When his first western, A Fistful of Dollars, was released in 1964, Sergio Leone was forced to hide his Italian identity under the name of Bob Robertson by the widespread belief that only Americans could make successful westerns. The success of Leone's westerns as well as of his last movie, Once Upon a Time in America (1984), which exploited the formula of the gangster movie, another typical American genre, was to prove this assumption wrong. Leone's choice of pseudonym was in fact deeply ironic: Bob Robertson is the English transposition of the Italian name ("Roberto Roberti") used by Leone's father, himself a film director. The choice points to Leone's lifelong commitment in reconciling his fascination for American culture and mythology with his Italian background, which he was seemingly trying to conceal. The same reconciliation is spelled out by the name given (at first disparagingly) to the...