1968 ‘C'era una volta il West’ Directed by Sergio Leone
This classic western masterpiece is an epic film about 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 Enzo Santaniello Simonetta Santaniello Marco Zuanelli Al Mulock John Frederick Michael Harvey Benito Stefanelli Antonio Molino Rojo Fabio Testi Frank Braña Paolo Figlia Saturno Cerra Spartaco Conversi Aldo Berti Aldo Sambrell Lorenzo Robledo Bruno Corazzari Antonio Palombi Show All…
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 stunning work of blazing originality & featuring precision craftsmanship in nearly all departments of filmmaking, Once Upon a Time in the West is western in its purest form that fuses breathtaking art into the legacy of Wild West unlike any other example before or after it.
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…
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…
Simply masterful. As impeccably crafted as Leone's other western masterpiece, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but to an altogether different effect.
I'm amazed by how fast time passes in this nearly 3-hour epic. The way in which Leone (and Morricone) stretch and pull time for meditative tension reaches impossibly transcendent heights by the film's bittersweet conclusion.
"Do you know anything about a guy going around playing the harmonica? He's someone you'd remember. Instead of talking, he plays. And when he better play, he talks."
What a pleasure it was for me to finally get to watch this masterpiece which I kept on putting off because of its nearly three hour runtime. I was blown away by Sergio Leone’s direction in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, and that was the only film of his that I’d seen up to this point, but now I honestly can’t say which of the two films I prefer. This is perhaps a better film because it is set on a grander and epic scale, but perhaps not as entertaining…
"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…
Continuing my reevaluation of the Spaghetti Western, I’m rewatching this 1968 classic.
Once Upon a Time in the West, there were four people, a newly widowed ex prostitute, a cold blooded killer, a jocular gang leader and a mysterious musical gunslinger, all seemingly headed for a confrontation over a patch of desert land. It’s the most story driven of the Spaghetti Westerns, it’s greatest weakness is the convoluted plot. These films are always at their best when it’s two or more men, wearing iron, staring each other down while an Ennio Morricone theme blares, why they are at odds was always all but irrelevant and this film spends a lot of time on establishing their motives. The strongest story is…
There’s some really really cool moments in this movie. The story for the most part works but there’s just something keeping this from being a perfect follow up to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Even though I liked Bronson’s performance in this, I can’t help but think, “I wish that was Clint Eastwood saying those lines,” every time I watch this. It’s crazy to me that Sergio was trying to get Bronson on for Fistful of Dollars. I couldn’t imagine anyone other than Eastwood in the roles of those three movies.
And what was the deal with “Harmonica” being Mexican as a youth and then for no reason at all, turning into Charles Bronson? Was Charles Bronson seen as a “diverse actor” in the 60’s or something? it’s almost baffling. I remember him being Russian or some shit in Magnificent 7 too.
This is still one of those special movies that gets better every time you watch it.
>mysterious stranger with harmonica
>lets try and kill him
>gets killed
>surprisedpikachu.jpg
A landmark western, one of the all time greats of the genre, but not a flawless film. Once Upon a Time in the West has an undeniable epic sweep, but it also has a bit too much plot and not quite enough story to sustain itself across its 165 minute runtime. The opening scene is a mini masterpiece of slowly building tension built through staging and sound-design, as we watch three men with guns wait for a train. This is classic Sergio Leone, everything is about framing, deliberate and precise camera movements, editing and time. However it does take 10 minutes for the Leone's director's credit to appear, 80 minutes before we are properly introduced to the villain, and about…
leone definitely did not say gorgeous' dad's music was better than morricone's thats for damn sure
Peter Stanley 1,210 films
All the films from all the editions, including those subsequently removed, presently totalling 1210. An easy way of seeing how…
Dave Vis 250 films
The Letterboxd Top 250 movies, based on the average weighted rating of all Letterboxd users. I chose to remove all…
Tobias Andersen 6,392 films
Rules: Generate a number (from 1 to x) via: www.random.org
See how many number of films there are in the…
