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.