I'm surprised no one made this after seeing all the fans in the dead directors thread. He's one of my favorite directors and an excellent one. He's also the only director I know who has a trilogy that got exponentially better with each film rather then the first being the best.
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Best Films (Not Favorite)

1) Once Upon a Time in America, a breaktaking piece of filmmaking, one of the ten best ever IMO. Along with Raging Bull it's also the best of the 80's. Leone brings an amazing amount of depth to a gangster film. Every frame is excellent and screams brilliance. From Morricone's music to Leone's direction to the great cast (including younger cast), I give this ****

2) Once Upon a Time in the West is one of the most operatic films ever, and one of the few (if not only) opera art westerns. Many people considered to be "Tedium in the Tumbleweeds" upon it's first butchered release but in years to come it would receive high acclaim from inspired directors. Another delight is the excellent score from Morricone for each character, which would inspire future films. The cinematography is wonderful as usual, and the beginning is pure Leone. Rather then music, 11 minutes of just about no dialogue, only action. My Review - ****

3) The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly lacks the depth of #2 on this list, but it's another masterpiece of the western genre. Morricone's music goes on to be a pop-culture icon itself. The story is well formed, and well chosen in it's actors Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach. A grand epic that all leads to one of two or three best stand-offs in film history. Leone directs it with his slow panning, absorbing the wonderfully gritty cinematography.****

4) For a Few Dollars More is an improvement on #5. It's story improves as well as the direction, which has inspired many future films and other spaghetti westerns, such as Death Rides a Horse. Clint Eastwood stars opposite Lee Van Cleef (as a good guy this time) in this tale of revenge in the world of bounty hunters. The cinematography is once again great, as well as the memorable scenes. Morricone once again provides a wonderful score. ***1/2

5) A Fistful of Dollars might not be the best or the first spaghetti western, but it did three things. Popularize the sub-genre, help in Clint Eastwood's rise to the public light, and bring Leone and Morricone a step up from past low-budget projects. Leone brings a very good direction, combined with Morricone's great score. Clint Eastwood's character quickly becomes the cult icon it still is today. This also features Gian Maria Volonte in a nice role as the villain. (same can be said for #4) - ***1/2

Leone's dream was supposedly making another adaptation of Gone With the Wind. I would've loved to see his version, not because I think it would surpass the classic 1939 version, but just to see how he would handle it. I would love to see that slow panning camera go over Tara and Twelve Oaks.

Man, this thread looks so impressive when you look at those stills. Each one, especially when regarded with the others, is a testament to Leone's renowned meticulous approach to filmmaking.

Per un Pugno di Dollari/A Fistful of Dollars ***
1964, Leone, It/WGer/Sp
A mysterious loner saves a Mexican border town from violent criminals.
Violent film with much to answer for: it took its director to Hollywood, made a TV star into a box-office main attraction, began the "spaghetti Western" and gave the genre a raw, New Wave feel of filmmaking.

Per Qualche Dollaro in più/For A Few Dollars More ***
1965, Leone, It/Sp/WGer
El Paso bounty hunters team up to find a wanted prison escapee.
Explosive sequel to A Fistful of Dollars, with a brainless plot and lacking narrative, but a magnificent score and directing.

Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo, Il/The Good, The Bad and The Ugly *
1966, Leone, It
During the American Civil War, three men search for hidden gold.
Possibly the most popular of Leone's spaghetti Western trilogy, despite its elongated length and more of an epic feel than the predecessors.

C'era una Volta il West/Once Upon a Time in The West ****
1969, Leone, It/US
A vengeful harmonica-playing gunman protects a lonely woman in the old west.
Tortuous and vast, this sprawling epic is perhaps the summation of Leone's Westerns, though it is by far more operatic in pace and tone than earlier stuff.

Gíu la Testa/Duck, You Sucker/A Fistful of Dynamite/Once Upon a Time - the Revolution (no stars)
1971, Leone, It
An ex-IRA explosives expert robs a bank with a Mexican bandit.
Overlong and pretentious, this is nothing compared to the director's other outings.

Once Upon a Time in America ****
1984, Leone, US
In 1968, a gangster returns to New York to remember his violent rise to power with three friends during Prohibition.
Intricate, vast, violent crime drama with a poetic feel of opera. Production values are high indeed, and the music is extraordinary.

My MFA Top 100 review of Once Upon a Time in America...

Once Upon a Time in America

Dir. by: Sergio Leone
Country: US
Year: 1984
Running Time: 229 minutes

“Le temps detruit tout.”

“Time ruins all things,” so Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible (2002) claimed. Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America is not so different. Both films contain a shocking rape scene at a pivotal point in their respective plots; both scripts play with narrative conventions to emphasise their point; both are blessed with great, emotively suitable scores; and both treat their protagonists as deeply flawed beings at odds with a world driven by inescapable violence.

But while Irréversible portrayed its violence in an agonisingly post-modernistic, ultra-realistic fashion (and yes, it is a fashion of sorts), Leone strived to make his part of poignancy which lay at the core of his film, making the violence, gunshots and even Noodles’ rape, seem nothing less than operatic. In the same way that his Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) transcended the Western, Once Upon a Time in America revitalises the gangster film, that genre which in the thirties Hollywood made its own, to spectacular effect.

Spectacularly slow, some might say. And they’d be right, but they would have no justification in complaining. For slowness is the point here. It emphasises Leone’s message: that time, as Noé made so clearly and polemically over thirty years later, does indeed destroy all things. Jewish gangster Noodles (Robert De Niro, restrained) grows up with Max (James Woods, calm with bursts of animation) and rises to the top of the Lower East Side’s prohibition racket. Sent away in exile after shopping his friends to the police—a betrayal out of compassion and love for them—he is lured back in 1968 to find that there may be one last secret for him to learn.

That we learn of Noodles’ betrayal so early on in the film and that it is, chronologically, very late in the tale, shows how convoluted this is. Leone’s sharp eye for period detail—captured lovingly by photographer Tonino Delli Colli, particularly in the extraordinary exterior shots—lends the film a grandiose feel of the epic, placing viewers in its mise-en-scène with wonderful authenticity, much in the same way as The Godfather (1972) and its sequel (1974) did. Carlo Simi and James Singelis’ art direction adds much visual and production value, while writers Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero de Bernardi, Enrico Medioli, Franco Arcalli, Franco Ferrini and Leone’s adaptation of David Aaronson’s novel The Hoods adds operatic weight to the proceedings, a fine blend of hardboiled colloquialisms and Shakespearean extravaganza.

As with Once Upon a Time in the West , the music is a character in itself, and perhaps the most important, since it is that which evokes most of the film’s emotion. Morricone’s score was again written before filming began, a unique way of creating the scene’s tone, which was repeated to phenomenal effect when Krzysztof Kíeslowski filmed his Trois Coleurs: Bleu (1993) to Zbigniew Preisner’s score. A haunting pan-pipe motif, mixed with other rare instruments, America’s score suggests a humanity full of despair and regret, a hymn to the American Dream sadly gone wrong.

This is a magnificent film, a sweeping epic in the strongest sense, with Leone drawing attention throughout to his obsession with time and how it relates to our lives. Note the beautiful, noted sequence where a phone rings to the memories of Noodles, for some twenty-four times, before finally revealing whose phone is ringing. And even then, the context of the phone call is not revealed until much later in the film, a delaying device used more overtly in González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams (2003), which inter-cut scenes in a non-linear narrative to address how much substance lies in the little moments of life.

As it was also suggested in 21 Grams, time is but memories, which soften the past and destroy the present. Leone delivers a tale of love, friendship, and the corruption of the avaricious West; compelling stuff, and, more than anything, a mere fairytale, suggested by Leone’s full awareness of how fake Cinema actually is, epitomised in the dream-like title itself: Once Upon a Time…

Thanks for reading,
Mick

Those links in your review are deadlinks, due to the Proboards update I think?

I hope to buy all three of the new SE DVDs when they are released. (there's a company merge problem) I haven't seen A Fistful of Dynamite though, which is the first in the trilogy including #'s 1 and 2 in my list. Are you gonna give The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly a rewatch somtime?

For all Leone fans, a little interesting tidbit, is that in the opening train station scene for Once Upon a Time in the West, Leone originally tried to get Eastwood, Wallach, and Cleef to be the three desperados waiting for the train, although one couldn't make it so the idea was forgotten.

Yes, definitely. I still have the VHS tape shrink-wrapped in its case. I can't wait to see it again...

Mick

I only have watched #1 and #3. This is why I don't join the movie board. But Once Upon a Time in America is a great masterpiece.

Is it the restored version as Leone instended or the Americanized?

Leone is one of the great directors. His works derive hevily upon the operatic concept of drama and yet they are always extremely fresh. Undoubtedly he shall be remebered for his most icnoic and famous work, "The Good, the Bad and The Ugly" or overall, for his "The Man With No Name" Trilogy. However, I cannot say that those are his best films. His film "Once Upon a Time in the West" clocks in at around 168 mintues ong yet one never feels the snesation of such a long period of time passing.

It's a film that although is meticulously made, and is slow paced it never feels slow paced. Leone knew how to keep the audiance interested with beautiful shots of Monument Valley and always keeping us on our toes. He also got the best out of his actors like Claudia Cardinale, Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda, with whom he created perhaps the greatest villian in screen history.

It stands for his last film to serve as his masterpiece and perhaps THE masterpiece of the Gangster epic. "Once Upon a Time in America" is undobtedly a Leone picture. Meticulous, with beautiful cinematography and so much attention placed to detail. He gets great roles again, yet here he has perfected his screenwriting capabilities making it so that it is a true work of art.

Undoubtedly one of the most debated scenes in cinema history involes our last glimpse at Max. Did he jump in?

That's aside from the point. Leone was the grandest director of the epic. He made an epic so it wasn't just a melodrama. He made it into art.

They purposely dressed up another actor to look like James Woods, and then shot the scene from a distance; he wanted to keep it a mystery. The whole film is a mystery (IE the opium-dream theory.)

They purposely dressed up another actor to look like James Woods, and then shot the scene from a distance; he wanted to keep it a mystery. The whole film is a mystery (IE the opium-dream theory.) [/quote]You said it: Theory.

Bothing was ever confirmed by Leone and when asked by James Woods if Max really jumped in he said "He did, but he didn't".

It's not important to find out what happened. There's no answer. What's certain? It's a story, and no matter what theory comes up, the same thing can be applied. It's an epic story of guilt and regret.

Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone...

The Jordan and Pippen of film

To me, he is the best director of all time and its not even close. No one can touch him. I usually get some dirty looks when i say this but thats just how I feel. His movies certainly aren't for everybody but I love to talk to other Leone fans

Sergio Leone- G.O.A.T.

Since were talkin about the man on a godfather site i think this discussion Q is neccessary:

Do you think Leone would have done with the godfather and do you think he coulda made it better b/c i think he did have the opportunity to make it. It certainly woulda been different

Who knows. If I remember right, didn't Leone want to take THE GODFATHER's setting be in the 60s?

Still, I just can't see Leone's film being superior to Coppola's movie...really, I'm that delusional!

Still, "Jordan & Pippen of Film"...nice!

Many great Filmmaker/Composer Tag Teams in Cinema History....Leone/Morricone, Spielberg/Williams, Hitchcock/Herrmann, etc.

Once Upon a Time in America is so underrated it's ridiculous. That movie simply blew me away. Leone's a genius.

In Italy Leone was longly and heavily criticized for his Spaghetti westerns, considered to be a B-movie category. Then he died and all of a sudden became a genius in the eye of some critics. Sad enough, it happens to some great artists to get recognition only after their death.

Now, I must admit I don't like those westerns at all, the only good things I can trace in them are Morricone's score and the fact they launched Eastwood's career. But Once upon a time in America is a great and largely underrated movie.

Sergio's eye...imitated, but never duplicated. Awesome.