Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

Starring: Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, and Woody Strode
Grade: A

Once Upon a Time in the West is one of those films that gives you a newfound appreciation for the artistry of the spaghetti western.

Summary

In the Old West, in the town of Flagstone, three gunfighters (one of them being Woody Strode) show up to a train station and scare off the people there, including the station agent. They await the train’s arrival in silence. Eventually, it shows up, but they don’t see the man they’re looking for. They decide to leave once the train departs, but they stop once they hear the sound of a harmonica playing. Waiting for them is the aptly named Harmonica (Bronson). He asks where Frank (Fonda) is, but they tell him that Frank sent them instead. They get into a quick draw shootout right after, and Harmonica is able to kill all three of them, though he leaves the scene wounded. At Brett McBain’s (Frank Wolff) family ranch in Sweetwater, he hunts with his youngest son Timmy (Enzo Santaniello) and brings the food back to the rest of his kids. As his daughter Maureen (Simonetta Santaniello) prepares the food, Brett promises her that once their mother shows up, they will be on the cusp of riches. His other son Patrick (Stefano Imparato) is unphased by this notion and says their mother died six years ago. After Brett slaps Patrick, he sends him to the train station to greet her. Sadly, when Brett goes to get water from the well, he sees Maureen get shot and killed from a distance. He runs back to her but is killed as well, along with Patrick. The five outlaws who did it are led by Frank. The group comes face to face with Timmy, and Frank shoots him himself.

At the train station, Jill McBain (Cardinale) shows up looking for her husband Brett and her new family. Obviously, no one is there to greet her because she doesn’t know all of them are dead. So, she finds a coachman named Sam (Paolo Stoppa) to take her to Sweetwater and to Brett’s ranch. Eventually, they stop at a bar along the way, despite Jill’s reservations. As she strikes up a conversation with the bartender about how she’s from New Orleans and how he’s got a cousin who runs a bar there, gunshots are heard outside. Everyone in the bar stops and looks towards the entrance. Then, the handcuffed Manuel “Cheyenne” Gutiérrez (Robards) walks in and demands a jug of alcohol to drink out of. It’s given to him without protest. Once he takes a gulp, the sounds of a harmonica ring throughout the bar. Cheyenne walks over to see Harmonica lurking in the shadows and moves a hanging lantern towards him to out his presence. He walks over to Harmonica and sees his open wound, though Harmonica doesn’t lose eye contact with him. Cheyenne dares him to show his shooting skills and scares off a bar patron from reaching for his gun at the same time. As Harmonica sits and watches, Cheyenne gives the customer a gun to shoot through the chain on his handcuffs, as he points his gun at the guy to make sure he doesn’t do anything else. Following this, Cheyenne’s men come into the bar to reconvene with him, and they are wearing the same dusters as the men Harmonica killed in the opening.

Harmonica brings this up because he assumes they are with Frank, but Cheyenne denies this because the only people that wear these specific dusters are Cheyenne’s men and according to Cheyenne, they don’t get killed. Though the conversation gets threatening, they go their separate ways.

Sometime after, Jill makes it to Brett’s ranch and finds her family dead, with numerous strangers on the property there to pay their respects. A teary-eyed Jill reveals to a lady that she got married to Brett a month ago in New Orleans and her marriage was to be a surprise to the rest of the family. Mr. Bennett shows up and brings a piece of cloth to one of the men there, and everyone assumes this is good enough to implicate Cheyenne and his men in the murder of Jill’s family. They promise to get the reason out of Cheyenne before they hang them. Sam offers to take Jill back to Flagstone, but she refuses, saying that this is her home. Elsewhere, Harmonica shows up at some barn and beats the holy living hell out of Wobbles (Marco Zuanelli) for giving him the wrong information about Frank’s whereabouts. Wobbles set up the meeting at the train station, but he’s not sure why Frank didn’t show up. Harmonica tells him it was because Frank showed up at Brett McBain’s ranch, but Wobbles insists this was Cheyenne’s doing and they got proof. Harmonica knows faking evidence is a Frank specialty, so he’s not fooled in the slightest, though he eases up on Wobbles because he’s telling the truth regarding him not knowing anything. Meanwhile, Jill tries to get herself acclimated to her home while looking around at everything. At night, she hears the sounds of the harmonica outside and fires a shotgun blast into the distance after asking, “Who’s there?”.

The sound is gone, but she knows who it was.

The next morning, Cheyenne shows up at Jill’s front doorstep with his gang. He enters by his lonesome and tells Jill that he had nothing to do with her family’s death because he would never kill a kid, though he still has no trouble proving himself to be a noted asshole and criminal. Elsewhere on a train, railroad tycoon Mr. Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti) is angered at how Frank handled the McBain situation. His railroad is being built and it was going through McBain’s property. He just wanted to use Frank to coerce Brett into a deal, but Frank decided to just kill everyone instead. The monkey wrench is that Jill is still there, so the land rights still go to her. Frank is still relatively unphased, but time is running out on Morton. Dying of spinal tuberculosis, Morton has one goal in mind and that’s to see the Pacific Ocean. He can’t let anyone screw this up for him, despite his contentious partnership with Frank helping him immensely. He’s also not sure where Frank’s head is at. Lately, Frank has been delegating a lot more rather than being there up close and personal for the tasks he has to carry out. Frank alludes to potentially wanting to take over for Morton, but Morton tells him he will never be as successful as him, showing him how money is much more powerful than a gun. Before things get any more heated, the train stops, and Frank insists Jill won’t be a problem. Back at Jill’s home, she explains her whole story about how she fell in love with Brett to Cheyenne, who seems to pity her after learning more about her. They depart on better terms than expected.

Following this, Jill goes to the barn to do some chores, and Harmonica is there.

She stops in her tracks, as Harmonica comes towards her and implies that he’s going to kill her. However, after ripping off some of her clothes, he demands she get him some water from the well. He follows her out and sees two gunfighters from a distance. As they come towards Harmonica and Jill, Harmonica tells her to get down, and he shoots and kills them both. From a distance, Cheyenne sees this and is now fully aware of the skills Harmonica possesses.

Jill goes straight to Wobbles and tells him to tell Frank she knows everything, and she wants to negotiate with him personally, though Wobbles denies knowing Frank. Wobbles, being the lying sack of shit he is, shows up on Mr. Morton’s train to talk to Frank, and Morton is pissed to see him because he doesn’t want to be associated with Frank’s boys. Even so, Wobbles says Jill is privy to everything going on. Frank considers all of this being a trick, but Wobbles doesn’t think so. He also insists he wasn’t followed, though Harmonica is on top of the train listening in unbeknownst to them. Frank has the train take off. Somewhere in the desert, the train stops, and Harmonica sees a group riding towards the train. He climbs down from the roof and walks right into Frank, who points his gun at him. They bring Harmonica on board and tie him up. Next, Frank kicks Wobbles off the train. As Wobbles gets up, he sees Cheyenne hiding under the train, and Cheyenne tells him to be quiet. Wobbles tries to say something, but Frank shoots and kills Wobbles. Frank then asks one of his men if Logan and Jim took care of Jill, but the guy says that someone killed them instead. This is where Harmonica takes the credit for it, as well as the other three from the opening of the movie. Realizing Harmonica was supposed to be killed already for trying to set up that meeting between them through Wobbles, he asks what Harmonica wants. Harmonica simply says, “Dave Jenkins”. A wide-eyed Frank says Jenkins has been dead for a long time. Harmonica then says “Calder Benson”, another man Frank killed.

Frank demands to know who Harmonica is and slaps him a couple of times, but Mr. Morton intervenes to tell Frank he has to find Jill. Frank leaves the train but tells the others to watch Harmonica because he’s going to make him talk when he gets back. Once Frank leaves and the train starts moving again, Cheyenne busts in the train car, kills Frank’s guys, and saves Harmonica, though Mr. Morton is left alive. Then, Harmonica has the train move backwards, so they can go after Frank.

Back at Sweetwater, Jill finds out how much Brett invested in trying to make a train station for the railroad because he knew it would inevitably be built through his land. This is why Frank and Morton want that land. The problem is that the two men disagree on how to get Brett’s land. Morton is willing to make a deal, but Frank wants to make it happen by force or even murder. Jill is standing in their way. Though she may not stand a chance alone against Frank, the motivation and drive of Harmonica and Cheyenne to stop Frank and help Jill makes things interesting.

My Thoughts:

Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West can be described in a lot of ways. It’s slow-moving, convoluted, complicated, personal, ruthless, exciting, and just about everything else under the sun. Regardless of what you may think of the overall product, the attention to detail and pure craftsmanship behind the story itself is worthy of being marveled at for generations to come, a must-watch for any aspiring filmmaker or storyteller. Leone wanted to move on from the spaghetti western after his famed Dollars Trilogy. Thankfully, Paramount roped him in for one more, and the result gave us this epic tale of revenge, land rights, railroads, and gunfighters. Basically, it’s the Old West in one of its most realistic depictions on the big screen.

Making an epic is such a difficult task in and of itself. There are no shortcuts, and you can’t rely on explosions, constant shootouts, action, and quick cuts to tell your story. Everything needs to be calculated and not overdone because the slow burns is essential. If you have too much of the explosions and action and such, it’s not nearly as impactful. A true epic is a stretched-out tale encompassing a large period of time, covering all aspects of the human experience in its purest form. The relationships are long, it takes a while to develop and understand the characters we are dealing with, the conversations are more drawn out for dramatic effect, and the final stamp is where it all comes together on a grand scale, making you feel like you watched an event, something special that makes every previous minute worthy of the elongated buildup. At the same time, you have to have a director who can keep your interest with a vision that makes use of every surrounding available to them to bring the audience into the world presented onscreen, along with introducing and developing memorable characters who we care about and want to know more about why they are who they are and what their motivations are. In a western, the latter becomes the most important part because it makes sense of the violent actions of who we consider the heroes, the villains, and the differing personalities in the supporting cast. The ultimate goal of everyone needs to be the center of the film to make sense of the grand fashion the story is told. In addition, violence in the western epic is the root of it all and is the main reason we are tuning in to the story.

However, this western epic is different from the Dollars trilogy or most westerns.

The violence is still brutal, but it’s very sudden. This is by design. The genius of Leone’s direction is focused on the buildup and the anticipation of the violence, rather than the actual act of it. He knows the suspense of the plot and the drive of these larger-than-life figures are found in the barrel of that gun which only fuels the vicious intentions of these unpredictable characters, who we don’t know enough about to figure out when they will act. Because of this, Leone stretches out a majority of the biggest sequences for as long as he can without losing interest, building the anticipation of the scene to a breaking point. This is very hard to do and a risky move at that because every member of the audience watching is waiting for those guns to go off. The true art in this is not giving us what we want right away but dangling it in our reach for us to beg to see it. When it’s time, no matter how quick it is, it will mean more. Leone gives us a newfound appreciation for this approach to violence in film, so despite its slower pacing, you still find yourself on the edge of your seat in every scene involving our three male characters. Now, there are loads of epics, especially during this time. However, there’s not a lot of them that have the staying power of others. Sergio Leone is one of the very few directors who specializes in epics, making him the perfect man behind the camera for this spaghetti western in Once Upon a Time in the West. From a direction standpoint, it’s phenomenal.

To compliment the slow-moving style of the film, nothing is better than a desert landscape. This much we can expect before the opening credits commence. Sergio Leone uses this idea to its fullest extent, showcasing some fantastic location shooting in Spain and Utah to encompass the areas of Flagstone and Sweetwater in a true tone-setter for what is to come. This is especially true in the electric, attention-grabbing opening. All you hear and feel are the natural sounds of this lonely landscape, as these three unknown gunfighters wait patiently for the arrival of Harmonica. As the windmill creaks over and over again, a bug bothers one of them, and water drips from the roof of a station into the hat of the gunman played by Woody Strode. Waiting, he drinks some of it. Nothing needs to be said between them. It’s just all about the environment, and it speaks volumes. It’s an opening where Leone is reveling in the landscape he created, taking his time to set the scene and give us a small taste of how the story’s actions will take place throughout the film. Though it will move at a snail-like place to get to its end goal, Leone ropes us into every scene to make us hear the natural sounds and feel the air as if we are in the scene with them. It’s an opening crafted like a moving art piece. Again, you feel like you’re watching something special.

Going along with this, Mr. Morton’s train was also a very cool location for the “bad guy lair” so to speak. For a majority of the planning scenes regarding the villains, most of them take place on this train that is made up to allow for Morton to move around and it’s highly memorable, with a lot of the more intense encounters and pivotal beats of the film commencing on it.

Morton himself is also the most underrated part of this movie. Even though the four main characters are at the forefront of the picture, every trait Morton possesses is just as compelling as they are. Despite being a supporting player, he’s integral to the subplot of the film, enriching the main story as a whole because of it. He’s the wealthiest person we come across in the story, but he’s essentially confined to his train because of his spinal tuberculosis slowly killing him. Knowing he’s getting closer towards the end of his life, he makes it known that he just wants to see the ocean. Considering the time period and the area they live in, it’s a strange detail for the character but intriguing, nonetheless. In doing so, his presence over the main story is very compelling, as you wonder how he’s going to make his dream come true despite the trouble at hand. Accompanied with some excellent shots of him staring into his painting and hearing the sounds of the ocean, Morton’s plight starts to speak to you on a different plain, which is why the scene in which we see his fate means so much more in context. Using crutches and an elaborate system of pipes to hold himself up on, he commands the attention of the viewer because of how unsure we are of his motivations and how deep his working relationship is with Frank. Eventually, we see the contrast between the two and why Frank is more of an obstacle, or even Frank sees him as another obstacle. It’s all about the money, and though Frank wants the power Morton seems to have, Morton is confident in telling him they aren’t cut from the same cloth because Frank, evil down to his core, can’t seem to shake off his penchant for violence instead of looking at things from a business perspective.

Frank balks at the notion and still leans towards taking over but with how things turn out, he later admits to Harmonica that he can’t be a businessman because he can’t move on knowing Harmonica is alive, proving Morton right. This only adds to how dark Frank truly is. He has an inability to get over himself and his personal feelings and can’t reach his potential as a businessman because of it. Seriously, every character is so complex when you look into all aspects of it, and this is what keeps our attention throughout because you’re trying to understand everything they do and why they do it. The handling of the characters is the best aspect of the story and is exponentially important to this epic’s success. With the exception of Jill McBain, the main characters leading the film are as captivating as they come. A theme we have noticed in Once Upon a Time in America is that Leone likes to focus his large-scale stories on complicated main characters who are downright reprehensible people. The only time we are able to discern who is the villain is because this person is willing to go just a tad farther than the other known bad people. Though Once Upon a Time in the West isn’t necessarily as dark as the famous gangster epic, the similarities are there. Frank, Harmonica, and Cheyenne are all bad dudes and gunfighters who aren’t to be trifled with.

Playing against type as the ruthless villain is Henry Fonda. Dressed in all black and a piercing stare of ill-intentions stemming from his blue eyes, Fonda makes Frank one of the dastardliest villains to ever grace the Old West genre. He’s a natural as a bad guy, and it makes you wonder why he never played the role more often. Frank is one cold-hearted person and has no problem in pushing the envelope in getting what he wants. Clearly an aging outlaw, he’s risen to a certain level of being untouchable because of his partnership with Mr. Morton. He’s become powerful in doing Morton’s bidding, but it’s not as if he isn’t his own man. He’s not a sidekick at all. He’s just doing it because it benefits him. Though Morton is a villain by proxy, he even seems to be nervous when in the presence of Frank. Despite possessing such a simple name, the presentation of the character and the performance of Fonda makes him an unforgettable bastard of a bad guy with a Darth Vader-like presence over the film, and it’s fantastic. In his introductory scene, he shoots and kills a child. Later, he kicks the shit out of a cripple (Morton) and remarks, “Who knows how far you could have gone with two legs, huh?”. This is how you introduce an antagonist, played by Henry Fonda no less! Even with everything going on with Jill, the excitement and what “makes” the whole film is the buildup to the inevitable showdown between Frank and Harmonica. In true epic fashion, it feels special anytime they cross paths.

Everything is leading up to their eventual faceoff, and the inevitability of it energizes us to push through to the bitter end.

The ultra badass that is Harmonica is also very interesting as the man who has focused his entire life on bringing Frank down. Now, Harmonica is not a hero in the obvious sense. Yes, he goes out of his way to help the protagonist in Jill, but it’s basically because their two stories have intertwined, and it becomes mutually beneficial for him to do so. Sure, he forces Cheyenne and his guys to help him build the train station to help out Jill, but his motivation isn’t only to help her, it’s because he knows that finishing the station will ultimately fuck with Frank and Morton’s plan to have the land rights reverted. Yeah, he buys McBain’s land for $5,000 at the auction, but it’s just to stop Frank’s men from taking it at a bargain. Following this, he implies he’s giving it right back to Jill for nothing. Every move he makes is just to stop Frank. This is revenge. He even refuses Frank’s offer of matching his total with an extra dollar before leaving the room. He knows it will eat at Frank and he revels in the fact, refusing to let Frank in on why he’s doing these things once again. Because of his vengeful motivations and doing everything he can in lieu of his goal, Harmonica is more of an antihero, who finds himself on the “right” side because circumstances have drawn him there. He’s not a hero and never claims to be. Harmonica is just a gunfighter out for vengeance. His goal is to end Frank at all costs, no matter what it takes. Frank has to die from his hands, adding even more fuel to the fire when Harmonica technically saves Frank by giving him a heads up when he’s about to be attacked by Morton’s men. Jill can’t believe he would let the bastard live, but it’s because Harmonica has to be the one to kill him. It’s not “saving” him per say, it’s just prolonging Frank’s life, so he can be the one to take him out.

If he has to keep him alive to get to this final showdown, then this is what he will do. Only Harmonica will be the one to get the satisfaction of killing him, no one else.

This gives the crazy moment where Harmonica implies a shooter is hidden behind the clock of a building, so Frank shoots the guy, and he falls through the roof. I’m telling you right now, the fall this stuntman takes is so catastrophic, there’s no way he didn’t get hurt.

Once Harmonica accomplishes his goal, he’s out. No woman or situation can change this. This is the “hero” made famous in the western genre, the quiet badass that is the “drifter”. The character is handy with a gun, fearless in every sense of the word, dead set on a goal, and will move on once he kills off the true terror, showing a glimpse of good without sacrificing his “cool guy” aura. Charles Bronson churns out one of his best performances in a role tailor-made for his persona. It’s the closest he comes to an all-around performance because of how carefully constructed it is to fit around his acting style, evoking so much emotion in just a cold stare. He never goes on a monologue about what has happened to him or what he plans to do, but when he speaks, we hang onto every word he says. Because of this, every word cuts deep, as he dares someone to make a move. Truthfully, we don’t know why he’s going after Frank for a majority of the film. When asked why, he just names random people off who we don’t know. Only Frank knows them because they are people he killed, which makes us assume Harmonica is playing the role of the “white knight”. Even then, it’s just a small sliver as to why he’s coming after him. Usually, this lack of information and implicating blurbs of conversation would bother me because the reveal isn’t given to us until the clash between the two characters in the closing moments of the film, but this risky decision is pulled off because of how well Leone tells this story. It’s handled to perfection, with Frank’s noted anxiousness engaging with the scenery and Harmonica’s dead-eyed stare with direct eye contact looking cool as a cucumber.

Not only is the flashback a huge moment worth every minute of the buildup, but it also explains everything we need to know about the character of Harmonica without him having to explain himself verbally. It’s very true when we say “Less is more” in writing a screenplay. It’s all about the action of our character and how the simplicity of this event travels miles, more than any line could ever do. By the time we cut back from the flashback to the standoff at hand, and we get the silent nod of remembrance from Frank after the gunfire, I actually sat back and thought to myself, “That is cinema”. This is the art form of the visual medium in all its glory. They dragged us all the way here without really explaining the details behind our two most important characters, but we just buy into it because of the performances. When it’s time to get to the nitty gritty and we are let in on why, it’s a mind-opening reveal that makes the entire production worth it.

Everyone loves Charles Bronson for the action hero he usually plays, but what makes his role as Harmonica different is that Leone frames every scene in a way to make him look like a silent killer who’s been through hell and back. You can see it in his thousand-yard stare as he plays his harmonica. You can feel it in the energy he radiates in every sequence he’s in. He doesn’t have to yell or flip out on someone to get his point across. Harmonica can just give that icy cold stare across a room, and it gives all the other characters chills. They know there is something different about him. We can see it in the first meeting between Harmonica and Cheyenne. As soon as Cheyenne pushes that lantern towards him, and we see him playing his music and staring at him with his gun in front of his feet without flinching, Cheyenne takes notice. His usual bullying tactics aren’t going to work with someone like him. Though Cheyenne still acts tough towards him and messes with another bar patron, there’s a small hint of nervous energy in Cheyenne because he too can feel the unpredictable aura around Harmonica. When Cheyenne rounds up the rest of his crew, this is when Harmonica decides to talk a bit and basically accuses him of working for Frank. This is how well this scene is written. In this exchange alone, we know how important Frank is to Harmonica because him bringing this up implies he’s willing to have a shootout with Cheyenne and his men on the spot if things were confirmed, despite him being outnumbered like crazy. This is where the legend starts to build, and he gains a reputation similar to the already well-known Frank and Cheyenne.

Jason Robards’s Cheyenne is the perfect in-between character in that he’s a known criminal who has no problem in pursuing his exploits, but he’s got no dog in this fight. If anything, he only gets offended by Frank making him look like the guilty party in the Brett McBain killings, making him look like this evil figure who has no problem killing an entire family. Yes, Cheyenne is an asshole, a criminal, and a troublemaking outlaw, but the lone line of him explaining to Jill that he would never shoot a kid instantly puts him in the antihero category. Despite the obvious issues of his character from its introduction and the “bad guy” energy he radiates early in the first act, he works for the rest of the movie to show us that though his moral compass is hidden, it’s still there, and he starts to win us over just as he does with Jill. Oddly enough, he shows the most heroic qualities out of any of the protagonists. He’s the one who kicks things into high gear by saving Harmonica when he didn’t have to and even though he’s initially a dick to Jill, he never does anything to her. They even connect on a personal level, more than any other character manages to do with Jill. However, this is what bothers me about Jill. Her character is less defined than all the others, despite having the most lines and being at the center of the drama. We never know where her loyalty lies and how she truly feels. Her involvement with each male character was especially confusing.

From the viewer’s perspective, it seems as if her and Cheyenne make this obvious connection and though it doesn’t necessarily need to get romantic between them, it would make the most sense if they did. However, she does have sex with Frank. The way it plays out onscreen, it seems to be enjoyed mutually, even though it’s framed previously that she’s intent on negotiation with Frank and hates him. It’s a very odd scene, making it even harder to understand where Jill is at on a personal level. Soon after, Jill is forced into auctioning off her land with Frank’s men intimidating any people putting a bid in, so it’s assumed the Frank/Jill sexual encounter was more of a threatened assault, but again, Jill seemed too sympathetic in the scene, which complicates things more than we would like and makes us assume other things that aren’t the intention. Also, our antihero Harmonica’s private scene at Jill’s place has her rip her clothes aggressively for no reason. It looks like he’s about to assault her, but then he stops and asks for water from the well. This leads to him shooting and killing two bad guys to save her. What the hell are we trying to say here with an action like this? Is this supposed to add to the “antihero” traits of Harmonica? What were his intentions in doing this? It just doesn’t make sense to never follow up or give us any reason for such an attempted violent action. It seems out of character even for him and makes even less sense as to why she trusts Harmonica and likes him more than Cheyenne by the time the film comes to an end. Despite Jill being the main character, the way she was written was confusing and only brought the entertainment value down as the film progressed.

Now, there are some problems that we have to address. How can a film be this long and stretched out and explain its plot this poorly? As much as I enjoyed the slow-moving handle on the overall product, especially for what it did for the characters, trying to figure out the plot was more distressing than it should have been considering how they had all the time in the world to explain it. When we are finally let in on what the actual movie is about, we’re damn near halfway through the movie! This is how long it takes to explain what the hell is going on and why everyone’s paths are crossing. So, though this late reveal works for characters like Harmonica, it doesn’t work for the main character of Jill and why Frank and Morton are after her. There’s no reason why they can’t explain Brett McBain’s land rights being reverted if the train station isn’t built yet, and Jill being in the middle of it all because of Frank and Morton wanting it so badly, in the first 40 minutes. At that point, you’re just dragging things for no reason.

Anytime Leone teams up with Ennio Morricone to construct his score, magic happens. This continues with Once Upon a Time in the West. The music throughout is magnificent, especially the signature themes of Harmonica and Cheyenne anytime they enter a scene. The importance of repetition in making a memorable score is another thing that has to be handled delicately, and Leone’s use of Morricone’s excellent pieces adds so much to final product to the point where anytime the first note is played, you know exactly who is going to be in the scene and you know shit is about to go down.

Excellent work all around.

Once Upon a Time in the West is a visceral portrayal of the violent Old West, showcasing the normalcy of threats of violence, death, and murder and how it’s such a commonplace occurrence. At one point, a bartender tells our main character Jill that he’s too used to the “quiet country, simple life” and wouldn’t want to move back to New Orleans because of it. Before he says this, there was a shootout outside of the door. Following his bartender’s statement, Jill goes to her ranch to find her entire family killed. The irony is not lost on us. This is the unforgiving world our protagonist and the audience are thrust into. Whether it be money, all-encompassing power, or revenge, our characters come from every angle to get what they want. Though the film isn’t as entertaining as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, or as iconic as Once Upon a Time in America, Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West is an artistic gamble that pays off. With an untouchable visual flare very few filmmakers have, another incredible score by Ennio Morricone, and compelling larger-than-life characters and performances, this slow but ruthless epic can be confidently placed into the category of being one of the most authentic westerns in existence.

Fun Fact: Sergio Leone originally wanted Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach be the three men at the train station who are killed by Harmonica in the opening, as a symbolic killing of the Dollars Trilogy, but Eastwood wasn’t interested, and Van Cleef was unavailable. Eastwood also turned down the role of Harmonica.