"Once Upon a Time in the West" is my Favourite western of all time!
To be clear i'm not a total western guy I find a lot of Hollywood westerns a bit hokey and I am not a huge John Wayne fan but I have always loved "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly", The Wild Bunch, Django, Johnny Guitar but when I saw "Once upon a time in the West" it knocked my socks off!
It is just so badass! The look, the feel, the score, the cast, the story! it is just so engaging I was spellbound by the film and there was just something about it that I couldn't put my finger on that made it just so good but I later found out what the special sauce was.
Sergio Leone had pioneered the "Euro Western" AKA "The Spaghetti Western" back in 1964 and after he completed "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" in 1966 he was was dead set on retiring from the western thinking he had said everything he wanted to say and do with the genre. What Leone had done with the three westerns he made between '64 and '69 was to strip away a lot of the Hollywood tropes found in classic westerns making his films more gritty and violent and presented the audience with anti-heroes.
The simple fact was "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" was a massive hit and Paramount offered Leone a generous budget to make another western and sweetened the deal giving him access to his favourite actor Henry Fonda so Sergio was onboard.
Even though Sergio was known for deconstructing the American Western but he was a huge fan of the genre. The story goes that Leone got together with his friend Bernardo Bertolucci and now cult film director Dario Argento and hashed out a treatment for the project in late 1966.
The men then spent much of the following year screening their favourite classic Westerns discussing and analysing such films as High Noon, The Iron Horse,The Searchers and Johnny Guitar at Leone's house, The trio then constructed the story for the project almost entirely of references to scenes and motifs from classic American Westerns. So this film is sort of post-modern they were basically doing what Tarantino is famous for but back in 1967.
So that special sauce I was alluding to seems to be that the film is a "Euro Western" dripping in Sergio Leone's style but it is also simultaneously a love letter to the best bits of the best of Hollywood westerns.
One of the best things that happened while they were putting this production together was Clint Eastwood passed! It's almost ironic the reason this film slips under a lot of peoples radar is that it is a non Eastwood flick but I think that is one of its strengths. If he was in it it would have some lame nickname and be just heaped in with Sergio's other westerns.
We get Charles Bronson in the lead role as protagonist simply called "Harmonica" who is a steely eyed badass! Henry Fonda wonderfully plays against type as the despicable villainous "Frank". The beautiful Tunisian actress Claudia Cardinale also stars in the film as the newly widowed homesteader "Jill McBain".
The cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli is stunning and really captures the dry and dusty heat.
The film sports a highly acclaimed film score by Maestro Ennio Morricone, Morricone had composed the score before principle photography began so I cant help but feel Leone hearing the music in advance influenced his choices regarding the visual aspects of the film the two marry together perfectly. The score is constructed using "Leitmotifs" so individual characters have musical phrases or "themes" which is so important when it comes to having a character called "Harmonica".
This film is truly stunning! It is what I call "deliberately paced" some would call it "slow" but that is part of its charm. This film is not wacky or tongue-in-cheek parody. This film is a somber meditation on violence in Leone's distinctive style. This is Sergio leaning into more of a Akira Kurosawa tone rather than just a Kurosawa story. The film features "deliberately paced" scenes with little dialogue and not a lot happening and sudden brief violent events. Leone was more interested in the rituals preceding violence than in the violence itself. The tone of the film is consistent with the arid semi-desert where the story unfolds adding realism that contrasts with the elaborately choreographed scenes of gun play.
The original version of the film was 166 minutes long when it was first released on December 21, 1968.
This version was shown in European cinemas, and was a box-office success.
For the US release on May 28, 1969, Once Upon a Time in the West was edited down to 145 minutes by Paramount studios and was a financial flop.
In 2009, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The film is now regarded as one of the greatest Westerns of all time and one of the greatest films of all time.
"Once Upon a Time in the West" is now available to buy on 4K UHD Blu-ray.
I think I need to treat myself to this!
I can't recommend this film more! If you haven't seen it check it out ASAP!
