| |  | DVD Once Upon a Time in the West |  | | | | | | | | | | Rating:  - Masterpiece
I had never seen the uncut version of Sergio Leone's famed Once Upon A Time In The West, before stumbling across the DVD at a bargain price. I had seen major portions of it, chopped up by censors, studio heads, and the nitwits who need to run commercials for local television stations. While intriguing I did not think it could hold up to his justly praised Once Upon A Time In America. I was wrong. It does, and in its own way is just as good, or great. Whereas America is amazingly complex, and follows the lives of several gangsters, West is sparse, amazingly straightforward, yet surreal- having been released fifteen years before America, in 1969. Instead of having affinities more in tune with Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather and Apocalypse Now it resonates with the tv series The Prisoner and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The film is quite surreal, depending far more on what is shown (imagine that- a film where the visuals are the most important element!) than what is said. In two hours and forty five minutes there's a reputed only fifteen pages of dialogue; most of that cryptic and seeming torn from a Beckett play, rather than being at home in a Western, a genre I generally detest for all the American triumphalism and John Waynean braggadocio, celebrating the worst aspects of the Ugly American. Yet, this film is loaded with symbolism, and a very simple plot. A land speculator named McBain is killed, along with his family, as he awaits his new wife's arrival from New Orleans. She is Jill (Claudia Cardinale), a gorgeous ex-prostitute. The murder is ordered by a man named Morton (Gabriele Ferzettii), a robber baron railroad man whose physical handicap leaves him a prisoner on his train (much in the mode of a 19th Century James Bond supervillain), and who employs a killer named Frank (Henry Fonda), who actually does the deed. On his tale is an unnamed man named Harmonica (Charles Bronson), for the instrument he plays, and also a bandit gang leader named Cheyenne (Jason Robards), whom Frank has framed for the crime.
The film follows the interactions of the four main characters, as described by others.... As for the film, it is surreal, yet also hyper-realistic in its use of the scenery of Monument Valley, and the great faces of many of its character actors- from Jack Elam and Woody Strode in small, early roles, to Lionel Stander and Keenan Wynn in later roles. There are scenes that ring true, even as they are also pure symbolism, such as Cardinale's close association with water and self-image, Bronson's almost magical sliding in and out of frame, and the way Frank radiates more real menace in a lip curl than Hannibal Lecter can in a whole film. The film damns Romanticism, even as its title celebrates it. It dazzlingly inverts clichés and, most importantly, realizes that film can and should make use of time, and long shots and scenes. MTV has destroyed much of appreciation of the brilliance that long scenes can hold. This is never truer than the film's start, where three gunman waiting at a train station for someone or something that is coming on the next train. No explanation, no conversation; not a word is said, yet they deal with water drips, flies, and knuckle cracking. Fifteen minutes pass before what they are waiting for arrives, yet it's a visual and aural feast for pure cinemaphiles, on par with 2001's opening scenes of prehistoric humans.
Throughout the film, glares, scowls, and small facial twinges convey emotion far more effectively than most pallid dialogue. And the grandiose scenes of natural beauty are something even David Lean would admire. The four musical themes attached to the main characters are highly effective. There are also many great lines in the film. Two of the best are when Harmonica is told by one of Frank's henchmen, after asking if a horse was brought for him, that it `looks like we're shy one horse.' Harmonica replies, `You brought two too many.' The other is when Frank, after being queried on his methodology, says, `People scare better when they're dyin'.' Touches like this, and even the title, lend credence to the idea that, like his later Once Upon A Time In America, this film is nothing but someone's dream of the West, not the real thing. Yet, both within and without, people must wake up to modern America. Damn!
Rating: - "Inside the dusters were three men and inside the men were three bullets.."
Arguably one of the greatest westerns ever made, this is a strange and slow moving tale of crossing paths and revenge.Charles Bronson as the mysterious "Harmonica" whom we first see at the train station.He is met by a trio of killers (Jack Elam, Woody Strode and Al Mulock).
Bronson: Did you bring a horse for me?
Elam (laughing): Well, I guess we're one horse shy.
Bronson (shaking his head): No. You brought two too many.
Henry Fonda as Frank, one of THE most vicious killers on film.Jason Robard's Cheyenne and Claudia Cardinale (who has never looked more beautiful) as Jill McBain. Described by one of the featurettes as an "Opera of Violence", that is a pretty fair assessment.Each character is pursuing a particular path that brings them all together: Harmonica is out to kill Frank (Fonda) -- for reasons which become clear toward the end.Cardinale's character has married a man who is murdered by Frank and his gang to get his land for the railroad.Cheyenne (Robards) is involved when Frank tries to frame him by having his men commit crimes in the type of rain slickers his men wear.This is apparent in the bar scene where Bronson, Robards and Cardinale meet.Cheyenne has just escaped from jail and watches into the desert bar with his men amid a cloud of dust.Bronson is seated on the bar, playing a wailing cord on his harmonica.In the course of things he discusses the three men who meet him at the railroad station earlier.
Harmonica: I was met by dusters like those.Inside the dusters were three men.Inside the men were three bullets." In the final confrontation, Frank wants to know Harmonica's reason for coming after him.
Harmonica: Only on the point of dying.
This is the most complicated of the Leone westerns. A brilliant score by his long time composer Ennio Morricone -- with distinct themes for each of the major characters.Different in many ways from the Dollars films and the last box office hit he would have. After the Dollars Trilogy he wanted to do hisgangster epic ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. Paramount convinced Leone that if he did another western they would bankroll his pet project.
Rating:  - Now That You've Said My Name..
A line from Henry Fonda (as Frank) right before he eliminates a kid,never did Henry Fonda play a more ruthless character than in Sergio Leone's classic epic western,Once Upon a Time in the West,featuring an all-star cast with Charles Bronson,Jason Robards and the luscious,Claudia Cardinale and also genre actor,Frank Wolff,character actor Jack Elam and Woody Strode,the opening scene alone is classic with no dialogue for the first ten minutes into the film,there was a story the legendary director Sergio Leone once considered Clint Eastwood,Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef for the opening scene roles,of course they would be eliminated after the first scene,can you imagine these three desperados up against Charles Bronson,it makes you think,who would've won this battle,who knows,never happened. If you've never seen this Spaghetti western it is a glorious spectacle to be seen,the greatest western ever made?,definitely in the top twenty,let's not forget about Peckinpah's,The Wild Bunch. This special two disc edition is presented in 16x9 widescreen at a cheap reasonable price.
Rating: - The best spaghetti western hands down!
What a movie.It is an epic in every way.Such great cinematography and acting even if it is dubbed.Amazing work by Sergio Leone. Copy is in excellent shape too. I didn't know I would be getting a bonus disc either.
Rating: - One of the Great Westerns
Is this the best Western ever made?I tend to disagree with the other reviewers.There are an awful lot of good movies to consider, including Leone's own "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly."And of course "The Searchers", "High Noon", "Stagecoach", and "Unforgiven" all must be ranked as the possible number one.
It's a pointless exercise, of course.This movie is very, very good.Many images are unforgettable and very moving:the shots of the train, the shootouts at the beginning and end of the film, Fonda's expressions, the shots of Monument Valley, the scene at the end showing the unstoppable progress of the railroad and the new town.
But the movie has its flaws.The plot is convoluted -- and not in a good way.It's almost as if the story is secondary to the power of the images.The movie is more myth than plot.This can work, but here the movie would have benefitted from the tighter kind of story lines used in the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
The acting is truly great.Fonda is a wonderful villain.The cold blue eyes and the friendly expressions that morph into pure sadism as he commits one outrage after another are chilling.Bronson has the ability to play the larger than life hero with a minimum of dialogue.Apparently, Leone originally intended Eastwood for that role.It would have been fascinating to have seen Eastwood square off against Fonda. But Bronson plays the part very well, and the movie works fine with him in that role.
The dialogue is in some respects memorable.Fonda and Bronson each deliver great lines.Robards doesn't quite have the same material to work with, and sometimes his dialogue and the dialogue of Cardinale seem stilted and not quite up to snuff with the ambition of this movie to be the definitive Western.
It's a terrific movie, but one that requires patience and open-mindedness by the viewer.
*****
I've been watching some of the bonus material and commentary since writing the above, and I am marveling at Leone's technical mastery.The point of the commentators is to see the movie as operatic, in which case my concerns about plot may be misplaced.The plot in an opera is a second thought -- what matters is the emotion and message conveyed by the music and the images.One shot that blows me away on reviewing is the arrival of Cardinale at the train station.A tracking shot follows her into the station (seen through the window) and then a crane takes you up over the station so you can see her exit into a bustling half-built frontier town.It is an amazing shot.
Leone is terrific.I'm going to watch or re-watch everything he ever made.
****
O.K., I give up.After watching this a few more times, this movie impresses more and more.The power of the images and music are apparent on first viewing.The thematic complexity of the work, and its desire to make a movie about not only the end of the West, but the end of the Western, becomes more apparent with each re-viewing.This is a great movie, and Leone belongs in the first ranks of film-makers.
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