However we must remember that, a short while after the director's death, the municipality of Rome already put up a plaque in Monteverde, in Viale Glorioso, where Leone used to live. The new Parioli  collocation was made possible in a new area, recently risen in the new Mosque area. The Assessorship to culture in Rome wanted to pay this homage to him not only for the director's undisputed artistic qualities but also because the Sergio Leone is a very popular figure and truly Roman.

Sergio Leone was born in Rome in 1929, his father was one of the pioneers of the Italian cinema industry and it was for this reason that the young Sergio started to work very young as assistant director. He arrived in Hollywood as second unit assistant for American productions filmed in Rome, the most famous "Quo Vadis" and "Ben Hur". In '61 he was commissioned the direction of the "Colossus of Rhodes", but very soon the director abandoned historical cinema to concentrate in the "spaghetti western", characterised by violent scenes, often accompanied by razor-sharp irony, by close editing, long silences full of intensity and content in the warm country settings (one of the director's favourite places was the Abruzzo countryside).
One of Sergio Leone's many merits  was that of giving an important turn the profesisonal carreer of little known actors (at the time) such as Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Romolo Valli, Rod Steiger, Gian Maria Volontè, and allowing one of the best film music composers to grow at his side: Ennio Morricone.

Sergio Leone's last work was for the script of "Troppo Forte" (Carlo Verdone, 1985), but his last masterpiece was "Once upon a time in America", filmed in '84 partly in the United States and partly in Cinecittà, to tell the rise and decline of two Italo-American gangsters.

February.2002