Buy Once Upon a Time in the West DVD at Amazon.
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Buy Once Upon a Time in the West DVD at Amazon..
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My title is a cliche but in this case it’s the only phrase to spend. The version of this movie available now, with its extra disc burly of broad bonus material, is an example of how to bring DVD format to its highest potential. First of course there’s the movie, and its director Sergio Leone. Every Leone movie I’ve seen–Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Wonderful Awful and Shocking, Once Upon a Time in America–is fantastic, but this tops them all. Imagine the year 1969: what a astronomical time to be a western film lover. You had this, and Sam Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch in the same year. Fantastic. Anyway, it’s impossible to list all the stout scenes, so I’ll stick with the first. If you admire the credit sequence you’ll adore the movie; it’s not for everybody, however. So those credits, mostly still except for a windmill creaking, which Leone somehow makes cross, and one of the minimal details he uses to set aside authentic mood, are the litmus test. You’ll either fancy the movie or dislike it. The scene is built on a genius contradiction: it’s so tense that you want it to ruin, but it’s so beautifully done, so built on image and gesture and explore, that you also hope it never ends. The whole movie is that palatable. And the cast–wow. Everyone is at top perform, but check out Henry Fonda as the leanest meanest bastard imaginable, but also someone you can’t avoid enjoying because it is the Astronomical Mr. Fonda, with Leone getting maximum mileage out of finish ups of Fonda’s ice-blue eyes, as unforgiving as a western sky, generally acting like the amiable stalwart figure he always plays, until he shoots itsy-bitsy kids and rotund lackeys whom he doesn’t trust because they wear both suspenders and belts: and as Fonda says, how can you trust a man who can’t even trust his beget pants? As the heroine, Claudia Cardinale isn’t unprejudiced pretty she’s enjoyable, lust-us. And tough. Observe for the scene where she looks at herself in the mirror when she’s all alone in her house. whose previous residents, her family, have been killed by Fonda and his thugs. Charles Bronson–what an underrated actor. Uncertain yet entirely sympathetic here. He finds wit in his role, knows exactly what the unusual Leone’s up to and gets in sync with the vision. Jason Robards is incapable of giving a performance less than intellectual, and this is another highlight in the film. As Cheyenne he is comical and tough and sparkling, maybe the most complex performance in the movie. There’s so mighty more, too–the finest Ennio Morricone soundtrack, killer dialogue, astonishing cinematography. This DVD is establish together so well it’s even a pleasure to glimpse at the menus–you’ll witness what I mean. And all this for under FIFTEEN U.S. DOLLARS. What are you waiting for?
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST is arguably Sergio Leone’s greatest Western, although Clint Eastwood’s three films with him remain among my favorites. Actually, Leone had hoped to have Eastwood in this film as Harmonica, but they were unable to work things out. As it is, I consider having Charles Bronson in the role is more effective. It was central to Eastwood’s persona in those three films that he be both a man with no name and with no past, but Harmonica’s character is entirely driven by the past and his need for revenge.
The beginning of this film are among my celebrated in the history of film. Leone is arguably the most patient director in the history of film, and is willing to purchase fifteen minutes for something another director would be hate to consume two. The two stout instances of Leone’s patience are the scene in the uncut version of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, where he allows a phone to ring thirty or forty times, and here at the beginning, where he takes fourteen minutes to expose three men waiting to men a voice.
As a whole, this is a far more ambitious project than Leone’s other Westerns. The situation is a bit more fable, the sweep of the film a bit grander, the relations between the characters more complex. Like most of his other films, it was filmed primarily in Europe, but unlike the others, a couple of scenes were actually shot in the United States, in particular in Monument Valley, the signature status of John Ford, the director most associated with Westerns. He handles characters a bit differently in this than in his earlier films. For instance, Leone ties a musical theme to each of the major characters in the film, distinguished as did Prokofiev with “Peter and the Wolf.”
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One aspect of the film that is simultaneously a strength and a weakness is the casting. Leone here works with a group of performers he had not worked with before. A couple of the performers are simply incandescent. Charles Bronson was shiny, and his minute, piercing blue eyes lend an eerie intensity to many of his cloak moments. The casting of the equally blue-eyed Henry Fonda as a sadistic villain was a stroke of genius, and he manages to build one of his most memorable roles. I have, however, misfortune with the other two major performers. Claudia Cardinale was certainly dazzling, but she simply does not bring as distinguished to her role that many other actresses would have. Women do not feature prominently in Leone’s films, and that might be because he simply didn’t describe to women as well as men. At any rate, I judge the movie would have been greatly improved with someone else in her role. I had similar problems with Jason Robards. He unbiased did not radiate the aura of anguish that his character was supposed to, and the musical theme that was tied to his character sounded somewhat clownish. I found him to be the most poorly conceived and executed character in the film.
Despite these two cavils, this is an astounding movie, and is by far one of the most thoughtful, novel Westerns ever made. The ending is perhaps the finest of his many Westerns, as well as one of the most surprising. It easily goes on any list of the greatest Westerns in the history of film.
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