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Sergio Leone: Something To Do With Death
by: Christopher Frayling

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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.430233092
EAN: 9780571164387
ISBN: 0571164382
Label: Faber and Faber
Manufacturer: Faber and Faber
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 570
Publication Date: March 06, 2000
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Studio: Faber and Faber
Sales Rank: 47849

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
They were "ersatz Westerns" to American critics. Umberto Eco compared them to the "godless nostalgia" of Renaissance writing, and the director himself described them as about "picaresque people placed in epic situations". The films of Sergio Leone have inspired generations of directors, from Steven Spielberg, George Lucas (whose film Star Wars was effectively a Western in space) and John Carpenter to Quentin Tarantino. Christopher Frayling certainly needs no convincing of the man's talent. Already the author of Spaghetti Westerns, his first full-length biography is a cinéaste's delight, a detailed and rewarding survey of the career of the man of whom Bernardo Bertolucci said, "I like the way he filmed horses' arses".

Leone was born into film: his father directed the first Italian Western in 1913 and his mother was an actress. Beset by a formative tangle of influences, such as Neapolitan marionette shows and a love of John Ford and Charlie Chaplin, he moved from "toga flicks" to the landscape of his dreams, the American mid-West (actually Almeria in Spain). The 1960s Dollars trilogy, with their fledgling star Clint Eastwood as The Man With No Name (actually Joe in the first, then Blondie) and their lingering camerawork allied to Ennio Morricone's haunting scores, defined a genre from which he fought to escape. Once Upon the Time in the West followed, with its dizzying stillness but there would be a decade of relative inertia before the epic Once Upon a Time in America, the gangster film he reputedly turned down The Godfather to direct. The film is a mosaic of reference to film noir and America, the genre and country that continued to inform and delight him. Frayling's cultured prose focuses less on the man than the movie-maker, yet his study, which also doubles as a general history of Italian cinema, splendidly feeds off the numerous legends and bitching that sprung up around the history of Leone's productions. Drawing on conversations with the director himself before his death in 1989, as well as dialogues with old acquaintances--and, most essentially, a first-class knowledge of the films themselves--Frayling has written a comprehensive homage to one of the trademark directors of 20th-century cinema. --David Vincent

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Definitive Biography But....
This is the definitive Leone biography. Meticulously researched with access to the key players either directly or through secondary sources. Particularly worthy of mention is the way the author brings the subject back to life by weaving quotes from Leone skilfully into the narrative. This book has the goods on the movies, how they were made and the source material that inspired them. However, and this is the only serious quibble with this book, one wonders if it is necessary to go into such detail regarding the plot outline particularly of Once Upon A Time In America which is repeated a couple of times through the book. Perhaps the author wishes to convey the agonizing lengths to which Leone had to go to bring this epic project into being but ... Read More:

Rating:

- Fine and detailed account of Leone and his films
The enormous strength of this book for me is Frayling's succinct and detailed analysis of Leones films. He takes key scenes from all of Leones films backing them up with excellent anecdotes, to point out either a technical point to Leones directing, or as an excuse to show Leone's emotional sometimes bullying and overbearing manner when directing. The biography does get a little too bogged down in minor detail sometimes. This can be distracting but its better to be slightly over detailed than under detailed in a biography. The only other minor quibble I would have with the book is the start of it, which confusingly starts with Leone as a young teenager or so, before going back to when he was born. Although this shift in time was ... Read More:

Rating:

- Wonderful
Prof. Frayling has written the first - and most likely definitive - account of Leone's life. It is everything that a fan could want, casting light on the conception and gestation of his films and offering generous insight into them.

This is no hagiography; Frayling (very gently) deflates the myth that Leone created about himself to produce a book which informs, enlightens and entertains.

It goes without saying that this is an essential purchase for anyone who loves Spaghetti Westerns and the work of Il Maestro.

Rating:

- The first in depth analysis of Leone's life in film.
This book, the first biography of Leone, features at its core the connection between Leone's life and career with that of the Italian film industry and Italian society. Leone was born and raised within showbusiness and here Frayling documents how this informed Leone and vice versa. Frayling also makes us reconsider the popular misconception that people have about Leone's personality; he was not the larger than life character most thought but instead deeply uncertain of himself and his talent. It becomes apparent as one reads that much of Leone's legendary ferocity and meaness stemmed from him trying to overcompensate for his own self-doubt.

Frayling manages to celebrate the great man's achievements without ever resorting to ... Read More:

Books : Sergio Leone: Something To Do With Death