ABOUT GENRE IN PARTICULAR
Mannerist westerns of Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone holds a special
place in the history of Western. He reformed generic tradition
from an outside point of view of a society that is not
American, but European; that is to say, from a point of
view that treats the American myth from a well-defined
distance. Sergio Leone made movies in a time when classical
in westerns had already reached its peak. Most of the important
authors of the golden era of Hollywood westerns were making
their last genre movies. Leone’s relation towards classical
western tradition of American film was thoroughly — mannerist.
Leone knew all the basic guidelines of genre and myth alike,
he respected both traditions, however, he did not acknowledge
them completely — in order to be able to transform them.
In Leone’s westerns, all the components of
genre (the outside ones) were hypertrophied, while the
ethical and metaphysical dimension, with which westerns
usually ended, disappeared completely. The author achieved
a high sense of style that became its own purpose, and
for that reason, also defined the content. Where in classical
westerns we had a situation when a hero had to make some
moral decision, in Leone’s westerns we notice that there
is ’no exaltation of any particular ideology, but rather
of the ability and the skill of the hero to destroy his
opponents’. The content of the myth ceased to matter, it
became limited to the stylistic procedures among which
mannerism prevailed.
Stylistic mannerism can be observed
on all levels, from the choice of the setting (Mexico during
the time of total uncertainty), shaping of protagonists
(they are complete individuals, with no moral doubts),
to the iconography of the genre (classical western iconography
is utterly overemphasized and stylised). Although sometimes
it may seem that Leone’s viewpoint was too cold, overly
stylised, it was, nevertheless, necessary to show his mannerist
view. With his personal handwriting, Leone shaped movies
in which he was ’now lyrist, now dramatist, now epicist’.
Tomislav Čegir |
