Once Upon a Time in the West [C’era una volta il West] ***** (1968, Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards) – Classic Movie Review 140

Complexly plotted, thrilling, vast in scale and visually breathtaking, Italian director Sergio Leone’s epic masterwork Once Upon a Time in the West [C’era una volta il West] (1968) is one of the cinema’s greatest Westerns and most revered of Spaghetti Westerns.

Henry Fonda is brilliantly against type as a cold-blooded gunman and gang boss called Frank, hired by the railroad to kill an American land baron whose property has the only local water supply. An actor spending so many years playing all-American heroes, Fonda gives a memorably chilling performance in one of the all-time great villain roles.

The dead man’s widow, Mrs Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale, at her most alluring), arrives in Utah to find her new husband and family wiped out. Jason Robards plays the innocent number one suspect, notorious desperado Cheyenne, who offers to help her track down the killer, Frank, with the help of a mysterious stranger called Harmonica (Charles Bronson), strangely enough so-called because of his habit of playing the harmonica. This music is playfully picked up in the score.

Leone, fresh from creating the Clint Eastwood Dollars trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad and The Ugly), puts his own personal, stylised spin on Once Upon a Time in the West by filming his violent, multi-stranded revenge story almost like it is stately grand opera. (Admittedly, there aren’t many revenge Westerns in opera, but we’ll let that pass.)

He is helped in this enormously by Ennio Morricone’s inspired and glorious score, Tonino Delli Colli’s stunning cinematography and Carlo Simi’s startlingly beautiful art direction. These are the same personnel he gathered together for his final work in 1984, Once Upon a Time in America.

Among the star character actors most memorably helping out are Jack Elam and Woody Strode as members of Frank’s gang, Snaky and Stony, Keenan Wynn as the sheriff and Lionel Stander as the barman. Also in the cast are Gabriele Ferzetti, Paolo Stoppa, Frank Wolff, and Marco Zuanelli.

Italian big names Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento had a hand in the story that borrows ideas from the 1954 Joan Crawford Western Johnny Guitar. Bertolucci’s plan to feature a woman in the main role concerned Leone till Cardinale turned up on set. So often used just for eye candy, here she responds brilliantly to this huge part.

Sadly, this is another Leone film that was afflicted by studio hacking. It was mutilated by Paramount for American release and it flopped at the US box office, grossing just over $5,000,000, the same as its budget. This way less than satisfactory cut version runs 137 minutes. However, the version shown abroad is 165 minutes and the full glorious print runs 177 minutes. Outside the US, it did well, so why did the Americans want to hack away at Leone’s work?

You have got to feel sorry for Leone. He got it so right, but his career was nearly destroyed by the studios. He died at only 60 in 1989, trying to get a new epic filmed, a co-production with the Russians on the siege of Leningrad. Still, his memorial is five brilliant Westerns and one great gangster movie. They are A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West and Duck, You Sucker [A Fistful of Dynamite], as well as Once Upon a Time in America. He also directed The Colossus of Rhodes in 1961.

It was shot in Arizona, Utah and Mexico, as well as in Almería and Granada, Andalucía, Spain, and Cinecittà Studios, in Rome.

The film’s title does not appear until after the final scene.

Lionel Stander is credited in the 137-minute US release print even though his part is cut out.

Once Upon a Time in the West ran for two years at a Paris cinema, which Leone then visited. He was greeted by fans seeking his autograph, and the projectionist, who said: ‘I kill you! The same movie over and over again for two years! And it’s so slow!’

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