Once Upon a Time in the West (Italian: C’era una volta il West) is a 1968 epic spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone. The film stars Henry Fonda cast against type as the villain Frank, Charles Bronson as his nemesis “Harmonica”, Jason Robards as the bandit Cheyenne and Claudia Cardinale as Jill, a newly-widowed homesteader with a past as a prostitute. The screenplay was written by Leone and Sergio Donati, from a story devised by Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Dario Argento. The widescreen cinematography was by Tonino Delli Colli, and Ennio Morricone provided the film score.
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
