Contact
Subscribe


We're An Ancient Race … The Future Don't Matter To Us.

Apr 25, 2008
By .
Movies, Reruns

I'm gathering a few odds and ends I've written at other places through the years, as recent events at one of the sites bookmarked on the left have taught me that a website is an ephemeral thing. Some of them I'm reposting here. This is a piece on Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West, a movie I love for many reasons. What I wrote about this film in November 2006 isn't particularly insightful, certainly nothing you wouldn't find better written by a third-tier rotten tomatoes critic.

There are many appreciations of Once Upon A Time In The West. This one is mine.

The three movies that killed the western as an institution, because no more could be said, are Once Upon A Time In The West, The Wild Bunch, and Blazing Saddles.

The wife and I watched Once Upon A Time last night, so I'm moved to put up a big slobbering love-post to it. You owe it to yourself to see this movie, or to see it again if you've seen it previously. If you've only watched the bastardized two hour tv edit, you owe it to yourself to see the widescreen "special collector's edition," which restores the film to its original almost three hour glory. Once Upon A Time was a commercial failure because the studio chopped it into incoherence. In its restored condition, it's a triumph.

The last of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, this is the best movie Leone ever made, and possibly the finest western ever shot.

Without spoiling anything that won't become apparent in the first forty minutes, the movie is the story of a revenge calculated over twenty years. Charles Bronson of all people plays the nameless hero (known only as "Harmonica") this time, and in his limited way proves to be as effective for the part as the prettier, more talented Clint Eastwood, with whom Leone worked on previous westerns, could have been. Bronson's savagery is in fact better suited than anything Eastwood could have brought to this role, as a man so obsessed with revenge that he won't allow others to kill his enemy.

Henry Fonda went on record to say that Once Upon A Time In The West was his favorite movie. Fonda's part, as the evil Frank, was a revelation in casting against type. Frank's cruelty and brutality rank him with Darth Vader among screen villains, yet Fonda plays the part with a humanity and, dare I say it, vulnerability, that make it almost impossible not to empathize with the villain on multiple levels.



This revenge play is set against the backdrop of a railroad moving from the east to the Pacific, and the death of the west. Frank, a literal troubleshooter for the railroad, recognizes that he's killing the freedom that makes him possible and gives him his power. Yet the sweep of civilization isn't presented as a one-dimensional good or evil, just as change:

Frank: Morton once told me I could never be like him. Now I understand why. Wouldn't have bothered him, knowing you were around somewhere alive.
Harmonica: So, you found out you're not a businessman after all.
Frank: Just a man.
Harmonica: We're an ancient race. Other Mortons will be along, and they'll kill it off.
Frank: The future don't matter to us.



As a bonus, the film features perhaps the best of composer Ennio Morricone's scores. Without a hook as memorable as The Mission or The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, the score Morricone wrote for Once Upon A Time In The West is still grander than either.

Do yourself a favor. See this movie.

Last 5 posts by Patrick Non-White

4 Comments
Tags ,

4 Comments

  1. Khomotso  •  Apr 25, 2008 @3:31 pm

    There is a weakness in me, and it is that I approach a Western like an Eastern – I want to see stylized choreography of gun battles like I want to see gymnastic artistry in Hong Kong cinema. And in this respect I found "Once Upon a Time in the West" a disappointment. A shallow complaint, I know.

    But I found also a lack of epic sweep to the revenge story, which for me detracts from its grandeur. It turns out to be a simple thing, after all, ended with a simple quickdraw. If the film understood this, and recognized it for the whimper it was, I might love it more. But it seems to swell with pride at its own hollow victory, suggesting to me that it really doesn't know its own strength.

    Also, I wanted it to sound like Bronson really was the one playing the harmonica, and he never did.

    For the artistry of its standoff tension, though, I give it full marks. Apart from Fonda's performance, which I agree is the standout, I really only needed to see the first 8 minutes or so. That, for me, was the Western.

  2. Patrick  •  Apr 25, 2008 @5:19 pm

    Leone is about the pauses, the cuts, the face shots, and the sudden action. If you're looking for choreography in a gun battle, you don't get Leone, and with all due respect Khomotso, from a cinematographic standpoint, you don't get westerns period.

    I'd say the flaw is in approaching the films from an eastern standpoint. I think I know what sort of films you mean, but even mythologically the two styles are incompatible. While there's been plenty of cross pollination between eastern films about the lone warrior (the central element these movies share with the western) at core they're opposites. The "eastern" is at core about integration of or with society, while the western is almost always about alienation and ultimate separation. Only the most western of the great eastern directors of these movies, Kurosawa, really makes films about separation. Of course things come full circle when one considers that Leone borrowed heavily (though not for this film) from Kurosawa, but then the Kurosawa films from which Leone borrowed were just uncredited adaptations of Dashiell Hammett.

    When I can find it, I plan to repost a similar thingie I wrote about Hiroshi Inagaki's Miyamoto Musashi trilogy. I look forward to your thoughts on those films.

  3. Khomotso  •  Apr 25, 2008 @5:33 pm

    "with all due respect Khomotso, from a cinematographic standpoint, you don’t get westerns period."

    No worries. I buy that. I think I meant to imply as much.

    I'm also ready to accept that all the Westerns I have enjoyed have fundamentally been reactions (either as celebrations of or "meta" pivots from – like Unforgiven) to earlier, classic fare.

  4. Patrick  •  Apr 25, 2008 @5:39 pm

    See the big middle bit I added while you were writing your comment Khomotso. I'm a western junkie, and approach what I'm calling the "eastern" from that perspective. I'll reiterate that Once Upon A Time has few competitors in its genre. Maybe Rio Bravo, maybe Unforgiven, maybe The Searchers, maybe High Noon. But other than those, even great westerns like Winchester 73, Stagecoach, The Good The Bad And The Ugly and The Wild Bunch aren't in its class.

    Last thought: If you're judging this movie on the version that runs on American tv, I agree with you. It's horrible, but as pointed out in the post what runs on tv is a botched abortion of a cut that removed a third of the film and turned it into a confused mishmash. Think of Star Wars without the Death Star scenes, or The Godfather without Michael in Sicily. The original version, the one to see, is so far as I know only available in America as a two dvd set.

    Thanks for the comments.