As Leone’s fourth successful American western film, Once Upon a Time in the West earned him acclaim for liberating the western genre, restoring it to a place of antique American simplicity. Nevertheless, Leone’s greatest cinematic achievement, Once Upon a Time in the West, served to refute these criticisms while exposing the director’s unique romanticism and artistic ambition. Despite his many achievements as a child of the Italian Cinecitta studios, however, Sergio Leone has been judged severely by writers who find his films lacking in ideas and moralists who find his films unduly cynical. Sometimes at the movies, that’s all you need.Few directors are characterized by both extraordinary film craft and the ironic reputation for lowbrow films.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST SERIES
These opening moments might be as good as anything that follows, even though they’re little more than a series of carefully composed shots of men filling up different spaces (and depths) in the wide frame.
This dynamic defines the prologue, in which three henchmen take over a train station and then kill time waiting for their quarry to arrive. Visually, he mostly vacillates between extreme close-ups of intense faces and vast widescreen compositions, a technique that is lurching but also luridly beautiful. Instead, Once Upon a Time in the West offers quintessential examples of the things he was better known for, including another blustery Ennio Morricone score. It’s probably unwise to come to Leone looking for too much in the way of feminism. McBain reclaiming her land, but having to perform for an ogling crowd of men in the process.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST MOVIE
(The most troubling one is played like a love scene.) The movie also ends on a note of triumph that works both ways: it’s an image of Mrs. McBain is threatened with rape, and only one of these scenes plays like something other than a tease. But Once Upon a Time in the West isn’t on her side the way Crawford’s movie was on hers. McBain is an heir to Joan Crawford’s Vienna in Johnny Guitar -an outmatched woman who sees a business opportunity and dares to pursue it. There are a couple of shots of her looking at herself in the mirror, and you can see the calculation-who do I have to be next to survive?-going on behind her eyes. Her performance-as a recent widow suddenly caught in a power struggle among these men-is fiery and taut. Bronson’s own brand of confident stillness gives us little reason to feel as if there’s much of a drop-off from Eastwood’s man with no name.Īs for Cardinale, she gets top billing, but I don’t know if the movie follows through on that. Charles Bronson has the Clint Eastwood part from Leone’s earlier films, as a silent stranger who plays a harmonica more than he talks. The cast also includes an almost unrecognizable Jason Robards as Cheyenne, equally sweaty but much more charming as a bandit with a heart of gold. Lincoln, but something more akin to a soiled American flag. Sweaty and dirty, with red veins discoloring the whites of his eyes and encroaching on those iconic baby blues, his face no longer recalls a young Mr. Fonda absolutely oozes with despicable menace it’s as if every step Frank takes is a stomp on one of the actor’s earlier, nobler roles. He plays Frank, a merciless killer paid by a railroad baron to terrorize a widower (Claudia Cardinale) off her land. The wolf, surprisingly enough, is Henry Fonda.
Sergio Leone capped off his run of Westerns with Once Upon a Time in the West, which-as its title suggests-is not so much a traditional Western as it as an exaggerated, fairy-tale variation on one, big bad wolf and all.
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