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Some of favorite westerns that I really enjoy viewing over again are ones that implant a visual concept that seems so foreign, yet paints something that offers an expression of viewing humanity and their involvement for trying to find a purpose in a desolate land. But it is also the artistic structure of each director views the west and portrays their personal meaning.

Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) is probably my favorite western. From my perspective it is one that truly defines the sub-genre of a Spaghetti Western. One may even interpret this film as a grand scaled opera. Late director and actor, Sydney Pollack once commented about this film of “how the arias are not sung, but stared” (TCM Media Room). Nearly every sequence, we glance forward through extreme-close up shots of facial poetry, looking directly at the eyes. The eyes become the second-act of dialogue. It follows that anonymous quote that “eyes are windows to the soul.” The characters only need to give out their dialogue when they need to. The film also plays (as most Spaghetti Westerns do) with the usage of silence, we do not know what to expect until it strikes us. It builds this tension that structures an eerie moment within the film. This is the film to which Leone’s art was complete.

More importantly, it is the right choice of characters that make this film into an epic masterpiece, especially Henry Fonda as the villain of the story. His daughter, Jane Fonda actually wrote a fan letter because of this role. The story takes place in a fictional town called Flagstone in the Old West, involving more than one plot. A mysterious gunman (Charles Bronson) simply named, Harmonica (due to constant playing of a harmonica) seeks out revenge for a notorious dead-faced outlaw named Frank (Fonda), who murdered his brother when he just a boy. In the opening sequence of the film, which is nearly ten minutes of unspoken dialect, he is confronted by three men who were sent by Frank to kill anyone that stands in way; remotely Harmonica kills all of them. Meanwhile, at farm called Sweetwater, an Irishman named Brett McBain (Frank Wolff) and his family plans to welcome their new mother, Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale). But everything turns into massacre when the McBain family is gun-downed and relentlessly killed by Frank and his gang.

The another plot structure of the film, involves a crippled railway tycoon named Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti) and his struggle for owning Sweetwater that contains the only source of water that is worth a fortune. The land was bought by Brett McBain, who had anticipated that the railroad would have to pass through his property to provide water as fuel sustenance for locomotives. When Morton becomes aware of this and hires Frank to force McBain and his family to move out, unfortunately this ends with their immediate deaths. Later on, Jill McBain arrives and becomes aware of her husband’s untimely death. She now owns the Sweetwater. Later Harmonica, still pursuing Frank teams up with bandit, named Cheyenne (Jason Robards), who also becomes the comic relief of the story. Knowing about Frank’s whereabouts and his involvement with Morton with the McBain property makes this the ideal plan that will set everything into motion.

The finale of the film involves, the duel between Harmonica and Frank in an intense communication of stare, which results the horrific memory of young Harmonica and his brother being tormented by a Frank. Harmonica’s brother with a noose around his neck and balancing on his shoulders for dear life. He is plummeted on the ground and his brother his hanged to death. Immediately pistols, Frank loses and dies. Just after Harmonica stuffs his own harmonica into Frank’s mouth as he did years before.

Once Upon a Time in the West is a grand scale epic that fuses with a satirical context. The major theme involves the railroad and the coming of industrialization, which in a sense marks the end of the Old American West. Though the film has less dialogue, we are so drawn in by these characters. Harmonica is an interesting and difficult character to follow; he carries a great man of knowledge, yet desires his brother to be avenged. Though we are introduced to one flashback of himself as a boy, he becomes this enigmatic figure, almost a lone wanderer like the ronin warrior. Frank is portrayed as an unfaithful man who seeks what he desires, in a vague surreal sense we are blinded and drawn by his blue eyes. Henry Fonda, unlike most of his characters, who were pure of heart and humane this was the exact opposite. The music score by Ennio Morricone composes a nostalgic portrait of a once graceful land and enhances the poetry of the west.

There was always something epic about Westerns. The big sky, stark landscapes, and family sagas were familiar genre markers attractive to big-scale filmmakers like John Ford. Ironically, they were not taken seriously in America during the first half of the 20th century and Europeans were the first to truly appreciate the Western as respectable cinema.
Sergio Leone understood the conventions and spirit of Westerns better than any of the new wave directors and that’s why his reshaping of familiar folklore feels so genuine. After revolutionizing the Western in the early 60s with his Man with No Name trilogy, he declared his work done and the time to move on to other things (such as an adaptation to the crime novel Hoods, which he would later film as Once Upon a Time in America or his dream to remake Gone with the Wind, a never realized project). Ah, but Hollywood, impressed with how he nurtured America’s baby and let it grow into “serious” entertainment, had other plans. Thank Paramount for its intervention! All of Leone’s experience and, indeed, all the work of John Ford and others were a lead up to Once Upon a Time in the West. It is not enough to call the film Sergio Leone’s masterpiece and even labeling it, however accurately, as the greatest Western ever is inadequate. Once Upon a Time in the West is the ultimate Western and one of the greatest pictures ever made.
It was constructed by particles of other Westerns as well as folktales of the land. The film evokes legend but it also acknowledges fantasy, as indicated by the “Once upon a Time” in the title. At its core, the premise reshapes popular mythology. A desolate town in the desert ends up prosperous due to a powerful savior from the big city. Unlike Leone’s first major Western, the anti-social A Fistful of Dollars, Once Upon a Time in the West is an optimistic tale despite the barbarity within the town.
Like a savior, Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale, an endearing blend of fragility and fire) arrives to the town of Flagstone from “far away” (New Orleans, to be exact) in time to fight the evil forces that left her new family dead and corrupting the construction of a railroad, emerging triumphant. Even her theme music (“Jill’s America”) is angelic.
But Once Upon a Time in the West becomes a battle of archetypes. In the movie, evil is incarnated in Frank, the cold-blooded gunslinger hired by railroad baron, Mr. Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti), to scare the McBains away from their property on Sweetwater to make way for the railway. Intimidation, however, is for humans. Nasty humans, perhaps, but humans nonetheless. Frank has no humanity. He is a killing machine. Leone dehumanizes Frank and his minions with clever nuance. McBain senses a disturbance in the wind and warily looks out across the field. Moments later, Frank and his gang appear on his property. The iconic massacre scene is shot like a nature show, with the prey (McBain) picking up the scent of the predator, which then springs from the grass before its fodder has time to react. Without authorization he guns down the McBains (save Jill who was still not in town), including their young son. Earlier, in a grim foreshadowing of the bloodbath to come, the little boy playfully mimicked the sound of a gun while hunting partridges with his father.
The most startling thing about Frank is Henry Fonda. It is shocking enough to see Fonda as a villain, let alone a snake-like killer (he emerges from the grass). But what really makes the character disturbing is that he is played as Henry Fonda. Ostensibly, he has the same mild manners and that soft-spoken voice that made his Tom Joad so affecting. John Steinbeck once said that in the face of Henry Fonda he saw “the face of America.” Fonda’s performance as Frank doesn’t invalidate Steinbeck’s simile. Like America itself, the Fonda persona is not to be thought of in absolute terms. That’s a disservice both to Fonda’s versatility as an actor and to the land of diverse thought and actions that is America. Frank is, after all, an all-American man. He is a man of the West, cradle of our rich cultural heritage. His choice of path to power is in the American tradition of the little dog following the power horse (Mr. Morton), hoping to overthrow him. Even his speech is straight out of the heartland. Leone saw that and shot down Fonda’s suggestion to grow a beard and wear contact lenses to disguise the familiar face that had won hearts all across the country. Why couldn’t that same face be used to portray a monster of a man? It’s to the credit of both actor and director that Frank is the most memorable aspect of a great movie.
There was some competition. The opening alone is a tribute to the ensemble and Leone’s use of sound and camera angles to heighten fear. The ever-present whine of a windmill and the creaky opening door are the only noises we hear as a train depot is held up by three of Frank’s men. They are a cast of Western reliables. Jack Elam, Woody Strode, and Paolo Stoppa can create menace simply by staring into the camera. Dialogue is kept to a minimum even as the reason for their arrival begins to unfold. Running into a drifter named Harmonica their mission is aborted in a quick fire exchange.
If we are to think of Once Upon a Time in the West as a Biblical parable, Harmonica (Charles Bronson) is a dark avenging angel. He arrives in Flagstone with a dark past and a purpose. He was wronged and has come for revenge. Named after the instrument from which he emits an eerie wail to signal his presence, Bronson makes Harmonica as frightening a figure as Frank. Perhaps even more so, since Frank is easily identified as an agent of pure wickedness (he smirks before shooting a child), albeit not as bright as he thinks he is. Harmonica’s morality is always ambiguous. His purpose and intentions are not always clear. Like Frank, however, he has a code. As evil as he is, Frank only kills when he has something to profit from it. He refuses to shoot Morton late in the film, for instance, only because the old and sick man was already dying. When Harmonica does kill, it is also with a sense of purpose and a method. He always appears from the shadows and seems to be always present, always watching, waiting for his chance to strike.
Amongst the ultimate good (Jill), evil (Frank), and the Angel of Death (Harmonica) is the mere mortal man with all of his follies played by Jason Robards. Cheyenne has done his dirt. He is a bandit and likes to intimidate. But his bully mask is transparent and this bumbling fool’s heart of gold is not hard to see. He too has been wronged, but he lacks the reptilian prowl of Harmonica. Perhaps it is not surprising that he doesn’t survive to the end of the film. What chance does an average human, with all of humanity’s faults and obtuseness, have without the absolute forces possessed by the film’s other two extremes (the saintly Jill or an unremorseful killer like Frank)? His death, however, feels appropriate as he dies fighting for the town where he founded a reputation.
Once Upon a Time in the West is a film of forward thinking sensibilities, even for 1968. It washed off the idealism of the 60s in favor of the cynicism of the forming Generation X. It borrows a lot from classic Westerns (part of the movie was filmed in Ford country, the iconic Monument Valley, and the McBain massacre evokes memories of both Shane and The Searchers), but scrambles their unofficial code of ethics. The villain is not above killing a child and the anti-hero (who, in a sense, takes revenge for the murdered child, since he too had been tortured by Frank as a small boy) brings with him a primal fear as he appears out of nowhere.
Jill is no traditional heroine. Back in New Orleans she had been a prostitute and upon arriving in Sweetwater (her arrival filmed with a crane-shot) the film deconstructs the familiar storyline of a stepmother as the new addition to a family. The oldest McBain son complains that she will never replace his deceased mother. But, to the viewer’s surprise, this film won’t be about her acquired acceptance into the McBain homestead. Quite the inverse is true, actually, as the family is killed before she even arrives. Instead, the movie is about her adoption of the town.
Once Upon a Time in the West even thinks of its characters in unique ways. Does Jill find a higher calling in her surviving the massacre by not being there? She should have died as part of the McBain family, as she had married Mr. McBain back in New Orleans. But she missed her date with death and her adoption of Sweetwater may be her way of showing gratitude. Sweetwater itself is a town at the cross-roads of the Industrial Revolution. The coming of the railway marks the death of the Old West and its stagecoaches. In a way, McBain’s sad fate was a result of his resistance to modernization.
Mr. Morton is the most conflicted character in the film. Sick from tuberculosis of the bones, he overcompensates with his ambitious dreams to the point of losing his morality. Undoubtedly he feels responsible for the death of the McBains and it is his conscience that ultimately kills him. His death is poetic and not entirely without mercy. His dream of seeing the Pacific (where the transcontinental was supposed to reach), is substituted by a mere puddle where he takes his last breath. A fitting end to a tragically pathetic man.
Surprisingly, the actual violence in Once Upon a Time in the West is minimal. Leone’s mastery is in his build-up and the unfolding rituals to violence. This was a sign of Leone maturing away from the gratuitous nihilism of his earlier work. Because of this, the climactic standoff between Frank and Harmonica is the greatest showdown in Western history. It is a conflict of primeval magnitude, evil versus retributive justice. All of the film’s other conflicts are put aside and it just comes down to these two old enemies.
Harmonica’s leitmotif along with the camera’s varying use of extreme angle long shots and close-ups create a gripping tension. A flashback reveals Harmonica’s secret carried throughout the film. Like everything else in Once Upon a Time in the West, the standoff is all about the build-up. The actual shooting happens so quickly that the struggle is over before it begins, with a creepy death rattle as Leone’s final touch of genius. Leone’s Western fairy tale comes full-circle and the folks of Sweetwater seem to live happily ever after. From here on, Sergio Leone moved more or less forward. His last film would be another “once upon a time” chapter of American history, but that is another tale for another day.

It’s perhaps the biggest salute to the Western genre. It takes everything great about earlier films and spins it on it’s heel. Henry Fonda’s incredibly evil Frank is in my opinion the greatest villain in the genre, he completely steals the movie. In so many ways Frank resembles the end of the gunslinger, when faced with the idea of being outdated and nearing extinction. Jason Robards and Charles Bronson also make for a great supporting cast. It has an amazing revenge story that only adds to the existing plot. Sergio Leone really did a great job, especially since he never wanted to direct the movie in the first place.

WESTERN FUNERAL
Once Upon a Time in the West is possibly the greatest Western ever made, and by extension, one of the greatest films ever made. Actually, even though I have a strong hatred for such silly hyperbolic phrases (despite said phrases having become common methods of classification), Once Upon a Time in the West may be the greatest Western of all time. There are grounds for this. First of all, I doubt there will ever be a director who loved or understood the genre more than Sergio Leone. The Italian’s fascination with and awe of American culture was epitomized by the glorification of the time period; the Old West had become modern mythology. There is a chivalry to the cowboy, and a fantasy to the frontier. Leone idolized it all.

“In my childhood, America was like a religion. Then, real-life Americans abruptly entered my life in Jeeps and upset all my dreams.”

That’s the other reason a better Western is unlikely to ever exist, and what the film is really about: the death of the myth. West was almost topical in the way it combined and referenced so many of the genre’s staples. The opening credits sequence re-imagines the train scene from High Noon, except in West, the three characters waiting for the train are gunned down within minutes. There is even a small reference to Leone’s previous film (and one of his three masterpieces), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. One of the three men famously filled the frame of that film’s opening shot, and remember the stray dog that intercut that first shot? He’s back, too. Legend has it that Leone even intended Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach to play the three men at the beginning of West. The shock of their deaths so early in the film would have perfectly symbolized the deconstruction of the genre, especially since Van Cleef was also one of the original three in High Noon. The man knew what he was doing.

I’ve only recently started getting into westerns. I have a problem now though. That problem is that I think I might have just watched the best western I’m ever likely to see.

The film is almost hypnotic. I’ll admit though, it did drag in a few scenes, but the rest of the film is just so damn incredible.

I can’t say enough about the stunning cinematography. The framing and editing are just sublime. It’s a true privilege to see such incredible work.

I’m watching this film and it even feels important. Epic is certainly an appropriate word for it.

The characters are delightful. Some are mysterious, some are surprisingly sweet and some are nasty. Claudia Cardinale of course is just simply beautiful.

Also I don’t think anyone could review this film without mentioning the score. The music was actually being written before anything had been shot. Now that has to say something about its importance.

I think this really is a masterpiece of film making. Flawless? No. But a masterpiece none the less.

Having watched Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly last week, I was ecstatic to find that his Once upon a Time In The West had been digitally remastered and was showing at the BFi. Looking back I do not know how I could not have watched this film on the big screen. The intense close ups, featuring the warts and all of the prominent characters of the film (Fonda, Robards and Bronson) gave it that extra kick.The score yet again works alongside the film, it does not overshadow the characters and gives each of them a medley, strengthening their presence.
I implore any of you that can, to borrow a projector from work or a friend and watch this film in BIG. The opening sequence is one of the most memorable and sets the mood and pace for the rest of the film.

You might think from reading my reviews that I have nothing to do but watch film, but truthfully, I value my time, and if a film doesn’t grab me within the first, say, 20 minutes, then I’ll find something better to do. Once Upon a Time in the West is just such a film; since I haven’t seen it all the way through, I’ll withhold judgment, and only say that in terms of my present taste in film, this one isn’t for me. Of course, I’m probably in the minority on this; a lot of people regard this the greatest western ever made.

A crowing achievement of cinema, Once Upon A Time In The West brings us smack dab into the vision of Leone’s legendary America, doing more justice to the actual history than most American films about the West. Cinematic craftsmanship at its most inspired, Leone’s masterpiece will never fail to enchant with its brilliant storytelling and beautiful imagery. Wagnerian long shots, expansive desert landscapes, a perfect score by Morricone and an amazing cast combine the charm and horror of the West into an epic of revenge, longing and rebirth.

(Originally written July 11, 2008)

We spend about the first 20 minutes of the movie with three men waiting at a train station. We know nothing about these characters, and the scene is almost silent. After spending this time with these nameless characters, we watch them get taken down by the mysterious lead character played by Charles Bronson. What would be seemingly pointless in the hands of an unskilled director becomes a classic exposition in which the quiet restlessness and contemplative atmosphere of the film are established. The scope of Lawrence of Arabia meets the West in this Sergio Leone masterpiece that alternates between understated detailed imagery and epic grandeur. The images of this movie are poetic, telling a story often without resorting to dialogue or conventional narrative. However, when dialogue is spoken, it’s biting and memorable. The detail of the film is astounding with time being devoted to a mere fly buzzing around a character’s face, but perhaps the best part of the film is the score by Morricone, featuring the haunting sounds of a harmonica and the ringing notes of an electric guitar cued at just the right moments, punctuating the quieter moments of the film.

Charles Bronson plays his character well, always hinting at a sort of tortured past that gives him the dedication to track down Frank, Henry Fonda’s character, without giving everything away. He becomes a sort of shadow, outlining something tangible that doesn’t become clear until the end of the film. However noble his mission, Bronson’s character is also violent and unforgiving, saving his enemy simply so he can kill the man himself. Playing opposite Bronson is blue-eyed Fonda who masterfully plays one of the most ruthless screen villains of all time. Fonda’s Frank has the sort of charisma expected from the actor, perverted to create a merciless yet still believable villain. The combination of these great performances with masterful direction makes for the greatest Western, a perfect intersection of art and entertainment.

Sergio Leone’s sweeping western masterpiece just gets more impressive with repeated viewings. At once a revisionist and Romantic vision of the Old West, it’s masterfully crafted, tense, and always engrossing. Like most films of this colossal length, it does loose a little steam in the middle – but with iconic performances from the likes of Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale, and Jason Robards; superb cinematography and production design; lush, extraordinary visuals; and a legendary score by Ennio Morricone, this is not only one of the best westerns ever made, but one of the best films ever made.

The birth of a nation. as seen through the eyes of Sergio Leone, in his greatest opera of the west.
The genius of Leone and Morricone, in their respective visual and sonorous treatment is mesmerizing.
A larger than life, solemn, almost sacred elegy that presents a remarkable group of characters and compels them to move to the rhythm of a waltz of death. Henry Fonda, tears down his heroic cinematic persona, to incarnate the devil; Jason Robards as a sympathetic outlaw who yearns for settle down; Charles Bronson as Harmonica, an impervious man with no name; and the fully blossomed gorgeousness of Claudia Cardinale, as never seen before.
What other filmmakers cemented for the genre, Sergio Leone lifted it to the stars, and beyond. He abandoned what made him popular, the nihilistic nature of his work, for a masterpiece that increases its power with each passing minute, exudes vitality and spiritual depth, and rightfully placed him among the grand myths of cinema.