1968 western by Sergio Leone will be restored

Italian director Sergio Leone’s 1968 western classic “Once Upon a Time in the West,” like so many films stashed away in storerooms for decades, has not aged well. The common signs: scratches, fading colors and a generalized reddish hue.

But by next fall, the film -- starring Henry Fonda and Claudia Cardinale -- will be restored to its desert blazing glory and ready to be shown at the second Rome Film Festival.

It will be a fitting venue to unveil the rejuvenated western, the first chosen for restoration under a three-year initiative launched this year by the film festival organizers and director Martin Scorsese, an ardent film conservationist, to preserve Italian films. The scope of the initiative, as well as the other films in line for the restoration, were still being worked out.