Everyone knows Quentin Tarantino's love for Sergio Leone and spaghetti westerns. Beyond the homage to Leone, already evident in the title of his latest film "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood," the American director wrote an essay, which will later become the preface to a book, published by the British magazine Spectator, about his Italian predecessors. "Once Upon a Time in the West is the film that made me a director," Tarantino writes, continuing: "It was almost a film school in a single movie. It illustrates how to make your mark as a director, how to create a personal work. It captivated me and made me think, 'This is how it's done.' Leone created an aesthetic in my mind." He concludes: "From my point of view, Sergio Leone is the greatest of all Italian directors. He is the greatest combination of style and storytelling, two aspects of cinema that have almost never gone hand in hand. He was a great aesthete, and he achieved this by using genre, paying attention to its rules while constantly breaking them to give audiences wonderful westerns. Leone created modern directing, so look no further, start with him."
