Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
"C'era una volta il West" (original title)

Epic story of a mysterious stranger with a harmonica who joins forces with a notorious desperado to protect a beautiful widow from a ruthless assassin working for the railroad.

Director:

Sergio Leone

Writers:

Sergio Leone (screenplay), Sergio Donati (screenplay),

Stars:

Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards

Top 250 #24 | 5 wins & 3 nominations.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Claudia Cardinale	...	Jill McBain
Henry Fonda	...	Frank
Jason Robards	...	Cheyenne
Charles Bronson	...	Harmonica
Gabriele Ferzetti	...	Morton - Railroad Baron
Paolo Stoppa	...	Sam
Woody Strode	...	Stony - Member of Frank's Gang
Jack Elam	...	Snaky - Member of Frank's Gang
Keenan Wynn	...	Sheriff - Auctioneer
Frank Wolff	...	Brett McBain
Lionel Stander	...	Barman

Storyline

Story of a young woman, Mrs. McBain, who moves from New Orleans to frontier Utah, on the very edge of the American West. She arrives to find her new husband and family slaughtered, but by who? The prime suspect, coffee-lover Cheyenne, befriends her and offers to go after the real killer, assassin gang leader Frank, in her honor. He is accompanied by Harmonica on his quest to get even. Get-rich-quick subplots and intricate character histories intertwine with such artistic flair that this could in fact be the movie-to-end-all-movies.

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Plot Keywords:

harmonica | assassin | widow | epic | death | 

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Taglines:

There were three men in her life. One to take her... one to love her... and one to kill her.

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Genres:

Adventure | Western

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for western violence and brief sensuality

Details

Country:

Italy USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

21 December 1968 (Italy)

Also Known As:

There Was Once the West

Filming Locations:

Arizona, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$5,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Finanzia San Marco, Rafran Cinematografica, Paramount Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

175 min 165 min (international) 137 min (1970)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

In the opening scene, when Stony (Woody Strode) is under the water tank, water kept dripping onto the brim of his hat, causing him to flinch and Sergio Leone to stop filming. Leone was going to move Strode but, at the actor's suggestion, kept him in the same spot. Strode wanted his character to be viewed as so cool as to not let dripping water affect him. On the spur of the moment, Leone had Strode take off his hat and drink the collected water.

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Goofs

When Harmonica climbs down the ladder, only to meet Frank at the other end of a '45, we clearly see that the ladder is electro-welded to the wagon and the steps are also electro-welded to the legs of the ladder. A rather lousy welding job, by the way! The movie takes place around 1870. Electro-welding started during the '90s, but the method got practicable only in the 1920s - and began to be commonly used in the late 1930s when the great navies (except for the Royal Navy) started to use the method for their first-line ships. The great leap forward came during WW2, when Liberty ships and many other vessels was electro-welded.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Station agent: Hey - hey hey hey hey, if you want any tickets, you'll have to go around to, eh, to, eh, the front of the, eh... oooh, well, I s'pose it'll be all right.

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Crazy Credits

Lionel Stander receives on screen credit in the original U.S. theatre release prints even though his part was completely cut out of this shortened version.

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Connections

Referenced in Inglourious Basterds (2009)
The open scene is an homage to Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West", hence the chapter's title, "Once Upon a Time in Nazi Occupied France".

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Soundtracks

"Danny Boy"
(1913) (uncredited)
Written by by Frederick Edward Weatherly
Hummed and Sung a cappella a bit by Simonetta Santaniello

User Reviews

"Something To Do With Death"

Sergio goes Hollywood for this big-name, big-budget Spaghetti Western. Fonda, Bronson, Robards and Cardinale queue up and take Leone's choreographic direction in an epic tale of blood and revenge.

Frank is a bad guy who has killed a lot of people. He now works for a railroad entrepreneur whose ruthless sterile tracks are spreading ever westward. The time has come for the real Americans to confront both the railroad and Frank.

Leone sat down with film intellectuals Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento and watched dozens of Hollywood westerns. From this saturation-viewing emerged a 300-page treatment which was eventually distilled into the script, penned by Leone and Sergio Donati. There are conscious echoes of "Shane" and "High Noon" in the meticulously-plotted screenplay. Ennio Morricone apparently sat in on the planning stage and had composed the score in toto before shooting began, the reverese of the usual process of fitting music to existing footage. The result is a tight matching of soundtrack and visuals. Robards, Bronson and Cardinale each have musical 'signatures' which play whenever their characters are onscreen. Bronson's is an eerily-wailing harmonica, Robards has the plonking banjo and Cardinale the lush strings. So intricately was everything structured that the themes were available to be played on set, so that the actors could co-ordinate every nuance of gesture to fit with the score.

The film is a grandiose lament to the death of the Wild West. Decay is everywhere to be seen. Streets, bars, buildings and people all have a beat-up, grungy look. When Cheyenne (Robards) pauses beside a rough-hewn wooden post, there is little difference in texture between his face and the post. Morton the cripple is killing the romantic West of open spaces with his "snail trail" of railroad tracks, leaving the fine adventurous men (Cheyenne and Harmonica) nowhere to go.

There can be few opening scenes with the visual and aural brilliance of this one. Three bad guys stake out Flagstone's railroad depot in a High Noon pastiche. Jack Elam (who was actually in "High Noon") leads the villains. The only spoken words throughout this long (but totally gripping) scene are uttered by the old station clerk. Haunting rhythms raise the tension to an unbearable pitch ... the squeaking windmill, the chattering tickertape, the creaking bench. This wonderful crescendo climaxes with the appearance of Bronson, a sequence as stylised and choreographed as a Shinto ceremony, all the more effective for the absence of spontaneity.

Equal to and counterbalancing this scene is the very next one, the introduction of Frank. This time it is "Shane" that gets the treatment as the McBain boy spots five men in yellow duster topcoats. A growing sense of unease on the McBain homestead is beautifully conveyed (was the stopping of a cicada chirp ever so effective?) A cinematic multiple orgasm ensues, with the musical theme crashing in as the boy sees the devastation, and the camera swoops round to reveal the baddie to be none other than Henry Fonda as Morricone's trademark solitary tubular bell peals out.

Cheyenne's entrance is also a piece of impressive cinema. Inside Lionel Stander's strange labyrinthine tavern, quite unlike any saloon ever filmed before, the violence which hovers around Cheyenne like a dustcloud is heard but not seen, preparing us for his appearance in person. The sliding of the lamp towards Bronson works brilliantly, the film's two good men sharing the light of humour, the symbolic forging of a meaningful friendship.

By a slow accretion, the plot reveals itself. The leviathan of the railroad must be stopped, and there must be a reckoning with Frank. Gradually the fates of the main characters converge, and swim into sharp focus for the shoot-out.

It is not the story, excellent though that is, which lingers in the memory, but rather a hundred individual flashes of brilliance: Claudia Cardinale (are those eyes for real?) filmed on the bed, viewed vertically downward, through a lace canopy: Cheyenne's surprise method of concealing himself on the train: Morton ("when you're not on that train, you're like a turtle out of its shell") imprisoned by the armature that helps him walk: the 'heartbeat' of the train's engine during the cardgame: the tension of the ambush preparations against Frank: the eruption of guitar music as Bronson enters the frame: Bronson's stillness and self-possession, the emblem of his righteousness: Fonda's eyes flickering rapidly in his motionless head, denoting the waning of his self-confidence: the amazing super-close-ups of Bronson: and the weird brick arch, the only man-made intrusion into the entire terrain, and the focus of human depravity.