Ben-Hur (1959 film)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Sergio Leone (January 3, 1929 – April 30, 1989) was an Italian film director.
Leone is well-known for his Spaghetti Western films, and his recognizable style of juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with extreme long shots, as in the opening scene of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).
Biography
Born in Rome, Leone was the son of the cinema pioneer Vincenzo Leone (known as director Roberto Roberti) and the actress Edvige Valcarenghi (Bice Waleran). He started working in the film industry at the age of 18.
Leone is well-known for his spaghetti western films and his style of juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots and original music soundtracks. His most well-known movies include The Man with No Name trilogy (a.k.a. the Dollars Trilogy) (which consists of A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America.
Leone began writing screenplays in the 1950s, primarily for the so-called "sword and sandal" (a.k.a. "peplum") historical epics, which were popular at the time. He also worked as an assistant director on several large-scale and high-profile runaway productions filmed at Cinecittà Studios in Rome, notably Quo Vadis (1951) and Ben-Hur (1959).
When director Mario Bonnard fell ill during the production of the 1959 Italian epic, Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (The Last Days of Pompeii), starring Steve Reeves, Leone was asked to step in and complete the film. As a result, when the time came to make his solo directorial debut with The Colossus of Rhodes (Il Colosso di Rodi, 1961), Leone was well-equipped to produce low-budget films which looked and felt like Hollywood spectaculars.
