Sergio Leone
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Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced by Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Themes Visuals Plot
Sergio Leone directed Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and then Once Upon a Time in America (1984).
In some ways, he may see commonality between that reality and that affecting the characters of “Once Upon a Time in the West,” who too are watching hopelessly on as their aesthetic is eroded down to its rawest materials.
The film’s title takes inspiration from Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West and pays homage to spaghetti and TV westerns of the 60s through the format of a dark buddy comedy.
Pese a esto, las historias se entrelazan de manera similar a un spaguetti western que seguramente fue inspiración para Tarantino: el filme de Sergio Leone, Once Upon a Time in the West .
After all, Quentin Tarantino calls his newest film “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” which is, of course, not only an homage to Sergio Leone (“Once Upon a Time in the West,” Once Upon a Time in America”), but also the traditional way to start a fairy tale.
It echoes “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) and “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984), both directed by Sergio Leone, whom Tarantino reveres.
The Lone Ranger (2013)
Directed by Gore Verbinski
influenced by Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Music Visuals Plot Themes
Westward expansion is the first of many tin-eared nods the director makes to Sergio Leone’s classic “Once Upon a Time in the West,” including recurring bits of Ennio Morricone’s iconic score.
Like Rango, The Lone Ranger substitutes pastiche for plot; the opening of Once Upon A Time In The West and the climax of Buster Keatons The General are both quoted extensively, and there are throwaway nods to everything from The Red Balloon to There Will Be Blood .
There are likable nods to Once Upon a Time in the West (in particular a railroad subplot and the oscillating dramatic score), Little Big Man, The Searchers, and The Bridge on the River Kwai.
Verbinski litters the film with references to old TV Western serials, John Ford’s Monument Valley, and especially Once Upon A Time In The West, which it quotes both in the score and in a subplot about the railroads bringing order to the Wild West.
The Lone Ranger turns out to be practically a comic remake of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West.
The movie is deeply indebted to three great films set during or just after the Civil War: John Ford’s The Searchers (a man’s quest for his brother’s killer in Indian lands), Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (the coming of the transcontinental railroad) and Buster Keaton’s The General (the climactic train chase).
Brimming with homages to just about every memorable western imaginable, particularly John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954), Once Upon a Time in the West is a brilliant metafilm that plays as both a stirring melodrama and a film geek’s cornucopia of in-jokes and movie references.
It's easy to trainspot the picture's references (and it was probably even easier back in the late sixties, when a film like Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar was little more than a decade old), but imperative that you not begrudge the movie its homages.
The Hateful Eight (2015)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced by Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Plot Visuals Music
Since a coming blizzard forces a cartoonish cross-section of nomadic, lying vermin to hunker down at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a staging post near Red Rock, Wyoming, it’s likely that further inspiration came from Delmer Daves’s 3.10 to Yuma and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, among other Westerns that milk the tension in waiting.
While those who see the film undoubtedly expect something more akin to the jaw dropping Monument Valley scenery in The Searchers, or desolate expanses of Once Upon a Time in the West, or the grandeur of Lawrence of Arabia.
We get an Ennio Morricone score—sadly, no match for “Once Upon a Time in the West,” where his musical glories washed in sadness against Leone’s array of sombre deeds.
It all plays out like a cross between The Petrified Forest and Ten Little Indians , with some Once Upon a Time in the West widescreen splendor to make it pop.
But Quentin Tarantino convinced Morricone to do the score for The Hateful Eight (2015).
Sergio Leone borrowed the plot for "A Fistful of Dollars," the spaghetti Western that launched Clint Eastwood.
In fact, he adapted the film from "Yojimbo," the Akira Kurosawa samurai-for-hire classic that was remade once before as "A Fistful of Dollars" with Clint Eastwood.
In 1964 Sergio Leone relied on elements from Hammett and Kurosawa for his Spaghetti Western "A Fistful of Dollars."
The American (2010)
Directed by Anton Corbijn
influenced by Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Characters
In a scene about midway through "The American," George Clooney's character is sitting in a bar where Sergio Leone's masterful "Once Upon A Time In the West" is playing on TV.
And any movie in which rustic afternoon barflies can be found watching Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West can't be all bad.
(The brief glimpse of Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West is far from random.)
You think you can escape history”…snap!), which contrast to the annoying scene in which Once Upon a Time in the West plays on a bar TV.
Jack is just a drone, and a pretty uninteresting one at that. Henry Fonda managed to reverse the polarity on his likeability with his bad guy guise in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West.
Like Henry Fonda playing the villain in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, a pivotal scene of which we see being shown on television in The American, the against-type casting makes the character that little more chilling and untrustworthy since they are so far removed from how we normally regard them.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced by Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Dialogue Music Visuals
A British spy (Michael Fassbender) is a film critic with an expertise in German cinema and G.W. Pabst; Melanie Laurent plays the proprieter of a cinema in Nazi-occupied France who screens films by Henri-Georges Clouzot for the locals and "The White Hell of Pitz Palu" with Leni Riefenstahl for the occupiers; Emil Jannings (Hilmar Eichhorn) makes a cameo; a guess-the-famous-name card game includes references to Pola Negri, King Kong and Edgar Wallace (the mystery writer whose work inspired an entire genre of postwar German thrillers known as krimi); the first "chapter" of the film is an extended revamp of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West"; when one of the Basterds disguises himself as an Italian, he is given the name "Antonio Margheriti" -- a reference to the director of such 1960s Italian horror movies as "Castle of Blood."
Its opening—“Once upon a time in Nazi-Occupied France”—sets the tone not just in fairy-tale terms, but in movie fairy-tale terms by invoking Sergio Leone movie titles (Once Upon a Time in the West, Once Upon a Time in America).
The sequence strongly alludes to Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (Ennio Morricone's music can't miss).
Ironically, the biggest influence here isn’t a war film, but Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, with its mix of history and fable, and its singular, slow-building scenes (the opening and closing sequences of Basterds are instant classics).
Its opening—“Once upon a time in Nazi-Occupied France”—sets the tone not just in fairy-tale terms, but in movie fairy-tale terms by invoking Sergio Leone movie titles (Once Upon a Time in the West, Once Upon a Time in America).
(The early scene with the truck full of coffins recalls Leone’s “A Fistful of Dollars,” in which Clint Eastwood’s character anticipates the violence to come by ordering the mortician to build three pine boxes.)
Furthermore, what about the truckload of coffins spilled out into the road after a vehicular smash-up that Teresa (Bárbara Colen), returning from the city for the matriarch’s funeral, passes on her way home, in an ominous nod to the deadly coffin-and body-producing town in Sergio Leone’s landmark spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars?
Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Directed by Robert Rodriguez
influenced by Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), A Fistful of Dollars (1964), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Themes Visuals
Once Upon a Time in Mexico is to El Mariachi what The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was to A Fistful of Dollars .
The title would make it seem that Rodriguez is straining for the epic scope of Sergio Leone�s Once upon a Time in the West (or Leone�s more pretentious Once upon a Time in America), but not only can�t he keep the story straight, he muddles the action scenes as well.
Editor/composer/cinematographer/writer/director Robert Rodriguez's loose homage to Sergio Leone's 1969 horse opera, Once Upon A Time In The West, does a fine job in bringing together a plethora of diverse characters, all well-played by a passel of addictively watchable actors (Mickey Rourke and his Chihuahua, Cheech Marin, Salma Hayek for about 5 minutes, Eva Mendes, Danny Trejo, and many more).
After the low-budget ''A Fistful of Dollars'' and ''For a Few Dollars More,'' Leone moved up to bigger budgets for ''The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'' and ''Once Upon a Time in the West'' -- and therefore, Tarantino told his friend, Rodriguez should now make ''Once Upon a Time in Mexico.''
The dusty milieu signaled that the filmmaker had slurped down his share of spaghetti westerns — the latest movie is named after Sergio Leone's savage masterpiece "Once Upon a Time in the West" — yet it also moved dizzyingly, up-to-the-minute fast.
Once Upon a Time in Mexico is to El Mariachi what The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was to A Fistful of Dollars .
The Harder They Fall (2021)
Directed by Jeymes Samuel
influenced by Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Visuals Music Themes Characters
Shootouts are defined by extreme closeups straight out of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly , and the excess blood splatter recalls Sam Peckinpah’s approach to staging violence in The Wild Bunch .
It is upfront and in your face a cliché parody of Sergio Leone oaters, particularly The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for example introduced the ocarina, a flute instrument whose sound is linked to the genre’s standoffs that would become a staple for Westerns.
The movie, in theaters now and debuting Nov. 3 on Netflix, is a 137-minute revenge saga that reminds you of Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West.”
In fact, the first real killing is done in a style that’s molto spaghetti western; and Treacherous Trudy (King) is about the meanest gunslinger this side of Henry Fonda in “Once Upon a Time in the West.”
He enters a saloon with the swagger of Charles Bronson in Once Upon A Time in the West and the cool factor of a Paul Newman.
Yojimbo (1961)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
influenced The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), For a Few Dollars More (1965), A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Plot Characters
Of course, Leone's inspiration was Akira Kurosawa's ''Yojimbo.''
Having invented the spaghetti-western a few years prior by virtually copying Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” frame by frame as “A Fistful of Dollars” to such a degree that Toho sued him, Leone used the spaghetti-western as a form to attack the, in Leone’s opinion, dominating morality of American Puritanism.
His character was based on an amoral samurai bodyguard created by Toshiro Mifune in Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo.
Leone saw the world through movies ( A Fistful of Dollars , let us not forget, was a deliberate transposition of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo ), but at a certain point he moved beyond that purview, to a place where movies were merely the conduit to a higher level of engagement with the world at large.
Leone took his original cue from Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and Sanjuro films, which starred Toshiro Mifune as a wandering ronin who looks out only for himself.
With A Fistful Of Dollars , a 1964 remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo , Leone and Eastwood introduced their iconic "Man With No Name," a drifter of few words who's heroic only by contrast to those around him, and who isn't above double-crossing those intent on cheating him anyway.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced by Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Music Characters Visuals
The Franco installment, for example, contains a direct homage to the creaky, loud-as-hell sound design of the famous opening scene of Once Upon A Time In The West .
An overture featuring Tim Blake Nelson as a musical cowboy – think Rory Calhoun with a psychopathic hit rate to rival Henry Fonda’s in Once Upon a Time in the West – provides the first of many neat genre inversions.
Given that Buster is riding through Monument Valley – Ford country and the setting for Once Upon a Time in the West – there’s a hint of meta-commentary here.
Django Unchained (2012)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced by Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), A Fistful of Dollars (1964), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Visuals Characters Themes Plot
Tarantino is channeling both the economical efficiency of the cash-strapped exploitation workmen who shaped his cinematic worldview and the more operatic ambitions of Sergio Leone in his later years, when the idea of transporting the American Western into the rocky hills of Spain morphed into such epic meditations on life and death as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).
But occasionally as the movie becomes a bit garrulous, we may wish for Charles Bronson's strong, silent hero in Leoni's masterwork Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).
There’s no scene in Django Unchained to put a lump in your throat like Henry Fonda’s child-slaying in Once Upon a Time in the West.
The new movie takes its title and some of its particulars from Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 spaghetti Western Django, whose success spawned dozens of imitators and was itself inspired by Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964).
Spaghetti westerns were launched in the 1960s by Italian director Sergio Leone when he took American TV actor Clint Eastwood to Spain to make "A Fistful of Dollars," a western rip off of Akira Kurosawa's samurai film "Yojimbo."
Now, Tarantino reconfigures that classic American genre, the Western, setting his new film in the Deep South, creating what he terms a "Southern," while infusing it with the spaghetti sensibilities of Sergio Leone (director of Tarantino's favorite film, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly) and, more so, the genre grit of that other Sergio, Corbucci (director of 1966's Django, naturally).
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Directed by Doug Liman
influenced by Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Visuals
Then there’s The Immigrant, probably James Gray’s most beautiful, moving and expansive work, a sepia-steeped ode to immigrant resilience, struggle and conditional American Dreaming that visually evokes Coppola’s Godfather Part II and Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, but in its utterly irony-free melodramatic sincerity also suggests a silent-era woman’s picture à la D.W. Griffith, King Vidor or G.W. Pabst.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced by Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Themes
Like the late Sergio Leone's three-hour 1969 tribute to American Westerns, "Once Upon a Time in the West," Quentin Tarantino's latest movie puts an epic spin on a favorite genre, taking it to time-tripping levels rarely tested by its forerunners.
Rango (2011)
Directed by Gore Verbinski
influenced by Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
Visuals Themes
With its fast draws, distinct settings, close-up shots and slower pacing, Verbinski pays perfect tribute to such classics as “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” “High Noon” and “Once Upon a Time in the West,” and even Hans Zimmer's score should conjure up memories of Ennio Morricone's finest work.
This is a movie all about the details jammed into every corner of the film: copious references to its genre (a creaking windmill out of Once Upon a Time in the West , a title uncommonly similar to the seminal Django ), only slightly less-copious references to cinema at large.
When you get right down to it, Rango is like Chinatown meets A Fistful of Dollars meets a Geico commercial.
The ones that will immediately come to mind are those made by Sergio Leone, such as A Fistful of Dollars , or even some Clint Eastwood-directed Westerns, such as High Plains Drifter (both are films which West has stated are amongst his favorites in the genre).
Argento and Bertolucci included references or quotations to several American Westerns, including High Noon (in the opening scene), The Searchers (in the closing scene), Shane (again, in the closing scene), as well as 3:10 to Yuma (in a line of dialogue), John Ford�s cavalry trilogy (brief shots in Monument Valley), and numerous others, in effect making Once Upon a Time in the West the first post-modern Western.
Shane would never do this, although Wilson (Jack Palance) might have in Leone's universe.
The Searchers (1956)
Directed by John Ford
influenced Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Themes
Positioned in history between the earnest majesty of John Ford’s The Searchers and Sam Peckinpah’s doomed cowboy dirge The Wild Bunch , Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is animated by the best those classic westerns have to offer.
Others may argue for The Searchers or Once Upon a Time in the West , but Sergio Leone’s spectacular conclusion to the Dollars Trilogy, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly , invariably comes at or near the top of Western best of lists.
The standoff is probably the most iconic scene in any Western ever made, and that is saying something when you are contending with the ending of High Noon , of the gold blown into the wind in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , and indeed of the triumphant but melancholy return of John Wayne’s character in The Searchers .
Brimming with homages to just about every memorable western imaginable, particularly John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954), Once Upon a Time in the West is a brilliant metafilm that plays as both a stirring melodrama and a film geek’s cornucopia of in-jokes and movie references.
Argento and Bertolucci included references or quotations to several American Westerns, including High Noon (in the opening scene), The Searchers (in the closing scene), Shane (again, in the closing scene), as well as 3:10 to Yuma (in a line of dialogue), John Ford�s cavalry trilogy (brief shots in Monument Valley), and numerous others, in effect making Once Upon a Time in the West the first post-modern Western.
For years, the top-rated western ever made has been Ford's The Searchers (1956).
The Godfather (1972)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
influenced Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Themes
Once Upon a Time in America, with its name obviously derived from Leone’s previous Once Upon a Time in the West, is a gangster film of the highest order, and, at the same time, it recalls so many of its predecessors, from the Warner Brothers classics of the 1930s to The Godfather.
Clearly influenced by The Godfather - wags called Noodles and Max the "kosher nostra" - it is made on a massive scale.
Now you could sum up "Once Upon a Time in America" by saying it is a mob movie, it is Sergio Leone having regretted passing on directing "The Godfather" delivering his vision, an epic vision of a group of Jewish gangsters.
The Godfather is undoubtedly the most acclaimed gangster film out there, but I'd take Once Upon a Time in America over it any day.