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Showing posts with the label Sergio Leone

PRODUCTION JOURNAL: Monday Morning Mixer - 9.16.13

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Captain's Log Star Date: 9.16.13 Almost 50 years ago today, A Fistful of Dollars was released in 1964. On September 16, 1964, a new kind of Western hero arrived on the scene… in Italy. On that day the first of Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name” westerns, Fistful of Dollars, opened there, three years before it would arrive in the United States. Casting an American actor, Clint Eastwood, best known for his stint on the TV series Rawhide, Leone reinvented the American Western by not only shooting the film dubbed in Italy but also by creating an operatic style that favored wide screens and epic landscapes, emotional and unusually arranged music by Ennio Morricone, and morally ambiguous characters. At the center of Morricone’s movie was Eastwood, with his side-slung poncho, cigarette and a serenely unyielding visage. Of his star, Leone famously commented, "I like Clint Eastwood because he has only two facial expressions: one with the hat, and one without it.”