ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)

A.K.A.: C’era Una Volta il West

Country: Italy / U.S.A.

Genre(s): Epic / Western

Director: Sergio Leone

Cast: Charles Bronson / Claudia Cardinale / Henry Fonda

Plot

Three gunmen and a prostitute arrive in a Western town at the same time, each of them becoming embroiled in a life and death struggle for control of a valuable piece of desert.

What I Liked

This is a movie I’ve wanted to see for a very long time.  I’ve been a Sergio Leone fan ever since the first time I saw “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” when I was a kid.  That was the first Western I ever liked, thanks to Leone’s visceral visual style and knack for the epic.  Since that time other titles on his filmography have joined that one as favorites of mine and I’ve always seen “Once Upon a Time in the West” included among lists of his masterpieces.  Yet, for no particular reason, I’ve never gotten around to watching it until now.  I was certainly missing out.

“Once Upon a Time in the West” has many of the same qualities that I have always enjoyed about Leone’s films; the intense close-ups, the dazzling camera movement, the mesmerizing choreography of lonely men against vast landscapes.  As the title would suggest, there is also that same quality of the mythic in this film, the larger-than-life characters who seem as ancient as the world itself on an equally timeless quest.  Just as in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” we have three unscrupulous gun fighters, each more evil than the last.  Then of course there is his marvelous melding of nerve-torturing suspense with abrupt violence into key scenes.  Perhaps most importantly, Ennio Morricone contributes yet another distinctive score, even if it doesn’t quite match that which he provided for “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”

The casting here is brilliant.  First of all, casting perpetual good guy Henry Fonda as the dead-eyed child killer Frank was nothing short of a stroke of genius.  Voluptuous Italian sex goddess Claudia Cardinale perfects the “angel-whore” dichotomy (even if her lines are overdubbed).  And if you can’t get Clint Eastwood to play the quiet tough guy with no name, then Charles Bronson more than fits the bill.

In short, “Once Upon a Time in the West” has everything I love about a Leone Western, and lacks for nothing.

What I Didn’t Like

Maybe because I’ve seen most if not all of his other classics, this one didn’t quite have the same mind-blowing effect on me as the others.  I went in knowing what to expect, and got what I expected.  Which was excellence.

It might even be that by 1968, when this movie was made, Leone himself might have been a little too used to his Westerns himself, maybe running over the same ground a little too much.  This doesn’t mean he didn’t still do everything with the same eye-catching artistry, just maybe not with the full amount of zest with which he attacked his earlier films.  Then again, the lack of passion might have been the fault of the viewer.

Most Memorable Scene

No one, and I mean no one, ever, will outdo Sergio Leone for the marriage of suspense and gunfights.  He’s a wizard at getting every possible ounce of tension out of his shoot-outs and pulls off that magic more than once in “Once Upon a Time in the West.”  The best of them occurs when Fonda’s men double-cross him, leaving him to creep along the city street waiting for the trap to spring.  Meanwhile, Bronson watches from a window, clearly unsure which side he wants to take in the fight, but with his gun at the ready.  And stunning Cardinale is right there to steam up the scene with a different kind of tension from inside her bath.  And this isn't even the movie's climax.  Now that, as they say, is entertainment!

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5