Saturday, October 24, 2009

Once Upon a Time I Used to Love Entertainment Like This…

I still do, but… The older I get, the more I see (or the more I suspect, at least) that some of the most beloved books and/or movies of my youth are really paeans to leftism and liberalism. There are some "treasures" that are hard for me to to "give up" (and hey, maybe I shouldn't even try), but such is the case, I suspect, to my deep regret, with the films (or at least some films) of Sergio Leone (I love some of those Ennio Morricone tunes, which I used to listen incessantly to at one point as a teen-ager), whose fifth western, Duck, You Sucker, which will be shown in a restored version.

Incidentally, following his three Man With No Name westerns (starring Clint Eastwood), Sergio Leone (who shares a birthday with moi) embarked on a second trilogy. The first and last films, "Once Upon a Time in the West" and "Once Upon a Time in America", reflect the Italian director's intent, but the title of the middle film, over his vehement objections, was changed (by his producer) to Giù la testa in Italian and to Duck, You Sucker (aka A Fistful of Dynamite) in English. The screenplay's original title, which captures far better the spirit and romance of the epic films Leone was seeking to make, was Once Upon a Time During the Revolution. (Only the French kept the original title…)

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