July 22-26

Tutors: Natalie Elliot and Eric Salem
Is it ironic that two of the greatest films about the American West and our emerging sense of national identity were created by an Italian filmmaker who shot them in Europe? Leone’s two Western epics (also referred to as spaghetti Westerns) further developed the themes and styles of great American filmmakers like John Ford to tell the story of America’s Civil War and westward expansion through the eyes of a European sensibility—not unlike de Tocqueville’s brilliant insights into American democracy penned 130 years earlier. In addition to being two of the greatest and most ambitious films made in the tradition of the American Western, Leone’s movies are stories of greed, violence, passion, and revenge that helped raise both Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson to international stardom and feature brilliant performances by actors such as Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, and Woody Strode.

Films:

Sergio Leone, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Sergio Leone, Once Upon a Time in the West