Savant's new reviews today are
Hello - The heat's broken a bit here so I'm giving the air conditioner a day off. Four foreign films today, three French (although one of those is primarily in English) and one a BBC Television show. As a gesture toward good discs I had to skip earlier in the year, Savant is presently backtracking to write up Anchor Bay's five-title British War Boxed Set from back in March.
As promised, here's a report on the Autry Museum's new Sergio Leone career exhibit.
The Autry museum is a fairly large venue with several upstairs changing galleries and a large permanent downstairs exhibit. Sergio Leone: Once Upon a Time in Italy is the new attraction upstairs. It's based on several years worth of research trips to Italy to visit Leone's family and associates. Curator Estella Chung brought back a sizeable quantity of original memorabilia and relics for the exhibit, enhanced by key items from local collector-experts Don Bruce, Tom Betts, Ernest D. Farino and many others. Bruce provided an original camera slate from Once Upon a Time in the West and pinpointed the location of the exhibit's elusive 'holy grail,' Clint Eastwood's original poncho from the Dollars Trilogy.
Noted Leone biographer Sir Christopher Frayling is the guiding co-curator and many of the exhibits are from his personal collections.
The show's concentration is the Dollars trilogy and OUATITW, featuring Leone artifacts from his childhood onward, literally including the comic books he read as a child. The walls are covered with extremely rare movie posters (the name 'Bob Robertson' shows up a lot), scripts and documents, Carlo Simi scene drawings and blueprints, and large photographs. The exhibit is 'narrative': One walks through it and it tells a story from one point to the next. There are many large projection video screens, some showing clips, others interviews (I noticed Joe Dante and John Carpenter in a couple) and others clips from associated movies, like Ben-Hur. From across the room I saw Robert Mitchum in a clip I couldn't identify (Pursued?) so Savant can't claim it was all old hat, even after a couple of years of working with the Leone westerns on tape.
For actual artifacts there are original Winchesters and Colts, etc.; costumes, (many from OUATITW) and Clint Eastwood's entire original rig - the previously-mentioned poncho and his .45 Colts with snake-grips.
Giù la testa and Il mio nome é nessuno are represented by one poster each and a couple of photos.
I read some captions and all were carefully written and of good general interest - only those who have memorized the Frayling books would learn nothing new.
I'd say the exhibit is very good. It's billed as the largest ever on a single director but there's really no precedent that I know of. The gallery is laid out with considerable visual interest - full-sized sculptures of Frank's Cattle Corner gang are at its center - but it is not overwhelmingly large. I've heard of no plans to tour the exhibit, as the arrangements to display the artifacts just for Los Angeles were complicated enough. Friends and Leone fanatics have asked me to advise if it warrants taking a trip from some other part of the country and even from Europe. That I honestly couldn't say. It depends on how much of a fanatic one is, and that's completely subjective.
Thanks, Glenn Erickson
Posted by DVD Savant at July 29, 2005 01:55 PM