Once Upon A Time In The West

Sergio Leone, Italy/USA, 1968, 165 minutes

"There were three men in her life. One to take her... one to love her - and one to kill her."

She is Jill McBain, an ex-New Orleans prostitute who has secretly married Brett McBain in a bid to become a respectable woman. They are the mysterious stranger Harmonica, the notorious yet sympathetic outlaw Cheyenne and the ruthless killer Frank, who has just murdered Brett McBain and his brood for standing in the way of Morton's trans-American railroad.

Not just the best Spaghetti western nor one of the greatest westerns but also one of the greatest films period, Sergio Leone's masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West is a complex, multi-faceted film that remains as enjoyable on the tenth viewing as the first one.

The script, co-written by Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci and Leone, can be appreciated as a deconstruction of the mythology of the west and the western in which Manifest Destiny, the coming of the railroad and the transformation of the desert into a garden mean the götterdämmerunggotterdammerung for superhuman figures like Frank, Cheyenne and Harmonica and the emergence of a new tamed, civilised and above all feminised world, as represented by Jill.

The direction can be taken as an essay in film form, Leone combining his earlier Dollars experiments in time and space with the idea of a composed film, developing his mise-en-scene around Ennio Morricone's pre-existing scratch score.

Just as remarkable as Leone's success in this regard is that of Morricone. While he always seems to find a way to make the music fit the action, it's rare that a score can stand in its own regard as well as this one does. A near literal horse opera, it presents each character with their own distinctive leitmotif - the lush strings and soaring vocals of Edda Dell'Orso for Jill, Allessando Allessandroni's whining electric guitar for Frank and so on - to be combined and counterpointed with one another as the epic tale moves towards its denouement.

Add in perfectly pitched performances from the leads - Henry Fonda chillingly cast against type, Charles Bronson seemingly born to incarnate Harmonica - a fine ensemble cast of reliable supporting players like Woody Strode and Lionel Stander, John Ford's beloved Monument Valley locations, and the only thing one can really say is missing is the presence of Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach as Frank's gunmen at the start (Leone had wanted them to say goodbye to the Dollars films but, alas, Eastwood was unwilling to participate.)

Unlike Frank, you don't have to wait "until the moment of dying" to know: Once Upon a Time in the West is a vital, must-see film.

Review by Keith H Brown
Written for EUFS Programme Spring 2004

"Not only can he play, he can shoot as well." Three men wait for a train on a deserted railway station, one crack his knuckles, one studies a pesky fly, one catches drops of water in the brim of his hat. The train arrives, a passenger alights playing his harmonica. "Where's Frank?" the stranger asks. In answer, one of the three pulls a gun but "Harmonica" blows them all away. This 15 minute opening sequence sets the tone for the rest of the film; long lingering tension-filled set-pieces combine to create surely the best Western ever made.

A crooked railroad boss hires Frank (Henry Fonda) to ensure that no-one stands in the way of his pioneering railroad track. Frank does this by executing anyone concerned, including the McBain family, owners of a obstructive farmstead. Widow McBain (Claudia Cardinale) takes on the farm and runs it with the assistance of the head of an unjustly accused band of outlaws (Jason Robands). Meanwhile, mysterious "Harmonica" (Charles Bronson) wanders in and out of scenes seeking revenge on Frank - but for what?

With a story co-written by Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci, Leone could hardly go wrong, and he is ably assisted by an excellent cast, notably blue-eyed Fonda cast against type as pure unadulterated evil and Bronson who plays the same tough guy role he would throughout the 70s but never as good as here. None of the characters win in this film. By the end they are all dead, dying or damned, which is fitting because they cannot easily be defined as good or bad, just varying shades of black.

Leone stubbornly refuses to show off his huge, carefully constructed settings; instead they exist as a richly textured backdrop to the movements of the characters. Exteriors were filmed in Spain not Arizona as most critics thought, while the interiors were completed in Rome. Ennio Morricone's superb score was recorded before the scenes were filmed, which lends an orchestrated feel to the set-pieces.

Review by Stephen Cox
Taken from EUFS Programme 1995-96