Christopher Frayling,
Sergio Leone: Something to Do with Death.
London: Faber and Faber, 2000.
ISBN 0-571-16438-2
570pp
A$40.00

Uploaded 1 November 2000

Sergio Leone’s career was characterised by a constant desire to be taken seriously as a film director. Leone is most often regarded as a curiosity, usually considered the resuscitator of a “dead” genre (the western) and the father of a derided sub-genre (the dreaded spaghetti western). His own personal view of himself was laden with doubts which marred the tenuous relationships he established with others. Christopher Frayling’s biography of Leone examines the self-doubts of the flamboyant director, offering a stimulating examination of a man who was as unsure of his own talents as the legions of film theorists who have struggled (and most often failed) to come to terms with Leone’s place in the history of cinema.

Frayling’s book is the definitive biographical study of Leone, one of Europe’s most unique film-makers. It is amazing that so few book-length analyses of Leone exist given the proliferation of material on near-contemporaries as Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. Leone was the master of the Italian box-office when both Fellini and Antonioni were in their prime. Some may even argue that Leone’s films are as cherished amongst cinephiles as the films of either of these two canonised film-makers The highlight amongst the few studies of Leone is Frayling’s earlier Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans: From Karl May to Sergio Leone (1981), a critical analysis of Leone’s films, and also an expansive examination of the cycle of Italian westerns in general. This study was a supremely intelligent (and bold, at the time) investigation of the sub-genre of the spaghetti western and displayed an intrepid approach to Leone’s films. Frayling’s new book is less a critique or examination of Leone’s films, more a contemplation of the film-maker himself and the influences and events which shaped his career. It is a meticulously researched monograph with an emphasis on first -hand accounts provided by those who surrounded Leone for most of his life. Frayling is an historian with an exceptional attention to detail, a trait which the reader learns is shared with the film-maker he scrutinises. Leone is often labelled a perfectionist, obsessed with details. Frayling, too, is obsessed with the litany of facts, stories and events of Leone’s life from birth to death which inspired his greatest triumphs and his various failures. Notably, Frayling investigates Leone’s early film work as an assistant director on sword and sandal epics as well as his mid-career venture into producing – episodes which have mostly been explained away with a sentence or two in other studies.

While exploring the life of the young Sergio Leone, child of a famous silent film director and a moderately famous film star, Frayling catalogues the various influences in the young man’s life, influences that would eventually colour his feature films. The reader is encouraged to regard the young Leone’s obsessions with the burattini (puppet theatre) and commedia dell’arte as fixations that would one day find their analogue in bigger-than-life epics such as A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Later, it would be his apprenticeship as an assistant director-primarily constructing and shooting actions sequences-which would develop his taste for the baroque and intricate set-pieces for which he was famous. Leone had a slightly strange predilection for blowing-up bridges seen in both The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and A Fistful of Dynamite (1971). But the story of Sergio Leone really comes alive when Frayling examines the meteoric rise of its protagonist as his second film as director – A Fistful of Dollars – changed the Western genre forever, made a star of Clint Eastwood, and single-handedly inspired hundred of imitations. Leone and Eastwood (as well as many others) rarely agree on the exact details of particular events and circumstances and are often seen to be at odds with respect to certain proposals and ideas cultivated in the process of making the films – it seems time has sullied the veracity of the facts and the integrity of the truth. Frayling’s investigation into the professional life of Leone is peppered with the usual biographical incidents of in-fighting amongst producers, writers and actors and the always tantalising “what-if’ casting ideas. Try, if you might, imagining Once Upon a Time in the West starring Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas, and Gregory Peck. Leone vetoed that idea as soon as it was proposed.

There is also a rueful side to this examination of an artist whose self-doubts coupled with a prodigious talent drove away many of his closest associates and friends. Leone’s shaky ego and yearning to be accepted as an intellectual (he often carried a copy of Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night to interviews; most of his associates suspected he had never read it) was often at odds with a bluff exterior, rarely yielding in battles of will. Mickey Knox, an actor turned dialogue expert, said: “Leone was shallow as hell; he was bereft of profound ideas. But nobody topped him in the technique of making a movie”. (294) Leone’s numerous public appearances, articles written and interviews given, suggest his quest was to cultivate a personal image such as those carved out by Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles. Like these celebrated personalities, in his time Leone was as well known as his films. As with Welles and Hitchcock, Leone’s fame and popularity fuelled a requisite megalomania. Sergio Donati details the numerous quarrels he had with the director who would rarely offer him the commendation he deserved and would often take personal credit for other people’s ideas. Luciano Vincenzoni, a respected Italian screenwriter, had a turbulent relationship with Leone. Frayling’s interviews with Vincenzoni reveal a bitter person who to this day has not forgiven Leone for making his success at the expense of others.

The most satisfying segment of Frayling’s monograph is the penultimate eighty-five page chapter on the genesis, pre-production, filming and eventual fallout from Leone’s most ambitious film Once Upon a Time in America (1984). This film was literally seventeen years in the making. It is a fascinating exposition of the lengths Leone would go to see his unwavering vision fulfilled. Frayling repeatedly implies that Leone’s extraordinary motivation and work-ethic contributed to a relatively early death. His in depth analysis of the trials and tribulations of the making of this film is a tribute to Leone’s intense talent and drive. Yet Frayling’s book is largely an unbiased assessment of Leone. He gives equal weight to the director’s detractors and seemingly never shies away from detailing Leone’s foibles and failings as a professional and a human being. Frayling invites the reader to judge Leone; a man who could be intensely cruel, entirely brilliant, but always devoted to cinema and a personal vision. Frayling succeeds in illustrating an identity who is just as complex and intricate as his often misjudged films.

Paul Coughlin