Esteemed Italian cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli, AIC recalls working with director Sergio Leone on this memorable 1968 western.

(Cover courtesy of Reel Art Press.)

The following interview is an excerpt from the forthcoming book Once Upon a Time in the West: Shooting a Masterpiece, written by Sir Christopher Frayling and published by Reel Art Press. To be released on April 23, the in-depth, 336-page tome details the entire production, from script to screen — celebrating the 50th anniversary of the film’s release.

With a forward by Quentin Tarantino, the book also features tribute essays by John Carpenter, John Milius, Joe Dante and Martin Scorsese.

In the chapter below, Delli Colli discusses his work on this epic “Spaghetti Western,” his long collaboration with Leone — including The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1966) and Once Upon A Time in America (1984) — and memories of often shooting many, many takes to achieve the visual perfection Leone sought.

At right, Tonino Delli Colli, AIC handles the zoom/focus remote as director Sergio Leone takes a turn at the eyepiece. (Photo courtesy of the cinematographer/ASC Archives.)

This conversation occurred in two places — in France at the Montpellier Festival of Mediterranean Cinema, October 1998, during a symposium and exhibition devoted to Sergio Leone and Carlo Simi; and at the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, July 2002. Tonino had a notably down-to-earth sense of humour — and was well-known to be touchy about critics and academics. He kept calling me “the Professore”...



Q: When you worked together on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, were there a lot of discussions with Sergio about the visual aspects of the project?

TONINO DELLI COLLI: You know, a critic once asked me about the sequence at the Indian cliffside village in Once Upon a Time in the West and the sunset lighting. He asked if I got inspiration from a painter for this. ‘What, the sunset?’ I’m afraid my answer was short and mean, and he never spoke to me again! The thing was, with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, that you can’t have too many colours in a Western: red, brown, beige, earthy, off-white. A lot of dust, constructions made of wood, sand-coloured tones. There wasn’t really much to talk about. We shared the same point of departure: not too many colours. [Costume designer] Carlo Simi was a fantastic colleague, a great help. Together with Sergio, they had studied a lot of books on the American West, and in the Almería scenes of For a Few Dollars More they had created a setting, for the first time, exactly the way Sergio wanted it. Sergio and I understood each other very well indeed. There was never any need for much discussion.

Cutting holes in the train platform set allowed for dramatic camera angles for scenes including the one featuring Charles Bronson as a nameless man known as "Harmonica" (also seen at top of page). (Photo courtesy of Reel Art Press.)

Q: But didn’t Sergio Leone use paintings as reference points for the visuals? Giorgio De Chirico, for example?



TONINO DELLI COLLI: While we were actually working, we didn’t refer to paintings. Sometimes we referred to them during the preparation stage as a kind of shorthand for costumes and sets, but that’s about it. For documentation rather than composition. Maybe for lighting, sometimes. We certainly looked at photographs of the period — that library of American books collected by Sergio and Carlo Simi. But, look, whatever Vittorio Storaro [ASC, AIC; another great Italian cinematographer] says, we are not making poetry. We turn the lights on, and we switch them off. That’s what we do. I don’t remember De Chirico. The resemblance could be by accident.









In the station shootout with Harmonica (featuring, at top, Jack Elam, Lionel Stander and Woody Strode), careful blocking and expert use of closeups are combined with deft editing — by Nino Baragli — to result in a classic scene

Q: Sergio was famously meticulous about his work, a real perfectionist. Did this create difficulties?



TONINO DELLI COLLI: The one problem about working with him was that he would never leave the set until he had completely finished what he was doing. We worked sometimes for 14 to 15 hours a day. Each day was filled to the brim! In America, those extra hours would have been well paid, but not with us. There were sometimes discussions about the long working hours. They consisted of Sergio saying,‘ Bugger off — we’ll continue till I am ready.’ He would start the day with a wide lens and finish with a big close-up; the close-ups were usually in the evening. In Spain there was daylight till 9:30, so we worked from first thing in the morning till late. I would try and pack away the camera, shut it away at the end of the day, and he would remember that there was just one more close-up to do. I would tell him, ‘We can shoot it tomorrow,’ because it could be done at any moment since you couldn’t see anything else in the shot apart from the extreme close-up.

Framing up an extreme close-up on Henry Fonda. (Photo courtesy of the cinematographer/ASC Archives.)

Q: He seems to have known a lot about the technology of filmmaking and enjoyed it too.



TONINO DELLI COLLI: He put a lot of work into the script — a lot of people would work on it; he contributed but there were also screenwriters. Because he was never happy and made a lot of changes... then he would closely follow this detailed script. Technically, he was perfect; technically, he was a great director. Sometimes he would ask for a small dolly of 20 centimetres, and I would say, ‘Why a dolly?’ but when it was edited, you could notice those 20 centimetres. The public didn’t realise about things like this at a technical level, but felt them psychologically. His films were very carefully shot, and it paid off with audiences. He was very precise. He would rarely improvise, because he had it all in his head. He knew in advance what each set-up would be like, and he knew how each set-up would be composed. He’d never just show up in the morning and then decide...

Leone looks on as Jason Robards is slated for a take. (Photo courtesy of Reel Art Press.)

Q: Were the scenes at the cemetery — the end of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — a particular challenge?



TONINO DELLI COLLI: When we filmed Eli Wallach running around the cemetery, I had the idea that in order to cut the close-up and the long-shot together, I’d put a pole on the tripod and put a camera at each end of it — at one end a camera with a 25mm lens and at the other a camera with a 75mm lens. The cameras turned together, so if the actor was framed with the 75mm lens, the 25mm would automatically be okay as well. It took half the time to shoot it, and it was better for the editing as well. In this way, we made a lot of circles all at the same time, while Eli Wallach did a lot of running. That’s how that was done.

Q: Sergio liked to use music on the set, didn’t he?

TONINO DELLI COLLI: Morricone had a starting version of the music, ready and recorded, which would be elaborated on and improved later. Sergio wanted music from the beginning of the project, before starting to shoot. He usually had it playing in the studio for the interiors, which used to irritate me because I couldn’t talk to the electricians. He liked to work with a musical track, to create atmospheres. But when we actually went for a take, he cut the music so we’d have good production sound.