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…
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…
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 soundtracks ranging from glorious, to thrilling, to haunting! An all star cast as magnificent as the film itself! (Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, Claudia Cardinale)
As lusty as it is gutsy! A place and time when guns and grimaces did all of the talking!
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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…
"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…
Masterpiece
Beyond the fact that this is one of the greatest movies ever made, this movie teaches you one very important lesson. DON'T F*CK WITH CHARLES BRONSON.
Some of the most achingly beautiful cinematography, scoring, and art direction you'll find in all of cinema held back by some of the most muddled plotting. With a runtime of almost 3 hours, Leone can only dazzle the senses for so long until the mind begins to wander... why should I care? I found I couldn't answer the question.
I literally cried tears of joy, sadness, and contentment. This film is beautiful, Claudia Cardinale is beautiful, Ennio Morricone is beautiful, Sergio Leone is beautiful, Charles Bronson is beautiful, Henry Fonda is beautiful. So much beauty.
“How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders? The man can’t even trust his own pants!”
Leone’s near-3hr western has been at the top of my watchlist for a while now, and I was not disappointed when I finally saw it. Legendary blue-eyed Fonda is fantastic whilst Bronson and ejjdjejfb put in memorable performances. The music is genius and it often sent shivers down my spine. When compared to the Dollars trilogy and a lot of other westerns, OUATITW doesn’t hold up due to the bottomless pit of a middle act and messy story. But the motifs, foreshadowing, setting and close-ups (😍) are Spaghetti stunners from a master in his prime.
7.75/10
Only Sergio Leone could make a few gross men waiting for a train to come in play like a symphony.
Leone outdoes his excellent Spaghetti Western trilogy starring Clint Eastwood with this film, epic in scope and running time, which is melancholy in tone and an ode to the old West itself, which is soon to be forever changed by the encroaching railroad and the envitable march of capitalism. Fonda plays against type as a terrifying villain who knows he is now part of the machine. The characters try to scramble some resolution in a barren landscape as forces beyond their control will change them forever, leaving the avenging Harmonica and the bandit behind. The film is a perfect marriage of plot, acting, visuals and music, the closet thing to opera, and Leone conducts everything with symphonic mastery.
Runtime is 165 Minutes (166min with Text on Start).
175 Minutes is from Amazon Link and wrong.
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