Latest Sergio Leone Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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

  Taken, Italian, Men

  Interview with Marlaine Glicksman, www.americansuburbx.com. September 1987.

• It [film-making] really just has to do with my own ghosts and phantoms. And I have to say, in the end, it's just my way of seeing things.

  Sergio Leone

  Way, Phantoms, Ghost

• I think, to go to the bottom of it all, that the films I have made and my kind of film-making is a hybrid type of film-making - in that it isn't American, it isn't Italian.

  Sergio Leone

  Italian, Thinking, Kind

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• As Claude LeLouche said, his favorite American director is Sergio Leone. Not because I would be American, but because I was dealing with subject matter that an American could have just as easily dealt with.

  Sergio Leone

  Directors, Would Be, Matter

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• I never worry about what they think about me. Because I feel so far away from what my Italian colleagues have done that I almost automatically become an isolated director.

  Sergio Leone

  Italian, Thinking, Worry

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• I've seen films that have made as much as $100, $200 million, but they're not films. They're images. They're flashes. They're many beautiful images, lots of things to look at. They capture you. But it's not a film. It's not something that involves you in a story. They go to cinema now to be blown away by the effects.

  Sergio Leone

  Beautiful, Cinema, Looks

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• I'm terrified by young people who are doing what they think is film making. What they're really doing is taking that convulsed, fast rhythm of commercials. It's not film making.

  Sergio Leone

  Thinking, People, Film

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• It's difficult to find new solicitations, new expressions. But this is talking about filmmaking. Cinema.

  Sergio Leone

  Expression, Talking, Cinema

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• It's very difficult to be original.

  Sergio Leone

  Difficult, Originals

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• It is hard to do a film that wants to say something because, unfortunately, most everything has been said.

  Sergio Leone

  Want, Film, Said

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• Young people of this century, like my son, didn't live through all those things that went on during that period of time, from 1930 to 1950. They're missing that experience. To go from a bicycle to a vehicle that takes somebody to the moon - only we saw this kind of thing.

  Sergio Leone

  Son, Moon, People

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• I was born in 1929, and in the 50 years from 1930 to 1980, I've been able to live an unbelievably varied century. Before, you could never have seen such intense change in a 50-year span.

  Sergio Leone

  Years, Able, Intense

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• I think that men of my generation - not me in particular - are among the most fortunate men in the universe.

  Sergio Leone

  Men, Thinking, Generations

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• When you manage to express something with a look and the music instead of saying it with words or having the character speak, I think it's a more complete work.

  Sergio Leone

  Character, Thinking, Looks

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• 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

  Important, Lines, Notes

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• I don't enter into particulars with [Ennio Morricone]. I give him the feeling and the suggestions of the characters.

  Sergio Leone

  Character, Giving, Feelings

• What I do is give Ennio Morricone suggestions and describe to him my characters, and then, quite often, he'll possibly write five themes for one character. And five themes for another. And then I'll take one piece of one of them and put it with a piece of another one for that character or take another theme from another character and move it into this character.... And when I have my characters finally dressed, then he composes.

  Sergio Leone

  Moving, Writing, Character

• 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

  Character, Scripts, Theme

• I've tried to consider stories that I have read, making them into films, but they would turn out unnatural. If a producer wants that, he should call other people. Not me.

  Sergio Leone

  People, Stories, Want

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• There are directors, and there are authors. I think I am more of an author than a director.

  Sergio Leone

  Thinking, Directors

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• I even had success with commercials, which is strange, because out of the six ideas, two won the platinum Minerva in France - it's the Oscar for their commercials. One was about the Renault diesel and the other about the regular Renault.

  Sergio Leone

  Ideas, Two, Oscars

• As far as commercials were concerned, I did very few, and I did them only when they gave me carte blanche to them the way that I wanted to. And I did them as an exercise, because I, who do very long films, never thought I would be able to tell a story in 30 or 40 seconds - you come across a whole new system and manner of approaching a subject.

  Sergio Leone

  Exercise, Long, Would Be

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• 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

  Thinking, Years, America

  Interview with Marlaine Glicksman, www.americansuburbx.com. December 28, 2012.

• I realized than an author cannot also be a producer.

  Sergio Leone

  Producers, I Realized

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

• Producing films was a distraction for me for which I payed dearly.

  Sergio Leone

  Film, Distraction

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com