make a 'bad' film and has shown considerable range from crime / gangster pictures to religious epics to thrillers. That being said, the quality of some of his films is of such high calibre that his lesser efforts, whilst still great, pale in comparison, losing that vital consistency. This is true for Spielberg, who has yet to blow me away this century. Quentin Tarantino has a vast following but anyone who made Pulp Fiction and also Deathproof should not be associated with the word consistency. David Fincher is pretty close were it not for Alien3 and I have yet to see all of Hitchcock and Kurosawa's works to comment on them.
But recently I watched a film, and that film was important because it meant I had completed the filmography of a director. The film was Duck, You Sucker though I intend to refer to it by the better name, A Fistful of Dynamite. The director: Mr one Sergio Leone. Completing Leone's filmography was by no means difficult; he only directed eight films and only six are readily available to find and watch.
Leone was an Italian film director, producer and writer. His parents were involved in the industry and Leone soon followed, picking up dream work experience on the sets of 1948's Bicycle Thieves, 1951's Quo Vadis and 1959's Ben-Hur. He took over as director during production of The Last Days of Pompeii in 1959 before making his full debut in 1961 with The Colossus of Rhodes. Whilst I will inevitably have to track this film down, for now I am continuing with my bittersweet view that I have seen all of Leone's 'Leone' movies (an Ennio Morricone score, American setting and his own perfected style). They are as follows:
A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), A Fistful of Dynamite (1971) and Once Upon a Time in America (1984).
The fact is, Leone could have made just three of those films and be considered an all time influential great. Not many can say that they created their own genre, but with A Fistful of Dollars Leone introduced the Spaghetti-western; a more unforgiving, violent type of frontier life dominated by anti-heroes and bandits. With his Dollars trilogy, Leone stripped America of law, women and religion and focused on the men it left behind. Critics were not used to this morally grey environment where lessons and messages are dropped in favour of technique, style and all round coolness. Yes Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name does dispense some satisfying justice, but more often than not it is in the service of money, rather than any sense of loyalty or duty. A Fistful of Dollars is perhaps the weakest of Leone's films. Whilst still a thing of beauty to behold, and is endlessly rewatchable, it suffers due to to its association with Kurosawa's samurai epic Yojimbo (1961) and how it is essentially a beat for beat remake. The security of going with an already well received story gives Leone a chance to focus on technique and style, and the intense close ups, massive wide shots, musical cues and black humour all start seeping into the screen.
With his new found genre and world, Leone continued with For a Few Dollars More. In this, Eastwood is joined by Lee Van Cleef as Mortimer, a fellow bounty hunter hoping to take down a gang. Their relationship allows a more dynamic narrative than just Eastwood alone like in AFOD. A fantastic western, FAFDM slips under the radar too often when it comes to all time greats.
The following year comes a film so famous you have heard it before you have seen it: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. One of my all time favourites, TGTBATU is near three hours of cinematic perfection. The second film gave us two characters, and this third film gives us three: Eastwood and Van Cleef return, but Eli Wallach steals the film as bandit Tuco. The three-way partnership and backstabbing creates an immeasurably fun atmosphere and Morricone's score has never been stronger. The final twenty minutes of this film is on another level entirety, it is Leone with no brakes, showing off every editing and camera trick he knows, all in the service of some serious tension. Quentin Tarantino was right when he named TGTBATU one of the best directed films of all time.
Three films over three years. One founded a genre, one confirmed it and one transcended it. And Leone was just getting warmed up. 1968 saw the release of Leone's magnum opus Once Upon a Time in the West. A masterpiece if ever there was one, this steers away from the European western and was filmed in Monument Valley, the stomping ground of Johns Ford and Wayne. A clear indication that Leone was offering something a bit more elegiac; a western that may have something to say as well as show. Indeed, OUATITW concerns a widowed lady who is caught between three men: one, a wronged bandit,; two, a vicious hired gun; and three, a mysterious drifter looking to settle a score. With Henry Fonda shockingly cast against type, and with Charles Bronson in the Eastwood role, Leone conducted a western so grand and precise many view it as the greatest ever made. When watching it it seems every action, blocking and framing has been carefully thought out. The dialogue sounds like poetry and every line carries weight. It is as close to perfect a piece of cinema has can be.
Again, Leone could have stopped there. He had deconstructed the western, then made a linear, classical western which fused European technique with Hollywood narrative. Out of those four, the last two are both considered in in the all time greatest films lists, with both featuring very highly on sites like IMDb.
In 1971 came A Fistful of Dynamite, sometimes seen as Duck, You Sucker, sometimes seen as Once Upon a Time in... the Revolution. Set in the Mexican revolution, Leone cast James Coburn as an Irish freedom fighter with Rod Steiger as a Mexican bandit who both get caught up the political action. Heroes still don't sit well with Leone: Steiger robs a train and rapes a women in the opening scene whist Coburn is shown to have gunned down three unarmed men. Yet the direction and characterisation is extremely good. The second act contains some of Leone's best work: the distant sounds of gunfire as Coburn observes dead bodies; a silent flashback when viewing a snitch; a motorbike rescue from firing squad. It is a severely underrated film and I eagerly anticipate my next viewing of it,
Leone was originally asked to direct The Godfather, but he rejected in favour of directing his own multi-generational gangster story, something that in 1984 would become his final work Once Upon a Time in America. A too often overlooked Robert DeNiro crime film, OUATIA alternated in its non linear narrative between children, men and elderly men and the effect greed and violence has on friendship. It is a mammoth film, clocking in well over three and a half hours long. This length frightened Warner Bros. who trimmed it down to a little shy of 140 minutes and turned it into a linear narrative. For a devastated Leone, this would be his last film. In time, the restored version has become more universal and, for those that have seen it, it is a truly great gangster movie.
Sergio Leone died in 1989 leaving behind seven films he fully directed. Five are westerns, a genre which Leone both admired and twisted, playing Tarantino with genre before Tarantino was born. It is hard to think of a cinematic landscape where Leone didn't exist: removing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly alone would cripple so many films post 1966. When it comes to understanding shots, juxtaposing images and editing, you have to look at the work this true auteur released. When it comes to consistency, Nolan comes close, but time will tell if his pictures will inspire and endure in the same legendary way Leone's have.
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