SusannahOnce Upon A Time in the West
June 30th 2007 01:18
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)
Starring: Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards.
Story By: Sergio Leone, Dario Argento, Bernado Bertolucci.
Screenplay By: Sergio Leone and Sergio Donati.
Music By: Ennio Morricone.
Directed By: Sergio Leone.
After Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name Trilogy, comprising A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, and famously, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, he wished to move on from the genre that had made his name and direct a different sort of film, instead, he made Once Upon a Time in the West, which not only surpasses his previous achievements in the genre, but may be the finest Western ever made.
Like the dollars trilogy, the film contains the triumvirate of male characters: Henry Fonda, cast against type as the ruthless villain Frank, Jason Robards as the slightly comical, yet dangerous outlaw Cheyenne, who is neither villain nor hero, and Charles Bronson, The Man With No Name, who is on a mission of revenge. But added to these characters this time is Claudia Cardinale’s young widow, Jill McBain, going beyond the simple “whore with a heart of gold,” to become Sergio Leone’s first prominent and fully developed female character, and the anchor of the film.
Shot mostly in Spain, and partly in Utah’s Monument Valley, the film is vast in scope, featuring Leone’s use of extreme wide shot, combined with extreme close up to create a feeling of vastness and intimacy. Leone loved the features of a landscape, and saw the face as a landscape in its own right. The final showdown at the end has one of the most extreme close ups ever put to celluloid, the camera zooming right up so that Charles Bronson’s eyes fill the entire screen.
What really pushes this film into the realm of cinematic poetry is the coupling of Ennio Morricone’s score with Leone’s visuals. Hardly before, or since, has music been combined so well with cinematic imagery. However, it was the intention of Leone and Morricone that this should be the case when they set out to make the film. Morricone composed most of the score before a single shot had been filmed, and because the film was shot without sound, the score was played on the set to give the actors a sense of the mood.
Each main character gets their own theme. As each of the four characters makes their own distinct and memorable entrance, they are accompanied by their signature song. First is Charles Bronson, mysteriously appearing behind a departing train, silhouetted against the desert background, his signature harmonica theme playing on the soundtrack before you even see him on screen. Because his character never reveals his name, he is christened Harmonica by Cheyenne, after the harmonica he is always playing.
Henry Fonda’s Frank emerges from the desert scrub in a cloud of dust, accompanied by his outlaw gang, clad in dustcoats, with an ominous guitar score. As Jill McBain arrives on the train, her signature score is a romantic, almost operatic, hopeful, yet mournful, sounding string piece.
After an ominous sounding gun battle, which we only overhear, Cheyenne bursts into the bar, raising his face from under the brim of his hat until only his eyes are lit by a single beam of light, accompanied by the strains of a simple banjo tune, signalling the playfulness, yet potential danger of the character.
But as important as sound is in the film, the absence of it has just as much of an impact. The famous opening, which has the longest opening credit sequence of a film, is completely without music. As the three gunmen wait at the station for the train, their waiting is punctuated by the background sounds of the creak of a windmill, the ticking of a telegraph, a fly buzzing, and the dripping of water. All this helps to build tension as we wait and watch with the gunmen, eager to see what will happen.
This technique is used again in the scene that follows. As the McBain family are preparing a lunch outside to Celebrate the arrival of Jill, the cicadas on the soundtrack are a fairly innocuous background sound, yet when they keep cutting out, the complete silence of the surrounding countryside can only spell trouble, and builds up an ominous tension in the audience.
The signature themes of Harmonica and Frank come together in their final showdown, the harmonica theme and the guitar combining to soar to operatic heights at the climax of the film. The reason for Harmonica’s relentless pursuit of Frank, and his desire to personally take him out, rather than see him die at the hands of others, as is revealed earlier in the movie, is held back from being revealed until this moment, as we find out at the same time as Frank, why a man he cannot remember ever meeting wants him dead so badly. And the revelation is suitably worthwhile, the horrible implications of Frank’s misdeed and the significance of the harmonica revealed to us in flashback. There is nothing worse than watching a revenge film where the motivation for the revenge is extremely weak. Once Upon a Time in the West has motivation, and then some.
For fans of the Western genre, this is a must see. The influence of it can still be seen today in television shows such as Deadwood. It also formed the first of Sergio Leone’s second great trilogy which comprises: Once Upon a Time in the West, A Fistful of Dynamite, and Once Upon a Time in America.
Starring: Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards.
Story By: Sergio Leone, Dario Argento, Bernado Bertolucci.
Screenplay By: Sergio Leone and Sergio Donati.
Music By: Ennio Morricone.
Directed By: Sergio Leone.
After Sergio Leone’s Man With No Name Trilogy, comprising A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, and famously, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, he wished to move on from the genre that had made his name and direct a different sort of film, instead, he made Once Upon a Time in the West, which not only surpasses his previous achievements in the genre, but may be the finest Western ever made.
Like the dollars trilogy, the film contains the triumvirate of male characters: Henry Fonda, cast against type as the ruthless villain Frank, Jason Robards as the slightly comical, yet dangerous outlaw Cheyenne, who is neither villain nor hero, and Charles Bronson, The Man With No Name, who is on a mission of revenge. But added to these characters this time is Claudia Cardinale’s young widow, Jill McBain, going beyond the simple “whore with a heart of gold,” to become Sergio Leone’s first prominent and fully developed female character, and the anchor of the film.
Shot mostly in Spain, and partly in Utah’s Monument Valley, the film is vast in scope, featuring Leone’s use of extreme wide shot, combined with extreme close up to create a feeling of vastness and intimacy. Leone loved the features of a landscape, and saw the face as a landscape in its own right. The final showdown at the end has one of the most extreme close ups ever put to celluloid, the camera zooming right up so that Charles Bronson’s eyes fill the entire screen.
What really pushes this film into the realm of cinematic poetry is the coupling of Ennio Morricone’s score with Leone’s visuals. Hardly before, or since, has music been combined so well with cinematic imagery. However, it was the intention of Leone and Morricone that this should be the case when they set out to make the film. Morricone composed most of the score before a single shot had been filmed, and because the film was shot without sound, the score was played on the set to give the actors a sense of the mood.
Each main character gets their own theme. As each of the four characters makes their own distinct and memorable entrance, they are accompanied by their signature song. First is Charles Bronson, mysteriously appearing behind a departing train, silhouetted against the desert background, his signature harmonica theme playing on the soundtrack before you even see him on screen. Because his character never reveals his name, he is christened Harmonica by Cheyenne, after the harmonica he is always playing.
Henry Fonda’s Frank emerges from the desert scrub in a cloud of dust, accompanied by his outlaw gang, clad in dustcoats, with an ominous guitar score. As Jill McBain arrives on the train, her signature score is a romantic, almost operatic, hopeful, yet mournful, sounding string piece.
After an ominous sounding gun battle, which we only overhear, Cheyenne bursts into the bar, raising his face from under the brim of his hat until only his eyes are lit by a single beam of light, accompanied by the strains of a simple banjo tune, signalling the playfulness, yet potential danger of the character.
But as important as sound is in the film, the absence of it has just as much of an impact. The famous opening, which has the longest opening credit sequence of a film, is completely without music. As the three gunmen wait at the station for the train, their waiting is punctuated by the background sounds of the creak of a windmill, the ticking of a telegraph, a fly buzzing, and the dripping of water. All this helps to build tension as we wait and watch with the gunmen, eager to see what will happen.
This technique is used again in the scene that follows. As the McBain family are preparing a lunch outside to Celebrate the arrival of Jill, the cicadas on the soundtrack are a fairly innocuous background sound, yet when they keep cutting out, the complete silence of the surrounding countryside can only spell trouble, and builds up an ominous tension in the audience.
The signature themes of Harmonica and Frank come together in their final showdown, the harmonica theme and the guitar combining to soar to operatic heights at the climax of the film. The reason for Harmonica’s relentless pursuit of Frank, and his desire to personally take him out, rather than see him die at the hands of others, as is revealed earlier in the movie, is held back from being revealed until this moment, as we find out at the same time as Frank, why a man he cannot remember ever meeting wants him dead so badly. And the revelation is suitably worthwhile, the horrible implications of Frank’s misdeed and the significance of the harmonica revealed to us in flashback. There is nothing worse than watching a revenge film where the motivation for the revenge is extremely weak. Once Upon a Time in the West has motivation, and then some.
For fans of the Western genre, this is a must see. The influence of it can still be seen today in television shows such as Deadwood. It also formed the first of Sergio Leone’s second great trilogy which comprises: Once Upon a Time in the West, A Fistful of Dynamite, and Once Upon a Time in America.
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