To paraphrase Michael Caine’s comment about superheroes as national and international image-bearers, My Darling Clementine is how America sees the Old West, while The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is how the rest of the world sees the Old West. (Pasolini and Leone were both drawn to the iconic faces in the works of Old Masters the difference is that where the former gravitated toward Masaccio, Giotto and Cimabue, the latter favored John Ford, Anthony Mann and André de Toth.) However, Leone amplified not only the myths, rituals, and vistas of his models but also their inner tensions, violence, and cruelty, blurring the line between full-bodied tribute and broken-mirror critique. At their most lyrical, these films could expand a familiar genre staple like a showdown into an incantatory aria, at times with an almost sacramental care curiously akin to the rough ecstasy that courses through Pier Paolo Pasolini’s early pictures. Mishmashes of multinational elements and influences best summarized by the pedigree of Leone’s breakout hit A Fistful of Dollars (a remake of a Japanese film deeply influenced by American pictures, directed by an Italian and shot in Spain), his spaghetti Westerns both exalted and upended the oaters he grew up watching. Such diminution-the equivalent of peeking at a fresco through a keyhole-is especially damaging to Leone, a voluptuary for whom size is not just pictorial swagger but the key to his reconstructive approach to genre. Such visual vandalism should be enough to make anybody howl. By the time the camera slowly dollies in for a tight close-up of Charles Bronson’s eyes during the climactic duel, all you could see was the grainily magnified bridge of his nose. From elation to dismay: as soon as Leone’s credit flashed by, the meticulous rectangular compositions started being indifferently hacked to fit the TV’s boxy shape. My shock arose as much from the images themselves as from how they were presented, in the way the sequence’s tension and humor felt like they were stemming from their sheer breadth. The fly crawling on Jack Elam’s meaty, stubbly mug Woody Strode sipping the water that’s been dripping on his hat the railway diagonals at the train station stretching interminably into the distance. It was some 20 years ago, when Once Upon a Time in the West played on TV and the network had the decency to keep the letterbox format for the opening credits, that I initially became aware of space itself as a salient component of cinema.
I owe my love of widescreen-or, perhaps more accurately, my loathing of pan-and-scan-to Sergio Leone.
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