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Cultural intermingling is about as common as the tides, and it’s about as obvious as the tides when it comes to film. Hollywood’s film noir craze in the 40s and 50’s were inspired by the German expressionist films of the 20’s, the films of directors like Martin Scorsese and Monte Hellman have their roots in the French New Wave, and then of course you have the spaghetti westerns. While originally used as a derogatory term by critics, these were films directed, crewed and produced in Italy and Italians obviously love spaghetti, the spaghetti western has gone on to subsume the concept of westerns in the public consciousness. I mean picture the quintessential Wild West gunslinger in your head and chances are he’s gonna be a lot closer to Clint ‘Chair Talker’ Eastwood than ol’ John ‘The Indians deserved it’ Wayne, and when westerns tropes are referenced in modern works it is more likely going to be from something like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly than it is Angel & the Badman. Whether spaghetti westerns are out and out better than the old American western isn’t really a question worth answering, there are plenty of classic American westerns just as there are plenty of shoddily made Italian westerns, but there is a distinct difference between the two and that is in their tone. The Italian’s depiction of the American West is gritty; It’s a morally gray world where good people die for nothing and the only common language is the one that comes out of the barrel of a gun. Compared to the squeaky clean, white hat versus black hat, occasionally jingoistic image of the old western the spaghetti western seemed more visceral, more relatable, especially to an American audience that was hurtling towards the Vietnam War and everything that followed. Westerns still faded away in the end sure, but it can’t be denied that those films and those directors gave that genre a level of critical and commercial acclaim that it hadn’t experienced in years, and arguably is the main reason that the genre hasn’t just faded into complete irrelevancy.
The man credited with the creation of spaghetti western is also the most famous director of spaghetti westerns: Sergio Leone. Entering the world of show business back in 1941 with a small role in Roberto Roberti’s The Man on the Street, Leone worked for several years as an assistant director and second unit director before finally making his debut in 1961 with The Colossus of Rhodes. Three years later he would turn in his sword and sandals for leather chaps and revolvers in A Fistful of Dollars, and the rest is history. It’s a bit sad that a director as influential as Leone wasn’t more prolific, he only directed 7 films before his death in 1989 with over a decade long gap between Duck, You Sucker! in 1971 and his final film, Once Upon a Time in America in 1984, but if you’ve got to choose between quality and quantity then Leone chose quality. Years ago I wrote about The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, a film which many consider one of the greatest westerns of all time, and so to kick off Long Dark Marathon of the Soul ‘21’s international top 10, why not return to Leone and cover the other greatest western of all time? I mean 80 percent of the Marathon this year is already returning names, what’s one more on the pile right??
Released in 1968, Once Upon a Time in the West was written by Sergio Leone and Sergio Donati with story by Sergio Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, directed by Sergio Leone and produced by Fulvio Morsella through Rafran Cinematografica. Once upon a time in the West, a man carrying a harmonica, known only as Harmonica (Charles Bronson) arrived at a little town named Flagstone, looking for another man named Frank (Henry Fonda). Frank wasn’t there to meet him however, as he and his friends were busy murdering a family named the McBains and framing a local outlaw named Cheyenne (Jason Robards) for the crime . He and his outlaw gang were working for a railroad tycoon by the name of Morton you see, and that delicious McBain land is right in the middle of some prime locomotive territory. Later that same day, a woman arrived in town and revealed herself to be Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale), the secret wife of patriarch Brett McBain who had arrived just in time to find her new family massacred. Thus we see a tangled web is weaved; Harmonica wants Frank, Morton wants the land, Frank wants power, Cheyenne wants money (and a little bit of Jill), and Jill is the center of it all. All it takes is one good shake and everything will come loose, with explosive results.
With a name like that you’d think the movie would be more fantastical, but at the same time I can’t think of a better name for this film. Leone’s westerns prior to this had a storybook element to them; The gunslinger with no name who arrives in town and saves it from outlaws in Fistful of Dollars or the odyssey the Tuco and Blondie embark on to find the hidden treasure in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. We see it here as well with the character of Harmonica and his role in the story, but where those previous films used the western as more of an aesthetic choice (literally in the case of Fistful of Dollars, as it was based on Kurosawa’s Yojimbo), Once Upon a Time in the West is intimately connected with its setting. The entire film is built around the expansion of the United States through the railroad after all, its populated by a veritable melting pot of people, black, white, Chinese, Mexican, Native American, which runs parallel to Harmonica’s quest to kill Frank. The inevitable march of time and progress, represented by the railroad, which sweeps away the remnants of the past, represented by the outlaws and gunslingers like Cheyenne and Frank. Once Upon a Time in the West has a storybook style name because like storybooks it has a definitive ending, for the film and in a grander sense for the ‘Wild West’. Leone would go on to direct, write and produce other movies in the genre in the years following the release of this film, but Once Upon a Time in the West does have this air of finality to it that you could easily see it as the end of the western movie.
It’s almost not worth mentioning the cinematography in this case, because we all know the Sergio Leone style by now: wide angle shots of the landscape paired with close focus shots on people’s faces, and hold for a couple glacial seconds. Which of course works because the scenery is fucking beautiful and the close-ups are connected to some of the most intense scenes in the film. Sergio jumps out of the gate with it too, with Frank’s men waiting at the train station to kill the man who turns out to be Harmonica. Three men just sitting at this train station in the middle of nowhere, ill intent marked clear on their faces, and the tension builds and builds until the train and Harmonica is introduced. Even though they break that atmosphere somewhat with some silliness, it’s a textbook example of the visual power the director wields. I also liked the scene with Cheyenne taking out Frank’s men from on top of a moving train; While not as dynamic as modern action set pieces it is a change of pace from the normal western gunfights, and does aid in the presentation of this film as an epic.
As far the cast goes, it’s solid. While Charles Bronson doesn’t cut the same figure as Clint Eastwood (although ironically Bronson was offered the lead role in all the Leone westerns that Eastwood would later star in), like Eastwood he does have this quiet machismo about him that conveys the idea of Harmonica as this enigmatic, deadly figure. Henry Fonda is great as the villainous outlaw Frank; A man who puts on airs of power and class but at heart is just a killer, and one who loves doing it. Jason Robards does a fine job as Cheyenne, a foil to Harmonica who eventually grows to be the secondary protagonist almost, although much like Bronson compared to Eastwood I don’t think he leaves as strong an impression as Eli Wallach did a few years earlier. Neither does Claudia Cardinale if I’m being honest; One look at her and you can tell why she was the most popular actress in Italy at the time, but I could never get a feel for her character. For a while I thought there was going to be a twist where she turned out to be a con artist looking to scam the McBains, because there were a couple scenes that seemed to suggest as much, but then nothing came of it and she just becomes a character that reacts to other characters doing things, which is never an ideal position.
Next we arrive at the music, composed by Ennio Morricone, king of the spaghetti western scores, and I’m surprised to say that it’s a mixed bag. When it hits like in the final duel it’s overwhelming, an explosion of raw emotion in the form of noise that elevates that scene to high art, and when it doesn’t it stumbles off a cliff. There’s this one little bit of music that has a bit of a cantering cadence, I don’t know if you’d call it a leitmotif or not, that keeps appearing in the film. From the sound of it you’d think it’s for the background of the sillier moments, but then it shows up for scenes that are dead serious and it’s tonally dissonant. Not to mention the soft and sensual music for what is, in essence, a rape scene, I don’t really get the logic there. Ennio Morricone is a legend in the world of film and rightfully so, but if you’re coming into this expecting the Moricone that everyone knows from pop culture then you’ll probably be out of luck.
I guess that’s the biggest takeaway from watching Once Upon a Time in the West. It’s a great film to watch, with deep characters and a story that it is both personal and grandiose, but as I’m writing about it I keep coming back to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It’s impossible not to, as Good, Bad, and the Ugly is the quintessential western. It’s got the iconic scenes, iconic characters, iconic music, it’s a successful film on all levels. Once Upon a Time in the West falls short not because it’s necessarily a worse film, but because it doesn’t compel you to revisit it the same way that GBU does. You see it, you feel it and you move on. Whereas with GBU just writing about it has given me the urge to rewatch it.
The operative words here are ‘you see it’. Once Upon a Time in the West is 100 percent recommended, but not quite a ‘turn off this computer and go see it now!’ kind of film. If you’ve slept on Leone and/or spaghetti westerns prior to this, then watch Fistful of Dollars, watch The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, watch The Wild Bunch and The Magnificent Seven and all those Django and Sartana movies, and when you feel up to it pop in Once Upon a Time in the West. It’s the last western, thematically at least, and that’s how it deserves to be seen.
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