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My title is a cliche but in this case it’s the only phrase to utilize. The version of this movie available now, with its extra disc burly of immense 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 Fine Poor and Gross, Once Upon a Time in America–is amazing, but this tops them all. Imagine the year 1969: what a gigantic time to be a western film lover. You had this, and Sam Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch in the same year. Unbelievable. Anyway, it’s impossible to list all the gargantuan scenes, so I’ll stick with the first. If you cherish the credit sequence you’ll esteem the movie; it’s not for everybody, however. So those credits, mostly calm except for a windmill creaking, which Leone somehow makes inferior, and one of the minimal details he uses to set authentic mood, are the litmus test. You’ll either care for the movie or disapprove it. The scene is built on a genius contradiction: it’s so tense that you want it to waste, but it’s so beautifully done, so built on image and gesture and gape, that you also hope it never ends. The whole movie is that scrumptious. And the cast–wow. Everyone is at top effect, but check out Henry Fonda as the leanest meanest bastard imaginable, but also someone you can’t avoid enjoying because it is the Mountainous Mr. Fonda, with Leone getting maximum mileage out of halt 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 exiguous 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 bear pants? As the heroine, Claudia Cardinale isn’t objective heavenly she’s scrumptious, lust-us. And tough. Eye 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. Unsafe yet entirely sympathetic here. He finds wit in his role, knows exactly what the recent Leone’s up to and gets in sync with the vision. Jason Robards is incapable of giving a performance less than intelligent, and this is another highlight in the film. As Cheyenne he is droll and tough and knowing, maybe the most complex performance in the movie. There’s so distinguished more, too–the finest Ennio Morricone soundtrack, killer dialogue, incredible cinematography. This DVD is set aside together so well it’s even a pleasure to gaze at the menus–you’ll survey 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 judge 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 current in the history of film. Leone is arguably the most patient director in the history of film, and is willing to steal fifteen minutes for something another director would be disapprove to pick 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 present three men waiting to men a divulge.
As a whole, this is a far more ambitious project than Leone’s other Westerns. The region is a bit more account, 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 position 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, grand 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 radiant. Charles Bronson was smart, and his diminutive, 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 obtain one of his most memorable roles. I have, however, effort with the other two major performers. Claudia Cardinale was certainly exquisite, but she simply does not bring as remarkable 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 represent to women as well as men. At any rate, I believe the movie would have been greatly improved with someone else in her role. I had similar problems with Jason Robards. He objective did not radiate the aura of concern 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 fabulous movie, and is by far one of the most thoughtful, recent 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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