Once Upon a Time in the West

I managed to get to see Once Upon a Time in the West last night at the National Film Theatre. If I’m not mistaken, this film was Sergio Leone’s first western made outside Europe. Although he had used American Actors in his Spaghetti westerns in Spain and Italy, he had never filmed in the United States before OUTW. His use of Charles Bronson and Jason Robards in familiar roles was reasonably safe casting but Henry Fonda as the evil Frank smacks as very risky.

Fonda, known mainly for more wholesome roles, plays directly against type and looks like he relishes the role completely. His tall, slim frame is mainly clad in black throughout the film and he chews tobacco and spits in the true spirit of the evil, rough, tough, gunfighter that he represents; his brilliant, tortured blue eyes caught magnificently in the extreme close up shots that Leone made one of his trademarks. It really is a terrific performance by one of Hollywood’s greatest Actors.

The film itself is a simmering, epic story that takes its time to deliver a typical good versus evil yarn in the true sense of the Western genre. It’s triumphant and sprawling and self indulgent and grandiose and takes such a long time to get going that at one point I almost gave up on it. I’m glad I held on.

Loosely speaking, it’s a tale of a man’s ambition to join the Atlantic with the Pacific by building a railway line from one seaboard to the other. However, the main themes in the film are really about the smaller tales of the men and women that get in the way of this ambition.

Charles Bronson plays Harmonica, Jason Robards plays Cheyenne and the beautiful Claudia Cardinale plays Jill McBain – the wife of the tragic Irishman who invites her to live on his humble farm with its rich secret. The musical score from Ennio Morricone is incredible and the first time we hear the piece that introduces Claudia to the audience must go down as one of the most beautiful film accompaniments of all time to one of the most gorgeous looking Actresses; it really made the hairs on my neck stand up.

The best line in the film has to be the one by Jason Robards. Upon receiving a first cup of coffee in a while from Jill McBain, he says, in his usual sardonic style, “You remind me of my Mother. She was the best whore in town and made my Father, in his hour or whatever amount of time he had with her, the luckiest man alive”. Brilliant stuff.