Once Upon A Time In The West [1969]

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Editorial reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
The so-called spaghetti Western achieved its apotheosis in Sergio Leone's magnificently mythic (and utterly outlandish) Once upon a Time in the West. After a series of international hits starring Clint Eastwood (from A Fistful of Dollars to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), Leone outdid himself with this spectacular, larger-than-life, horse-operatic epic about how the West was won. (And make no mistake: this is the wide, wide West, folks--so the widescreen/letter-boxed version is strongly recommended.) The unholy trinity of Italian cinema--Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Dario Argento--concocted the story about a woman (Claudia Cardinale) hanging onto her land in hopes that the transcontinental railroad would reach her before a steely-eyed, black-hearted killer (Fonda) does. (The film's advertising slogan was: "There were three men in her life. One to take her ... one to love her ... and one to kill her.") Meanwhile, Leone shoots his stars' faces as if they were expansive Western landscapes, and their towering bodies as if they were looming rock formations in John Ford's Monument Valley. --Jim Emerson, Amazon.com

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Synopsis
Possibly director Leone's best work, this unusual western stars Fonda in a particularly villainous role - he savagely murders a whole family, without a trace of remorse.

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Customer reviews

review by: smoothiedudie date: 2008-05-03 rating:
My favourtie Western.
Once Upon A Time in the West is Sergio Leone's masterpiece. Not only does it feature classic Leone figures, the silent gunman (Charles Bronson), the cruel hitman (A suprising turn from Henry Fonda) and the charasmatic rouge (Jason Robard), it is the only Leone film and one of the few westerns to have its central figure be a woman. It also pays homage to many great westerns, in particular High Noon with the films brilliant opening, and is also intellegent, many critics interpreting it as a parable on capitalism. As well as brains, it has muscles though, with terrific set pieces and landscapes, exciting action and, as ever with Leone's films, enough suspense to make you heart skip a beat. The music is also great, and it, like Leone's previous films, makes the audience laugh. Perhaps not the best western ever, but certainly my favourite.

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review by: s.vernon date: 2007-12-09 rating:
ONE OF THE GREAT WESTERN FILMS
I can't quite find the words to even come close to describing the pure brilliance of this movie. When this movie was made, the western genre was dominated by the big hollywood studios. The western was taken by these studios and transformed into an opportunity to portray classic superheroes like John Wayne and Burt Lancaster in their fight against all sorts of smalltime crooks and outlaws in smalltime stories and smalltime towns. It was a genuine effort to portray 'Americanism', the American Way, along with a romanticised view of the west as 'Frontier country' where good always triumphed over bad and where the life was hard but honest. It was the American Way.

And then came this film. The title, 'Once Upon A Time In The West' must have seemed to mean nothing more than 'just another western' to the unexpecting viewers at the time. Oh boy were they wrong. With this movie, Sergio Leone singlehandedly redefined the western genre and no American western would ever match the brilliant spirit in which it was made. While the story is basically the same as in any other western, it is the WAY in which it is presented that so clearly distances this western from others. Whereas other westerns are simply stories that are designed to entertain, this movie is an emotional masterpiece that will move your heart. Sergio Leone takes the ordinary western and replaces words with looks, and conversations with feelings and emotions. With his brutal but honest portrayal of the sheer hardness of life and death in those times he thoroughly destroys the old romantic idea of the west as a 'generally-hunky-dory-kind-of-scene with the occasional bad guy and indian' and replaces it with an eerie, dark, hot and dry place where life is cheap and only the strongest will survive.

I cannot adequately convey in words the way in which Sergio Leone deepens and defines the characters by pure means of visual persuasion. It starts with the three gunman in the beginning of the movie, waiting for some reason at a train station for someone or something that obviously is going to be on the next train. No explanation, no conversation; not a word is said. Even the stationmaster is ushered into captivity without a single audible threat. Then comes the waiting... Any other director would have skipped directly to the moment of arrival, but Sergio Leone takes minutes of boredom and translates it into a visual feast, deepening the characters that are portrayed and making them more human, more real to the viewer, while at the same time encompassing us with a deep dark sense of foreboding. This way in which the story is not just augmented but in times completely replaced by the sheer visual drama, is perfected by the absolute fantastic music, directed by Ennio Morricone. Who needs words and explanations when the combined forces of cinematic mastery and heart-tearing music are not just able to carry the story, but pick it up and push it up to such heights of excellence that it has no equal in it's genre?

Another great feat that adds to the power of this movie is the minimalistic way of portrayal of the characters as real, emotional people. Not a single word is said that isn't required for the understanding of the story, yet the characters feel more true than those in movies where whole conversations are added merely to explain their motives. Instead of words, the camera focuses on the characters...so that you can simply read the emotion off their faces. Often no explanation is given other than than a mere facial expression. No superheroes or supercriminals, just real, desire-laden, traumatised, obsessed people that act upon motives inherently understood by the viewer.

All in all this is without a single doubt in my mind the greatest western of all times, and even though Sergio Leone has made many more mindblowing, heart-shattering westerns like this one, like 'A Fistful of Dynamite', 'The Good The Bad and The Ugly', and 'For a Few Dollars More', none could equal 'Once Upon A Time In The West' in sheer magnitude of perfection. Western has never been the same since....

I only wish I'd have been there in 1969 when the movie was new and see it, for the first time with fresh innocent eyes and an unexpecting mind..just like 2001: A Space Odyssey (also of 1969, a year of legends).

A tip for those who have never seen this movie: Bribe, beg, borrow, or steal yourself into possession of a Videobeam and Hifi-audio equipment if you can't find a cinema that is showing this movie. Turn the audio up WAY HIGH (never mind the neighbors) and prepare never to be the same again.........

I (obviously) gave this movie a 10 because no matter how hard I try I can't find anything less than perfect about it.
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review by: date: 2007-12-07 rating:
Leone at his best
Just seen this film again and it gets better every time i see it. The story, the characters, the dialogue, the soundtrack and the cinematography is brilliant. Definately one of if not the best westerns made to date and one of the best films for that matter too.

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review by: date: 2007-11-23 rating:
Perfection is hard to find
I love all the Clint Eastwood films with Sergio Leone. But the cast in this film is better then in any of the three Clint films. Henry Fonda is great but it is Charles Bronson who steals this film. From the opening scene, which must be one of the best opening scenes to a western i have ever seen, Charles Bronson oozes presence. Two and a half hours just fly by as we follow the three main protagonists through to the end of this dance of death. Fantastic ending also... much better then most films, never mind westerns.


review by: brendoclarke date: 2007-11-04 rating:
True cinema
The opening credits with the Morricone soundtrack. Sergio Leone introduces three characters in the Train station waiting for a train (High Noon style). Leone deepens and defines the characters by means of visual persuasion; no dialogue between the characters as they wait at the train station for someone who is obviously going to be on the next train. No explanation, no conversation; not a word is said for 15 minutes. We then move onto a scene of quiet with young Timmy McBain after his family have been slaughtered. Cue Henry Fonda, the all American hero now playing a bad guy. He shoots the boy. This is ground-breaking cinema at its best.


How is it that this rather stylized movie still holds up so well 37 years after its release? It's not that it has somehow kept up with cinema and popular culture. It's that cinema and pop culture have done their best, over the decades, to catch up with this epic western. I stubbornly keep it on my list of top ten English language movies, even though it was mainly an Italian production with an Italian director. Three of the four main actors were American and delivered their lines in English (although many of the other roles were filled by Italians). Even the Internet Movie Database gives its language as English, even while listing it under the title C'era una volta il West, which by my tally is at least 78 percent Italian. The Italian title is actually slightly better since, as I read it (in my virtually non-existent Italian), it comes off as more elegy than fairytale: There Was Once the West.


Leone's westerns were called, somewhat derisively in the beginning, "spaghetti westerns." But his employment of majestic music (Ennio Morricone) and of epic drama and emotion suggest that another old term, ironically evocative of Italy's cultural heritage, might have been more appropriate: horse opera. The cast is great, but the real stars here are Ennio Morricone's reverberating musical themes and Leone's stunning visuals. Many striking scenes have been quoted endlessly ever since: the camera swinging around to reveal that the chief bad guy is (gasp) Henry Fonda (about to gun down a defenseless child), the camera peering through the train station window and then rising to give us a sunrise's view of a frontier town, Fonda and Claudia Cardinale face to face and rotating 90 degrees and revealed to be horizontal on a bed. It goes on and on. No one would ever mistake this for a documentary.


The men are impossibly implacable and impossibly macho. Cardinale and the landscapes of southeast Spain and southwest U.S. are impossibly beautiful. Supposedly, Leone wanted to use the stars of his earlier westerns (Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach) as the trio of killers who wait to ambush Charles Bronson in the movie's opening sequence (over what is claimed to be the longest set of opening credits ever). That would have been some opening but, of course, it didn't come to pass. In their place old standbys Jack Elam, Woody Strode and the lesser known Al Mulock did just fine. It was merely the first of many unforgettable set pieces, mostly sans dialog, that make up this extraordinary piece of film work.

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Video . Video . Categories . Action & Adventure . Westerns
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Video . DVD & VHS . Categories . Classics . War and Westerns
Video . DVD & VHS . Refinements . BBFC Rating (intended_use_browse-bin) . 15
Video . DVD & VHS . Refinements . Release Date (feature_three_browse-bin) . 1960 - 1969
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Video . DVD & VHS . Refinements . Language (theme_browse-bin) . English
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