The Wild Bunch is noted for intricate, multi-angle editing, using normal and slow motion images, a revolutionary cinema technique in 1969. The writing of Walon Green, Roy N. Sickner, and Sam Peckinpah was nominated for a best-screenplay Academy Award; Jerry Fielding’s music was nominated for Best Original Score; director Peckinpah was nominated for an Outstanding Directorial Achievement award by the Directors Guild of America; and cinematographer Lucien Ballard won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Cinematography.

In 1999, the U.S. National Film Registry selected it for preservation in the Library of Congress as culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant. The Wild Bunch was ranked 80th in the American Film Institute’s best hundred American films, and the 69th most thrilling movie. In 2008, the AFI revealed its “10 Top 10″ of the best ten films in ten genres, The Wild Bunch is the sixth-best western.

Casting

Director Sam Peckinpah considered many actors for the Pike Bishop role; originally, the part was written for Lee Marvin, who declined, thinking it too like his role in The Professionals (1966), and he was offered more money to make Paint Your Wagon (1969). James Stewart, Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston were considered before William Holden.

The part of Deke Thornton originally was offered to Brian Keith (who had worked with Peckinpah on The Westerner [1960] and The Deadly Companions [1961]). Keith, working in Family Affair, declined; also considered were Richard Harris, Arthur Kennedy, Henry Fonda, Ben Johnson (later cast as Tector Gorch) and Van Heflin. Robert Ryan was cast per his performance in The Dirty Dozen.

Mario Adorf was considered for the part of Mapache; the role went to Emilio Fernandez, the Mexican film director and actor and friend of Peckinpah. Among those considered to play Dutch Engstrom were Steve McQueen, George Peppard, Jim Brown, Alex Cord, Robert Culp, Sammy Davis, Jr., Charles Bronson and Richard Jaeckel. Ernest Borgnine was cast per his performance in The Dirty Dozen.

Robert Blake was the original choice to play Angel, but he asked too much money, per his success with In Cold Blood (1967). Peckinpah had seen Jaime Sánchez in the Broadway production of Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker, was impressed and demanded he be cast as Angel.^[10] Albert Dekker, a stage actor, was cast as Harrigan, the railroad detective. He died months after filming, The Wild Bunch was his final film.

Bo Hopkins played the part of Clarence “Crazy” Lee.

Themes

Critics of The Wild Bunch noted the theme of the end of the outlaw gunfighter era. Pike Bishop says: We’ve got to start thinking beyond our guns. Those days are closing fast. The Bunch live by an anachronistic code of honour without a place in twentieth century modern society. When they inspect General Mapache’s new automobile, they perceive it marks the end of horse travel, a symbol also in Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country (1962) and The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970).

The violence that was much criticized by critics in 1968 remains controversial. Director Peckinpah noted it was allegoric of the American war against Vietnam, whose violence was nightly televised to American homes at supper time. He tried showing the gun violence commonplace to the historic western frontier period, rebelling against sanitised, bloodless television westerns and films glamourising gun fights and murder. The point of the film is to take this façade of movie violence and open it up, get people involved in it so that they are starting to go in the Hollywood television predictable reaction syndrome, and then twist it so that it’s not fun anymore, just a wave of sickness in the gut . . . It’s ugly, brutalizing, and bloody awful; it’s not fun and games and cowboys and Indians. It’s a terrible, ugly thing, and yet there’s a certain response that you get from it, an excitement, because we’re all violent people. Peckinpah used violence as catharsis, believing his audience would be purged of violence, by witnessing it explicitly on screen. He later admitted to being mistaken, that the audience came to enjoy rather than be horrified by his films’ violence, something that troubled him.

Betrayal is the secondary theme of The Wild Bunch. Characters suffer their knowledge of having betrayed a friend and left him to his fate, thus violating their own honour code when it suits them. Such frustration leads to the film’s violent conclusion, as the remaining men find intolerable the abandonment of Angel. Pike Bishop remembers his betrayals, most notably when he deserts Deke Thornton (in flashback) when the law catches up to them; and when he abandons Crazy Lee at the bank after the robbery (ostensibly to guard the hostages).

Production

Filming took place mainly in Ouray County, Colorado, in the vicinity of Ridgway (now the home of the True Grit Cafe), and the town of Ouray. (The script maintains the novel’s references to place names in Arkansas and Oklahoma, in dramatic contrast to the Colorado topography.) The courtroom scenes were filmed at Ouray County Court house in Ouray.

Mia Farrow was originally cast as Mattie and was keen on the role. However, prior to filming she made a film in England with Robert Mitchum who told her about director Henry Hathaway being rude to actresses. When producer Hal B. Wallis wouldn’t replace Hathaway, Farrow quit the role which was given to Kim Darby.^[1]

Wayne called Marguerite Roberts’ script “the best [he’d] ever read.” He particularly liked the scene with Darby where Rooster tells Mattie about his wife in Illinois, calling it the best scene he ever did.

In the last scene, Mattie gives Rooster her father’s gun. She comments that he got a tall horse, as she expected he would. He notes that his new horse can jump a four rail fence. Then she admonishes him “You’re too old and fat to be jumping horses.” Rooster responds with a smile “Well, come see a fat old man sometime” and jumps his new horse over a fence. Despite popular belief, Wayne did not jump over the fence himself. In fact, according to biographer Garry Wills in his book on Wayne, Wayne was not healthy enough to do such stunts. It should be remembered that Wayne had an entire lung removed four years prior to making the film and actually had trouble walking more than 30 feet without breathing heavily. But Wayne fell in love with the horse, which would carry him through several more Westerns, including his final movie, The Shootist. A chestnut Quarter horse gelding, Dollor (‘Ole Dollor), had been Wayne’s favorite horse for ten years, through several Westerns. The horse shown during the final scene of True Grit was Dollor, a two-year-old in 1969. Wayne had Dollor written into the script of The Shootist because of his love for the horse, it was a condition for him working on the project. Wayne would not let anyone else ride the horse. Robert Wagner was a rare exception, who rode the horse in a segment of the Hart to Hart television show, after Wayne’s death.

Reception

Awards and nominations

John Wayne won the Academy Award for Best Actor and the Golden Globe. Upon accepting his Oscar, Wayne said, “If I’d known this, I’d have put that eyepatch on 40 years ago.” The song “True Grit”, by composer Elmer Bernstein and lyricist Don Black, and sung by Glen Campbell who co-starred in the movie, received nominations for both the Academy Award for Best Song and the Golden Globe.

John Wayne’s performance

Garry Wills notes in his book John Wayne’s America that Wayne’s performance as Rooster Cogburn bears close similarities to the way Wallace Beery portrayed characters in the 1930s and 1940s, an inspired if surprising choice on Wayne’s part. Wills comments that it’s difficult for one actor to imitate another for the entire length of a movie and that the Beery mannerisms temporarily recede during the scene in which Cogburn discusses his wife and child.

Cast

• John Wayne as Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn
• Kim Darby as Mattie Ross
• Glen Campbell as La Boeuf
• Jeremy Slate as Emmett Quincy
• Robert Duvall as Lucky Ned Pepper
• Dennis Hopper as Moon
• Strother Martin as Col. G. Stonehill
• Jeff Corey as Tom Chaney
• Donald Woods as Barlow
• James Westerfield as Judge Parker

The film was photographed in Super Panavision 70 by Joseph MacDonald, with original music by Quincy Jones. The story is very loosely based around the legend of the Lost Adams Diggings.

Theme song

The opening song, “Old Turkey Buzzard”, is a recurring background theme. It was sung by José Feliciano and was composed by Quincy Jones with lyrics by Freddie Douglas.

The theme was used on the Late Show with David Letterman in 2007 as a random running gag. A 13-second clip would be played after Letterman threw his blue index cards through the “glass” window behind his desk, and was often combined with a video clip of the turkey buzzard soaring in the sky during the movie’s opening sequence. Letterman would gradually show increased mock irritation with the clip in discussions with bandleader Paul Shaffer, while at the same time calling it “exciting, moving, inspirational” and “stirring, haunting, beautiful”. The running gag ultimately resulted in Feliciano making a guest appearance on the Late Show on October 16, 2007, singing a longer version of the song (with the buzzard video clip superimposed over him).

Influence

While Paramount’s 1954 film Secret of the Incas is often cited by film buffs as an inspiration for the Indiana Jones franchise of films, the 1969 Mackenna’s Gold is only occasionally recognized as a direct inspiration, even though numerous scenes in the Columbia film bear a striking resemblance in tone, structure and even art direction to scenes in the Raiders of the Lost Ark trilogy. The distinct impact of Mackenna’s Gold on the production of the Indiana Jones franchise can clearly be seen in the following:

• Both Mackenna’s Gold and Raiders of the Lost Ark use the rising sun as the all-important key to pinpointing the location of a long-hidden treasure (gold in one case, the Ark of the Covenant in another);

• In both Mackenna’s Gold and Raiders of the Lost Ark, an antagonist goes sailing off an impossibly high cliff while in hot pursuit of the main characters;

• In both MacKenna’s Gold and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a narrow, rickety rope-and-wood suspension bridge stretching over an enormous stony gorge must be traversed by the hero;

• in both Mackenna’s Gold and Raiders of the Lost Ark (as well as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), the hero realizes the deadly danger attached to the treasure while the others realize too late;

• in both Mackenna’s Gold and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the blonde female lead is suddenly struck with an unreasonable attraction to the deadly treasure;

• in both Mackenna’s Gold and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the path to the treasure is an extremely narrow crevice in a canyon wall where a horse and rider are barely able to squeeze through;

• in both Mackenna’s Gold and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, after locating the treasure, the hero is pursued by the villain while both take turns clinging to a sheer, rocky canyon wall that leads straight down;

• in both Mackenna’s Gold and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the site of the treasure comes crashing down in an earthquake and is completely buried under rubble, presumably to be lost forever.

• In both Mackenna’s Gold and Raiders of the Lost Ark, (as well as the two following Indiana Jones films) throughout the films a map is superimposed over the action as the characters reach different points of their treasure hunt.

What sets Mackenna’s Gold apart from and the aforementioned Secret of the Incas, however, is the fact that Raiders of the Lost Ark writer George Lucas was actually on location for Mackenna’s Gold when several of its Utah scenes were being filmed in 1967. Lucas and two other film students had been chosen by Columbia Pictures to shoot short behind-the-scenes documentaries for Columbia about the making of what was to be Carl Foreman’s epic western. Lucas titled his finished product, 6-18-67.

Although many other movies in addition to Secret of the Incas have been cited as inspiration for George Lucas and Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones series (Zorro Rides Again, Zorro’s Fighting Legion, Stagecoach, Gunga Din, Green Hell, Casablanca, China, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Valley of the Kings, Jivaro, Yojimbo, Lawrence of Arabia, etc.) Mackenna’s Gold is, by far, the most influential, not only because of the number of scenes referenced, but also because it is the only movie of the group that is actually contemporaneous with Lucas and Spielberg as filmmakers.

Cast

• Gregory Peck as Marshal MacKenna
• Omar Sharif as Colorado
• Camilla Sparv as Inga Bergmann
• Julie Newmar as Hesh-Ke
• Ted Cassidy as Hachita
• Telly Savalas as Sgt. Tibbs
• Eli Wallach as Ben Baker
• Edward G. Robinson as Old Adams
• Robert Phillips as Monkey
• Raymond Massey as The Preacher
• Burgess Meredith as The Storekeeper
• Keenan Wynn as Sanchez
• Eduardo Ciannelli as Prairie Dog
• Lee J. Cobb as The Editor

Charro! was released to DVD for the first time in the summer of 2007. It marked the very first time that an uncut release of the film was presented to the retail market, and in its’ original wide-screen letterbox format. This DVD version underwent an extensive remastering process to restore the original 35mm filmprint quality. Previous VHS issues of the film, notably the 1990 Warner Home Video release, were of an inferior standard, mainly due to poor picture quality and minor edits throughout the movie. An oddity concerning Charro! is the film’s classification. Despite containing violence and partial nudity, it was released with an MPAA G rating, even though other Presley films from the 1968-69 period carry PG ratings. These latter releases are somewhat less ‘adult’ than Charro!.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack songs were recorded in November 1968 at Samuel Goldwyn Studios in Los Angeles, California. As Charro! was not a musical, only the title track was used in the film and released in conjunction with the movie (it appears on the B-side of the single “Memories”); a second song recorded for but not used in the film, “Let’s Forget About the Stars” appeared on the compilation album Let’s Be Friends in 1970). It is sometimes listed erroneously (such as in Elvis: The Illustrated Record by Roy Carr and Mick Farren) as a soundtrack recording from the later Presley film, Change of Habit.

Recording musicians

• Elvis Presley (vocals)
• The Jordanaires (background vocals)
• Tommy Tedesco, Ralph Grasso, Howard Roberts (guitar)
• Pete Drake (steel guitar)
• Larry Knetchal, Charles Berghofer (bass)
• Don Randi (piano)
• Emile Radocchia (percussion)
• Carl O’Brien (drums)

Tracks (songwriter)

• Charro – (Mac Davis & Billy Strange)
• Let’s Forget About The Stars – (A.L. Owens)

Trivia

• This movie was scheduled to be episode 421 of the movie mocking show Mystery Science Theater 3000, however the rights fell through and it was replaced by Monster A Go-Go.
• This is the only film in which Elvis sports a beard.

Cast

• Elvis Presley : Jess Wade
• Ina Balin : Tracey Winters
• Victor French : Vince Hackett
• Barbara Werle : Mrs. Sara Ramsey
• Solomon Sturges : Billy Roy Hackett

The film was directed by George Roy Hill and produced at 20th Century Fox by John Foreman from a screenplay by William Goldman. The music score was by Burt Bacharach with song lyrics by Hal David. Along with Newman and Redford, the film stars Katharine Ross, and features Strother Martin, Henry Jones, Jeff Corey, Sam Elliott, Cloris Leachman, Ted Cassidy, Kenneth Mars and Donnelly Rhodes.

Production

Goldman’s script, originally called “The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy,” was purchased by 20th Century Fox for $400,000. The two starring roles were originally given to Newman and Steve McQueen, but McQueen left after failing to come to an agreement about which actor would receive top billing. Jack Lemmon’s production company JML had produced Cool Hand Luke in 1967. Paul Newman was grateful to Lemmon for his support, and offered him the Sundance Kid role, but Lemmon turned it down. He did not like riding horses, and he also felt he’d already played too many aspects of the Sundance Kid’s character before.^[1] Warren Beatty was considered for one of the lead roles, and Marlon Brando, who at the time had minimal box-office draw, was considered at one point due to his role in an earlier Western, One-Eyed Jacks. At one point, Steve McQueen and Paul Newman were expected to star, and they discussed using the new “staggered but equal billing” later introduced for The Towering Inferno. Eventually, Newman and Robert Redford were chosen, but initially Newman was to play Sundance and Redford Cassidy. 20th Century Fox did not want Redford to play the part, but director George Roy Hill insisted. Redford later noted that this film catapulted him to stardom and changed his career forever.

The movie was partially filmed near Durango, Colorado. (The area where they jump into the river is just north of Baker’s Bridge in SW Colorado.) In the scene where a railroad car is blown up, the railroad car was built for the scene out of balsa wood and toothpicks. The budget only allowed for one take, and therefore an unusually high amount of explosives was used. The explosion was huge, and the line “Think ya used enough dynamite there, Butch?” is reported to be an ad lib, according to locals who observed. (Screenwriter William Goldman included the line when he reprinted the script in his book Adventures in the Screen Trade.)

Butch Cassidy’s outlaw gang was actually called The Wild Bunch, this was changed in the film to The Hole In The Wall Gang to avoid confusion with Sam Peckinpah’s recently released film The Wild Bunch.

Legacy

The Sundance Film Festival, begun by Robert Redford, is named for his role in this film, as is his Utah ski resort, Sundance.

Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for seriously ill children is named from the gang in this movie.

A prequel to the film, “Butch and Sundance: The Early Years,” starring William Katt and Tom Berenger was released in 1979. The film inspired a television series, Alias Smith and Jones, starring Pete Duel and Ben Murphy as two outlaws trying to earn an amnesty. It has also been spoofed in films such as Shanghai Noon and Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, and TV shows such as The Simpsons (in the episode Duffless), Futurama, The Venture Bros. and Full Metal Panic^{[citation needed]}.

The Sundance Square, a commercial development in downtown Fort Worth, Texas by the Bass Family, is named in honor of the final and most famous portrait taken in that area.

In popular culture

• In the b-side song Sepia by Manic Street Preachers. It includes the lines: “And just like the moment in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid / I’m perpetually stuck in a sepia film / But bleeding inside I manage to keep it all in”.
• In an episode of The West Wing (titled “The Fall’s Gonna Kill You,” in reference to a line from this film), C. J. Cregg (Allison Janney) refers to Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) and other senior staffers as ‘Butch and Sundance’.
• In the video game Max Payne, a guard can be overheard saying, “The best movie ending ever? Heh, gotta be ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’. A hero’s end, goin’ out with guns blazing.”
• In the film, A Little Romance (also directed by George Roy Hill), Thelonious Bernard’s character, Daniel Michon, raptly watches the film (dubbed in French). (Michon also watches George Roy Hill’s The Sting.)
• In the film, Mallrats, Sven-Ole Thorsen’s character, the over-zealous security guard La Fours, is a clear homage by director Kevin Smith to the classic Western. La Fours follows the protagonists throughout the movie, and is often seen wearing his white skimmer.
• In the comic book Hitman, Tommy Monaghan, the titular hitman, is talked out of a suicide run by his friend, Natt, who says “it don’t feel like time for Butch and Sundance yet”. In the series’ final arc, Natt calls back to this earlier comment, deciding that it does feel like they’ll go out guns blazing.
• In an episode of The Simpsons, Homer and Marge ride on a bicycle while ‘Raindrops are falling on my head’ is playing in a similar fashion to the famous scene in the film.
• In the film, Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s characters are having a shootout against the “villains” of the film at the ending. The shootout parodies Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s shootout as well.
• In the television show Farscape, main character John Crichton (played by Ben Browder) creates an alias for himself and his partner, Aeryn Sun (played by Claudia Black) on an alien planet. “I’m Butch. This is Sundance”
• In the film, The Way of the Gun, the protagonists take on the aliases of Mr. Parker and Mr. Longbaugh, the real names of Butch and Sundance.
• In the film Beverly Hills Cop Billy Judge Reinhold references the movie during a gun battle at the end of the film.
• Miami Dolphins’ running backs Jim Kiick and Larry Csonka were known as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
• In The Fast Show, Simon and Lindsey, the extreme sports enthusiasts, spoof the ending of the film during a paintballing game.

Production

The film features a David Raksin and Robert Wells song “The Lonely Rider” with vocals by Don Cherry. The exteriors were filmed in Inyo County, California, USA.

Reviews

“The admirable thing about the movie is its devotion to real life. These are the kind of people, we feel, who must really have inhabited the West: common, direct, painfully shy in social situations and very honest.” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“…Will Penny ranks as a superior Western for a multitude of reasons. Heston, so often required to play larger-than-life characters throughout his career, here delivers a sublime performance in a role that is the exact opposite.” — Reel.com DVD review

Cast

• Charlton Heston as Will Penny
• Joan Hackett as Catherine Allen
• Donald Pleasence as Preacher Quint
• Ben Johnson as Alex (Flat Iron Ranch foreman)
• Lee Majors as Blue
• Bruce Dern as Rafe Quint
• Slim Pickens as Ike Walterstein
• Anthony Zerbe as Dutchy
• Matt Clark as Romulus
• Jon Gries as the Boy Horace (button) G. Allen

Plot summary

A hunting party composed of European aristocrats is led into Apache territory by their guide, Bosky Fulton (Stephen Boyd). When French Countess Irina Lazaar (Brigitte Bardot) wanders off by herself, she is confronted by Indians, only to be rescued by Shalako (Sean Connery). When the party ignores his warning to leave Indian country, the Apaches led by Chato (Woody Strode) attack. Based on the book by Louis L’Amour

Production

Producer Euan Lloyd was introduced to Louis L’Amour by his friend Alan Ladd. Over the years as Lloyd dreamed of becoming an independent producer he kept in touch with L’Amour with a view of filming his 1962 Shalako. At one time Lloyd had lined up Henry Fonda and Senta Berger for the film to be made in Mexico but the reluctance of many film distributors to financially back Fonda and changes in the economic situation made filming in Mexico more expensive then planned.

During a meeting with L’Amour, Lloyd related stories of the large queues at the cinemas in New York for the latest James Bond film. L’Amour remarked that Sean Connery would certainly “look tall in the saddle”. Lloyd met Sean Connery who was a Western fan since childhood and was keen on doing the film as he received one million dollars out of the 5 million dollar budget. Connery was available as he had turned down playing Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Lloyd also obtained that films planned original co-star Bardot, Bond cinematographer Ted Moore, and Bond stuntman and action scene arranger Bob Simmons.

With Connery on board, many European and other film distributors were keen to finance the film that was made in Almería, Spain. Whilst scouting locations when he was planning to film in the United States, Lloyd noticed that many real Native Americans were overweight and did not look menancing. Simmons recruited a war party of lean and mean gypsies that he trained to ride and act like vicious Apaches. Simmons also talked Connery into shaving off the droopy moustache he had grown for the role to look more “realistic”. The investors perhaps remembered Gregory Peck’s moustache in The Gunfighter that was believed to have made the public stay away from that film and feared the same might happen with Shalako.

Almeira had many spaghetti westerns filmed there, but at the same time as Shalako, Harry Saltzman’s Western Desert war film Play Dirty was being filmed on the same locations. One film crew had to wipe out the tyre tracks in the sand before filming the Old West whilst the other crew had to pick up the horse droppings before they began shooting. Once the gypsy Apaches mounted on horseback made an error and attacked a Long Range Desert Group by mistake.

Lloyd gathered a strong international cast including former Goldfinger co-star Honor Blackman, Jack Hawkins, Stephen Boyd, Woody Strode, Don Barry and an unsuccessful candidate for the role of Bond, Hans De Vries.

Plot Summary

Jesse W. Haywood (Knotts) graduates from dental school in Philadelphia in 1870 and goes west to become a frontier dentist. As a “city slicker“, he finds himself bungling in an odd new environment.

On his way west the stagecoach he is travelling on is held up and robbed by two masked bandits. A posse sets out to capture the bandits and catches one of them, Penelope “Bad Penny” Cushing (Rhoades).

Held by the sheriff and facing prison as a convicted stagecoach robber, Penelope is offered a pardon if she will track down a ring of gun smugglers that also involves a local Indian tribe. She tricks Haywood into a sham marriage as a disguise.

Haywood unintentionally and inadvertently becomes the legendary “Doc the Haywood” after he guns down “Arnold the Kid” and performs other exploits (all with covert assistance from Penny).

The film is a remake of The Paleface, a 1948 movie starring Bob Hope and Jane Russell.

Cast

• Don Knotts …. Dr. Jesse W. Heywood
• Barbara Rhoades …. Penelope ‘Bad Penny’ Cushings
• Jackie Coogan …. Matthew Basch
• Burt Mustin …. Old Artimus
• Don ‘Red’ Barry …. Rev. Zachary Gant (as Donald Barry)
• Ruth McDevitt …. Olive
• Frank McGrath …. Mr. Remington
• Terry Wilson …. Welsh
• Carl Ballantine …. Abel Swanson

In Europe, the film was a substantial box office success, playing for multiple years in some cities. However, it was greeted with a mostly negative critical response upon its 1969 theatrical release in the United States and was a financial flop. The film is now generally acknowledged as a classic and one of the best western films ever made.

It is the first part of a loose trilogy of epics called Once Upon a Time Trilogy, followed by 1971′s A Fistful of Dynamite (known alternatively as Once Upon a Time… the Revolution or Duck, You Sucker) and 1984′s Once Upon a Time in America.

Acclaim

Though not as popular as the “Dollars Trilogy” which preceded it, Once Upon a Time in the West is a highly acclaimed film^. The movie has gained an ardent cult following around the world, particularly among cineastes and film makers.

Once Upon a Time in the West can be found on numerous film polls. It is usually in the top 20 of the IMDB’s top 250 and is listed as one of the best all time films by Time magazine. It is highly acclaimed by modern critics. Film critic Kim Newman claimed it was the best Western ever made, as did film historian Christopher Frayling, who wrote two books about the film’s legacy.

Production

Origins

After making his stunning American Civil War epic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone had intended to retire from making Westerns, believing he had said all he wanted to say. He had come across the novel The Hoods by “Harry Grey” (a pseudonym), an autobiographical book based on the author’s own experiences as a Jewish hood during Prohibition, and planned to adapt it into a film (this would eventually, seventeen years later, become his final film, Once Upon a Time in America). However, Leone was offered only Westerns by the Hollywood studios. United Artists (who had produced the Dollars Trilogy) offered him the opportunity to make a film starring Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas and Rock Hudson, but Leone refused. However, when Paramount offered Leone a generous budget along with access to Henry Fonda, his favorite actor with whom he had wanted to work for virtually all of his career, Leone accepted this offer.

Leone commissioned Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento – film critics, who later became directors – to help him develop the film in late 1966. The men spent much of the following year watching and discussing numerous classic Westerns such as High Noon, The Iron Horse, The Comancheros, and The Searchers at Leone’s house, and constructed a story made up almost entirely of “references” to American Westerns.

Ever since The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which originally ran for three hours, Leone’s films were usually cut (often quite dramatically) for box office release. Leone was very conscious of the length of Once Upon a Time in the West during filming and later commissioned Sergio Donati, who had worked on several of Leone’s other films, to help him refine the screenplay, largely to curb the length of the film towards the end of production. Many of the film’s most memorable lines of dialogue came from Donati, or from the film’s English dialogue director, expatriate American actor Mickey Knox.

Style

With Once Upon a Time in the West, Leone chose a different path to styling the film, and this can be distinguished from his earlier westerns. Whereas the “Dollars” films were quirky and up-tempo, a celebratory yet tongue-in-cheek parody of the icons of the wild west, Once upon a Time in the West is much slower in pace and sombre in theme. Leone’s distinctive style, which is very different from, but very much influenced by, Akira Kurosawa’s Sanshiro Sugata, is still present but has been modified for the beginning of Leone’s second, the so-called “Once Upon a Time”, trilogy. The characters in this film are also beginning to change markedly over their predecessors in the “Dollars” westerns. They are not quite as defined and, unusually for Leone characters up to this point, they begin to change (or at least attempt to) over the course of the story. This signals the start of the second phase of Leone’s style, which would be further developed in A Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon a Time in America.

Cast

• Claudia Cardinale as Jill McBain
• Charles Bronson as Harmonica
• Jason Robards as Cheyenne
• Henry Fonda as Frank
• Gabriele Ferzetti as Morton
• Paolo Stoppa as Sam
• Woody Strode as Stony
• Jack Elam as Snaky
• Keenan Wynn as Sheriff
• Frank Wolff as Brett McBain
• Lionel Stander as Barman

The Mercenary was released the same year as Corbucci’s more popular western, The Great Silence (Il grande silenzio). The film is often compared to Corbucci’s 1970 film, Compañeros (Vamos a matar, compañeros), which features Nero and Palance in similar roles, and Tomas Milian in a role similar to Musante’s in The Mercenary. Both films also had Morricone as the composer, Alejandro Ulloa as the cinematographer and Eugenio Alabiso as the editor. The Mercenary’s theme music L’arena was later used by Quentin Tarantino in the 2004 film Kill Bill: Vol. 2.

Plot

Paco Roman (Musante), a Mexican peasant, rebels against his rich boss and humiliates him. He is later captured, but saved from a certain death by his friends. Meanwhile, Sergei Kowalski (Nero), a Polish mercenary, arrives in Mexico and makes a deal with two Garcia brothers to take their silver safely across the border. Curly (Palance) sees the three men talking and tracks down the brothers to find out what they hired Kowalski for, after which Curly kills the two.

When Kowalski arrives at a mine to meet one of the Garcia brothers, he finds the man along with many others dead and meets Paco and his revolutionaries instead. Soon after, Colonel Alfonso Garcia’s (Eduardo Fajardo) Mexican army troops attack. Kowalski agrees to help Paco fight them, but only for money as he is a professional soldier. With the help of Kowalski and his machine gun, the revolutionaries defeat the army. Kowalski then leaves the group, but gets ambushed by Curly. Soon Paco’s group arrives and kills Curly’s men. Although Curly swears to revenge, they let him go after stripping him of his clothes. Paco then hires Kowalski to teach him how to lead a revolution.

The revolutionaries travel from town to town robbing money, guns and horses from the army. They also release a prisoner named Columba (Ralli) and she joins the group. After Paco stays in one town to protect the people despite Kowalski telling him that they can not match the army sent to capture them, Kowalski leaves the group again. Paco and his men later admit their defeat and go after Kowalski. Kowalski’s price has doubled now, but the two make another deal. After the revolutionaries take over a town by defeating a whole regiment, Paco takes Kowalski as prisoner for being too greedy, confiscates all the money he has paid him and marries Columba. When General Garcia’s army, along with Curly, attack them, Paco realizes he can not manage the situation on his own and decides to set Kowalski free, but ends up locked up himself while Kowalski escapes. Columba frees Paco and the two also manage to escape before Curly finds them.

After six months, Kowalski attends a circus performance and notices that Paco managed to get away after all, as he is one of the clowns. After the performance is over, Curly enters the arena and his men capture Paco. Kowalski then shoots Curly’s men and gives him and Paco both a rifle and a bullet, so that the two can have a fair duel. After Paco kills Curly, Kowalski takes him as a prisoner and heads to the headquarters of the 51st Regiment to collect the reward offered for his head. Columba sees this, manages to get before them to the headquarters and then pretends that she wants to betray Paco by telling where the two are.

When the army troops find the pair, Kowalski also finds himself arrested as there is now even a bigger reward for his head. The two are then sentenced to death by firing squad. However, Columba now executes her plan and with the help of two machines gun, Paco, Kowalski and Columba manage to escape. Kowalski suggests Paco that they team up to make a lot of money, but Paco claims that his dream is in Mexico referring to the revolution. The two part ways, but Kowalski soon notices five Mexican army soldiers after Paco. Kowalski kills them when they are about to shoot Paco, and then yells to him to “keep dreaming, but with your eyes open.”