Clint Eastwood made three films with the Italian director Sergio Leone, and five with the American Don Siegel. He parted company with Leone in 1966 and with Siegel in the seventies, and since then has been pretty much his own director; though he leaves the actual director’s seat to someone else, he hangs on to the reins, so to speak, producing all the films in which he appears. Certain movies for certain reasons he directs himself: most of these show substantial debts to Don Siegel and Sergio Leone. Leone and Siegel were top-of-the-line action directors in their respective countries. Leone collaborated with Robert Aldrich on Sodom and Gomorrah and directed Eastwood in three millenial spaghetti westerns. Siegel, who had begun life as an editor, graduated to top-flight B-movies such as Riot in Cell Block 11 and The Killers.