rating:
(out of
4 stars)Italy, United States; 1968
Directed by Sergio Leone; produced by Fulvio Morsella; screenplay by Sergio Leone, Sergio Donati
Starring Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, Gabriele Ferzetti, Paolo Stoppa
Here is a film I can watch over and over again and still enjoy it every single time. For me some other films in that category are 'Citizen Kane', 'Casablanca', '2001: A Space Odyssey', 'Star Wars', 'Apocalypse Now' and 'Pulp Fiction', of course not the worst films ever made. Director Sergio Leone made three great westerns before ‘Once Upon a Time in the West'. They are about "The Man with No Name" played by Clint Eastwood, but this one is better than all of them, including the great 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'. Everything in this film is as perfect as it can be.
The film opens on a train station and we see three men waiting for the train. With the familiar Leone close-ups of sweaty faces it is interesting to watch even though not much is happening. The train arrives. The men are searching for someone but they do not find him. The train leaves and a man appears from behind the train, playing a harmonica. The three men are killed in a shootout by the man with the harmonica, he himself is hit in the shoulder. It is the hero of the greatest (spaghetti) western ever made, and he has the face of Charles Bronson. The tone is set.
Bronson, who never gets a name but is called Harmonica, was looking for a guy named Frank, played by Henry Fonda. We see Frank kill the family of Brett McBain (Frank Wolff), including McBain himself, and during their funeral a lady arrives. Her name is Jill (Claudia Cardinale). She just married McBain, inheriting his house and his property. Before this we have seen her on her way to McBain, stopping at a resting place. There she has an encounter with Cheyenne (Jason Robards) who on his turn has an encounter with Harmonica who is also there. In a strange way these three people start working together, all with their own motivations.
We learn why Harmonica needed Frank, we learn who Jill really is, why she just married the poor McBain and we learn about Cheyenne, a wanted gang leader, who has his own reasons to team up with Harmonica. In the meanwhile we see Frank as a villain who is pure evil. He rides a train that belongs to Mr. Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti). Frank does little things, you know the kind, for Mr. Morton but grows more powerful since Mr. Morton himself is sick and is losing his ability to walk.
Everything leads up to the final confrontation between Harmonica and Frank but on the way the sub-plots are as interesting as the main story. It is not the story itself that makes this film as good as it is. It is all in the way it is shown to us. Leone creates an atmosphere and every scene plays within that atmosphere. When the hero faces his enemy you know who will win but Leone directs these moments to perfection, creating real tension and suspense. Like I said earlier, he films his characters in close-up, showing the sweat that is dripping from their faces, and we almost feel what they feel. Together with the bullets there must be a lot of adrenaline going through their bodies.
The editing here is useful as well. Why does Harmonica wants to meet and probably kill Frank? We see flashbacks of what happened but we learn the complete story only near the end, another way of creating suspense. Again, this is a hard thing to do since the outcome of the film is pretty certain. The editing also works on another level. We never really know how much time is passed and therefore things can be surprising. We see Harmonica in the first scene before the film cuts to McBain and how he is killed. Then we go to Jill who encounters Cheyenne and that Harmonica is there as well comes is surprising, since we thought only Jill and Cheyenne were to be introduced here.
Another thing I should mention is Ennio Morricone's music. The music is at least as famous as the film, great on its own, but even better when you see Leone's images with it. Every character has his or her own theme. Harmonica, Frank, Cheyenne and Jill are often introduced in a scene with their theme. You hear the music before the character is shown. Especially Harmonica makes great entrances into the screen, because he plays his theme himself. On the train station, in the resting place where Cheyenne and Jill are, in McBain's house. Every single time his entrance excites the viewer.
In conclusion, for me this is the greatest western ever created. It is better than any of the John Ford or Howard Hawks westerns, better than any western starring John Wayne (Ford's 'Stagecoach', 'The Searchers' and 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' and Hawks' 'Rio Bravo' and 'Red River') or Clint Eastwood (Leone's own 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'), better than 'High Noon' (from Fred Zinnemann) and 'The Wild Bunch' (from Sam Peckinpah) and better than 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid', although that is more a crime film than a western. Why do I name all these movies? Because they are considered as the best ever made. ‘Once Upon a Time in the West' tops them all.