1968 ‘C'era una volta il West’ Directed by Sergio Leone
A widow whose land and life are in danger as the railroad is getting closer and closer to taking them over. A mysterious harmonica player joins forces with a desperado to protect the woman and her land.
Claudia Cardinale Henry Fonda Jason Robards Charles Bronson Gabriele Ferzetti Paolo Stoppa Woody Strode Jack Elam Keenan Wynn Frank Wolff Lionel Stander Frank Braña Stefano Imparato Claudio Mancini Al Mulock Antonio Palombi Renato Pinciroli Aldo Sambrell Conrado San Martín Enzo Santaniello Simonetta Santaniello Luana Strode Fabio Testi Marco Zuanelli
Er was eens in het verre Westen, Bilo jednom na Divljem zapadu, Ükskord Metsikus Läänes, Bir Zamanlar Batıda, Fins que li va arribar l'hora, Bilo je nekoč na Divjem zahodu, A fost odată în Vest, Ondt blod i Vesten, Het gebeurde in het Westen, Había una vez en el Oeste, Huuliharppukostaja
obviously outstanding score, gorgeous camerawork. a lot of truly cool blocking and framing that makes interesting and kinetic cinematography out of sweaty men living in a land of no showers. almost didn’t recognize Charlie Bronson, looking like a Mad Magazine McPoyle brother for the entire thing. a terrific piece of evidence towards the case that every movie should be 90 minutes.
A true masterpiece in every sense of the word! The opening scene takes the mundane (sweaty gunslingers with weathered faces, dripping water, pesky fly and a rusty old windmill) and literally turns it into a work of art!
A western that's so real you can almost see the beard stubble grow by the minute and the sweat trickling from your screen!
Gorgeous cinematography with a soundtrack ranging from glorious, to thrilling, to haunting! An all star cast as magnificent as the film itself! Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, and Claudia Cardinale!
As lusty as it is gutsy! A place and time when guns and grimaces did all of the talking!
Naughty Approved!
Although Sergio Leone never really made anything better or more entertaining than The Good, the Bad & the Ugly in my opinion, he did come incredibly close to repeating that cinematic feat with this spaghetti western epic. A jaw-dropping work of blazing originality that features precision craftsmanship in all aspects of filmmaking, Once Upon a Time in the West is a western that fuses breathtaking art into the legacy of the Old Wild West unlike any example before or since.
The story revolves around a small chunk of land which is the region's only water source. The family that owns the land is slaughtered by Frank & his gang, after which the ownership transfers to Jill, the widow of the murdered family.…
Felt it was time for a revisit. One of my faves.
I tweeted about and someone was nice enough to reply with this link:
ascmag.com/articles/shooting-once-upon-a-time-in-the-west
Good read.
Watched on Blu-ray
Sergio Leone's genre defining classic, Once Upon a Time in The West is a hauntingly beautiful, operatic masterpiece and my favorite western of all-time. Leone applying everything he executed in previous films but going above and beyond that and comes up with a true epic western. This film is practically flawless, from stellar performances to an unforgettable score to sublime, breathtaking cinematography, it's everybody firing on all cylinders. And the casting of good guy Henry Fonda as one of the nastiest bad guys in cinema was a stroke of genius.
The first 15 minutes alone of the movie may be the finest opening sequence of any movie ever made.
"There were no dollars in them days."
All of Sergio Leone's westerns have been about the arrival of capitalism (both to the historical American West and to then-contemporary 1960's Italy), but Once Upon a Time in the West takes a slightly more specific perspective. Instead of looking at the (monetary) value of life, it uses the symbol of the cowboy to chart how the arrival of capital and industry parallels the decline of traditional male heroism. Industrialization causes heroic masculinity to defensively over-inflate and begin to collapse in on itself. The film takes this macho war hero whose glory days are behind him and shows how society is moving forward without him. Removed from the spotlight, this symbolic centerpiece is…
Beautifully composed, shot, and told, Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" is well deserving of its reputation as one of the best Westerns ever made. An epic story of lawlessness, vengeance, and the women and men conquering the untamed American west, Leone's film is meditative and gritty, sweeping and violent. It compels with its carefully composed aesthetic, archetypal-yet-specifically drawn characters, and grand themes.
Steeped in dirt, sweat, and stubble, Leone's film is made up of narrative threads well-known to genre fans. Murder, westward expansion, and frontier justice dominate the plot. The story focuses on a widow whose husband owned precious water rights near the town of Flagstone. With parties trying to forcibly rid the widow of her…
This was a rewarding experience from start to finish,a masterpiece in true sense.It excels in every department but what stands out to me are the intense character moments and the clever action sequences.The West is brought to life by atmospheric cinematography and chilling score.
"You don't sell the dream of a lifetime."
I love how while this uses the same attraction/repulsion storytelling structure of The Good, the Bad and rhe Ugly, it does the exactly opposite with it contracting everything instead of expanding. It must be the smallest near 3 hour movie ever made, barely any plot, very few actual scenes, only 5 meaningful characters (unless one counts the corpse whose dream set the plot in motion), as wonderfully detailed as Simi sets can be there's very few of them. The only big thing here is the extension of Frank's army that seems to include every actor whose face Leone wants to shoot. Somehow the combination between this smallness with the large canvas of…
Once upon a time in the West there was a frontier built on capitalism and individual struggle. That world has gone. The era of corporatism arrived and the world grew. Once Upon a Time in the West is about the arrival of civilisation. Henry Fonda's terrifying villain Frank is torn between his wild ways and his desire to become a businessman. Frank is unabashedly individualistic, but he is prophesised to become a partner or leader. The changing face of capital moved from the individual to the corporation. Money is the ultimate weapon, never a gun. Compared to previous Leone movies, this is a film of negotiations more than shootouts. Its chief conflict is civilisation fighting against the frontier. Latter day…
