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I didn't want actress just to be a woman standing at the window, waving hello and goodbye to men as they came and went in the world that they were struggling through. I wanted her to have a true function.
Sergio Leone -
There was also the myth of the western films. But my films are borrowed not from the story of the West in America but from the story of cinema.
Sergio Leone
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My mother was an actress. My father was an actor and a director. I am the son of filmmakers.
Sergio Leone -
I've shot films in Africa. I've shot in America - English is not my language.
Sergio Leone -
The function of the flashback is Freudian...You have to let them wander like the imagination or like a dream.
Sergio Leone -
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.' "
Sergio Leone -
Because the life that I live - the life that we all live - is filtered through one's own experience. It isn't necessarily optimistic when you look at the political phenomena, the different things that are going on in the world.
Sergio Leone -
The American public is a very specialized public. The reason it is taken as a realistic film is because inside the fable, I've put that kind of reality in. And it could easily be called, instead of Once Upon a Time in America, Once Upon a Time There Was a Certain Kind of Cinema. Because it was also an homage to cinema.
Sergio Leone
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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.
Sergio Leone -
I had more trouble than I had a sense of utility or satisfaction. But it served to occupy me and to keep me occupied in a field that I love - which was cinema - while I was waiting to realize the film that I wanted to do, which was Once Upon a Time in America, which took ten years of thinking and working to realize.
Sergio Leone -
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.
Sergio Leone -
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.
Sergio Leone -
I don't enter into particulars with Ennio Morricone. I give him the feeling and the suggestions of the characters.
Sergio Leone -
America is so varied and exciting that after six months, you go back and find it completely changed.
Sergio Leone
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I began to understand that 'America' in reality belonged to the whole world and not just to Americans. The idea of America had already been invented by the philosophers, the vagabonds, the dispersed of this earth, long before the Spanish ships got there. Those whom we call Americans have only rented it for a time. If they behave badly, we can discover another 'America'. The contract can be canceled at any time.
Sergio Leone -
It's difficult to find new solicitations, new expressions. But this is talking about filmmaking. Cinema.
Sergio Leone -
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.
Sergio Leone -
I work with intuition. With interpreters. I have my own method. I know exactly what I want from actors. Sometimes, I even recite the role to the actor if it's not clear.
Sergio Leone -
If a director takes the time to document - to step back to observe - I think it I more honest. Because it has to be the public that makes the conclusions and who, possibly, resolves the situation.
Sergio Leone -
The very fact of seeking specialization is probably what makes America so great in these two hundred years. But also, the sensation that somebody who wants to understand America doesn't really need to visit it much.
Sergio Leone
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I think women have always been considered objects, especially in the genre of westerns.
Sergio Leone -
I've always felt that music is more expressive than dialogue. I've always said that my best dialogue and screenwriter is Ennio Morricone. Because, many times, it is more important a note or an orchestration than a line said.
Sergio Leone -
I think even in American schools, they must be studying in a specialized manner.
Sergio Leone -
Whoever would like to look and see what someone is saying behind all the show, glitter, scenery, whatever it may be, and see what ideas are being expressed beyond and below and above that, can do that, as well.
Sergio Leone