Once Upon a Time in the West
Once Upon a Time in the West (Italian: C'era una volta il West, "Once upon a time (there was) the West") is a 1968 epic spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone, who co-wrote it with Sergio Donati based on a story by Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci and Leone. It stars Henry Fonda, cast against type as the villain,[5][6] Charles Bronson as his nemesis, Jason Robards as a bandit and Claudia Cardinale as a newly widowed homesteader. The widescreen cinematography was by Tonino Delli Colli and the acclaimed film score was by Ennio Morricone.
This article is about the 1968 Spaghetti Western film. For other uses, see Once Upon a Time in the West (disambiguation).Once Upon a Time in the West
- Sergio Donati
- Sergio Leone
- Dario Argento
- Bernardo Bertolucci
- Sergio Leone
Fulvio Morsella
- Euro International Films (Italy)
- Paramount Pictures (United States)
- December 20, 1968 (Rome)
- December 21, 1968 (Italy)
- May 28, 1969 (New York[1])
166 minutes
Italian
English
$5 million
$5.3 million (United States)
40 million tickets (worldwide)
After directing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone decided to retire from Westerns and aimed to produce his film based on the novel The Hoods, which eventually became Once Upon a Time in America. However, Leone accepted an offer from Paramount Pictures providing Henry Fonda and a budget to produce another Western. He recruited Bertolucci and Argento to devise the plot of the film in 1966, researching other Western films in the process. After Clint Eastwood turned down an offer to play the movie's protagonist, Bronson was offered the role. During production, Leone recruited Donati to rewrite the script due to concerns over time limitations.
The original version by the director was 166 minutes when it was first released on December 21, 1968. This version was shown in European cinemas, and was a box-office success. For the US release on May 28, 1969, Once Upon a Time in the West was edited down to 145 minutes by Paramount and was a financial flop.
The film is the first installment in Leone's Once Upon a Time trilogy, followed by Duck, You Sucker! and Once Upon a Time in America, though the films do not share any characters in common.[7]
In 2009, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[8][9] The film is regarded as one of the greatest Westerns of all time and one of the greatest films of all time.[10][11][12][13]
Plot[edit]
A train arrives at the Old West town of "Flagstone". A man with a harmonica on a thong about his neck alights and faces three gunfighters who are waiting for him, killing all three. Their leader, an outlaw called Frank, is working as a hired gunman for the railroad tycoon Morton, who is trying to acquire land owned by Brett McBain's family.
The dusters worn by the three outlaws lead Harmonica to believe they are a rival outlaw, Cheyenne's men. Meanwhile, Frank and his henchmen kill McBain and his three children at their "Sweetwater" ranch and leave behind evidence to frame Cheyenne for the murders.
A woman named Jill arrives in Flagstone, supposedly to marry McBain at Sweetwater. In fact, she is a former New Orleans prostitute who married McBain a month earlier, so she is the sole heir to Sweetwater. As it will emerge, McBain knew the railroad would pass through Sweetwater one day and planned to build a watering station there, subject to a reverter that he would forfeit Sweetwater if the station was not built by the time the railroad reached it. Morton told Frank to only intimidate McBain, and the murder has put them at odds. Morton wants to make a deal with Jill, but Frank wants the land for himself.
Cheyenne denies that it was his men who tried to ambush Harmonica and murder the McBains. Harmonica saves Jill from two of Frank's men and spies out the railway carriage to which Morton is confined on crutches, owing to his spinal tuberculosis. Harmonica discovers the connection between Frank and Morton but is seen and captured. When Frank asks for Harmonica's name, he replies with names of men that Frank has killed in the past. Frank is called away and Cheyenne rescues Harmonica. The two collaborate to help Jill save Sweetwater, using stockpiled materials to start building a station.
After a threatening sexual encounter with Frank, Jill is forced to auction the land while Frank's henchmen intimidate the bidders in order to keep the purchase price low. Suddenly, Harmonica appears with Cheyenne in tow and bids $5,000, which is the price on Cheyenne's head as a wanted fugitive, and gets the property himself. Meanwhile, Morton has bribed Frank's own men to kill him, but Harmonica intervenes to save Frank from being ambushed in the street. When Jill condemns Harmonica for saving Frank's life, he replies "I didn't let them (Frank's men) kill him and that's not the same thing".
Cheyenne soon escapes custody and he and his gang engage Frank's remaining men in a gunfight on Morton's train. Except for Cheyenne, who heads to Sweetwater, everyone is killed, including Morton. When Frank sees the aftermath of the fight, he rides to Sweetwater too, where he finds Harmonica waiting. Cheyenne has arrived earlier, but he remains in the ranch house with Jill. Outside, Harmonica and Frank engage in a showdown; through a flashback, it is revealed that Frank had once hanged Harmonica's older brother, forcing the younger brother to support him on his shoulders. Just before the panting boy collapsed under the weight, Frank had forced a harmonica into his mouth, telling him to "keep your lovin' brother happy".
Harmonica beats Frank to the draw. As he lies dying, Frank again asks Harmonica's identity and Harmonica places the instrument in Frank's mouth. Frank remembers, nods his head, and dies.
Jill hopes he will stay with her but, as Cheyenne has already told her, that won't happen. Jill asks Harmonica to come back and he says: "Some day". Harmonica and Cheyenne leave Sweetwater together, but Cheyenne collapses and dies from a gut wound he received in the gunfight with Morton. As Harmonica departs carrying Cheyenne's body on a horse, Jill serves water to the railroad workers.
Production[edit]
Origins[edit]
After making his American gunfighter epic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone had intended to make no more Westerns, believing he had said all he wanted to say.[14] He had come across the novel The Hoods by the pseudonymous "Harry Grey", a fictionalized book based on the author's own experiences as a Jewish hood during Prohibition, and planned to adapt it into a film (17 years later, it would become his final film, Once Upon a Time in America). Leone, though, was offered only Westerns by the Hollywood studios. United Artists (which had produced the Dollars Trilogy) offered him the opportunity to make a film starring Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas and Rock Hudson, but Leone refused. When Paramount offered Leone a generous budget along with access to Henry Fonda—his favorite actor, and one with whom he had wanted to work for virtually all of his career—Leone accepted the offer.
Leone commissioned Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento to help him devise a film treatment 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.
Beginning with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which originally ran for three hours, Leone's films had usually been cut (often quite considerably) for box-office release. Leone was very conscious of the length of Once Upon a Time in the West during filming and subsequently 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 toward the end of production.
Reception[edit]
Critical response[edit]
Once Upon a Time in the West was reviewed in 1969 in the Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert, who gave it two and a half stars out of four. He found the film "good fun" and "a painstaking distillation" of Leone's famous style, with intriguing performances by actors cast against their type and a richness of detail projecting "a sense of life of the West" made possible by Paramount's larger budget for this Leone film. Ebert complained, however, of the film's length and convoluted plot, which he said only becomes clear by the second hour. While viewing Cardinale as a good casting choice, he said she lacked the "blood-and-thunder abandon" of her performance in Cartouche (1962), blaming Leone for directing her "too passively".[32]
In subsequent years, the film developed a greater standing among critics, as well as a cult following.[33] Directors such as Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Quentin Tarantino,[34] and Vince Gilligan[35] have cited the film as an influence on their work. It has also appeared on prominent all-time critics lists, including Time's 100 greatest films of the 20th century and Empire's 500 greatest movies of all time, where it was the list's highest-ranking Western at number 14.[34] Popular culture scholar Christopher Frayling regarded it as "one of the greatest films ever made".[36]
Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports a 95% approval rating based on 66 reviews, with an average score of 9.20/10. The critical consensus reads: "A landmark Sergio Leone spaghetti Western masterpiece featuring a classic Morricone score".[37] Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 82 out of 100 based on reviews from 9 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[38]
Leone's intent was to take the stock conventions of the American Westerns of John Ford, Howard Hawks, and others, and rework them in an ironic fashion, essentially reversing their intended meaning in their original sources to create a darker connotation.[52] The most obvious example of this is the casting of veteran film good guy Henry Fonda as the villainous Frank, but many other, more subtle reversals occur throughout the film. According to film critic and historian Christopher Frayling, the film quotes from as many as 30 classic American Westerns.
The major films referenced include: