I started work on the screenplay at home, with Bernardo Bertolucci. We began with nothing except an idea of Sergio's: he wanted to have a woman as lead for the first time. I would write on my own, then Bernardo would write on his own, then we would write together. Once a week Sergio would come to see how we were getting on, and offer his thoughts. He was incredible at generating ideas. He made me realize the director should always be involved in some way with the screenwriting.Bernardo and I studied many films over three or four months. The one with female leads, like Johnny Guitar, were important. But we were not working on a script: it was a treatment. It was very long, very free, full of ideas, dreams and descriptions. It was full of fantasies. And then Sergio and Sergio Donati turned our work into a screenplay.
[On GBU] Leone explores shapes and spatial relationships in expansive ways which make his previous work seem almost understated. For much of the film, the camera will simply not keep still. As gunslingers get off their horses, the camera starts below their stirrups, then rises to be level with their faces by the time they reach the ground. Panning shots explore horizontal shapes: a Colt's barrel, a Henry rifle. Objects appear from out of frame, beneath the camera's field of vision. Often, the camera 'reveals' things to us startlingly, which the characters should have been able to see already. . . . Blondie and Tuco are walking, with their map, through a deserted landscape; suddenly the rifles and bayonets of Northern sentries appear at the bottom of the frame; equally suddenly the camera cranes over to a high angle shot of the huge and crowded battlefield which was just on the other side of the hedge. Cinematic space in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is full of surreal juxtapositions of his kind, to trick the eye and keep the audience intrigued. (Frayling 230)
The thing to remember is that Harmonica is just playing what we hear Frank play at the end, that is what the characters in the film hear, like the German title translation which is "Play Me The Song Of Death", but WE hear Morricone's "music of the gods" superimposed upon it, hence we hear the chromatic harmonica.
--You know much about women?--I can’t say I do. Why?--Mae. Things ain’t right between us. You’ve been around. You’ve seen us. You know anything I can do to make her like me better? Of course, I can’t change this ugly face none but maybe some things I do, I don’t do right.--There’s a lot of things a man does that bother a woman.--Like what?--Like slurping coffee out of a saucer.--Yeah?--Spitting. Scratching. Whacking her on the behind when she isn’t looking.--Why, I always do that.--You mean, in front of company?--Why sure, if I just swat her in private—--Do you think she likes being swatted?--Don’t all women? Shows them you love them, don’t it?--There are other ways, you know, Shep.--Of course! Why, that’s exactly what’s been bothering her.--That’s right. She’s just fed up with being whacked on the rump.--Thanks for the tip, Jube.
You know what? If I was you I’d go down there and give those boys a drink. Can’t imagine how happy it makes a man to see a woman like you. Just to look at her. And if one of them should, uh, pat your behind, Just make believe it’s nothing. They earned it.
THE REVOLUTIONIS NOT A SOCIAL DINNER,A LITERARY EVENT,A DRAWING OR AN EMBROIDERY;IT CANNOT BE DONE WITHELEGANCE AND COURTESY.THE REVOLUTION IS AN ACT OF VIOLENCE
Rio Bravo was released in Italy under the title "Un dollaro d'onore" late 1959 and it was a massive hit here. To the best of my knowledge, there was no other movie released in Italy after WW2 with the word dollar in the title which had such a great success as "Un dollaro d'onore".So my bet is that whoever changed the title from "The magnificent stranger" to "FOD", must have thought about "Un dollaro d'onore". Last but not least, don't forget that Leone when discussing the soundtrack for FOD with Ennio, asked him to create a trumpet sound similar to the deguello in "Un dollaro d'onore" and "The Alamo" (score by Dimitri Tiomkin).
In some reference sources, Italian Sergio Leone was erroneously listed as a co-director of The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah. According to interviewer Pierre Sauvage's account in Alain Silver and James Ursini's book What Ever Happened to Robert Aldrich? Leone was an assistant director only briefly. Aldrich visited the second unit, found nothing happening and Leone "loafing", and fired him on the spot. Although Leone was known to embellish his accomplishments to interviewers, so did most everyone else in movies...