“How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders? The man can’t even trust his own pants.”

The Scoop: 1968, directed by Sergio Leone, starring Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, and Jason Robards

Tagline: There were three men in her life. One to take her… one to love her… and one to kill her.

Summary Capsule: The Death Wish guy stalks Tom Joad through the Old West just ahead of the railroad and all the trouble that comes with it.

Al’s rating: It’s like Pinter Pause: The Movie.  And I mean that in the best possible way.

Al’s review: Once Upon A Time in the West has the greatest opening scene that no one ever remembers: three men in dusters arrive at an empty train station.  In near silence, they lock the sole ticket taker in the closet and proceed to wait.  And wait.  And wait.  For ten minutes, they watch in the distance for the train to arrive.  Ten full minutes.  There’s no dialogue.  There’s no music.  They watch the windmills turn and the water drip off of the roof.  They watch the flies buzz around their heads.  Ten minutes before we finally hear the familiar whistle in the distance.  They slowly get up and move towards the platform as the rumbling locomotive pulls into the station and settles to a stop.  It pulls away after a moment, and when the dust settles, a lone man stands on the other side of the tracks.  It’s Charles Bronson, who pulls out a gun and shoots all three men dead.

It’s an inspired and evocative scene that sums up everything that’s so brilliant about Once Upon A Time in the West: long silences punctuated by moments of loud, dirty violence.  Extreme close-ups set against sweeping vistas.  It’s about swirling dust and gritty atmosphere and hard-bitten gunslingers that would kill you as soon as look at you.  It’s Sergio at his Leone-ist, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why more people haven’t seen it.

Bronson’s nameless hero fits perfectly in the Eastwood mold: he’s a man of few words with quick hands and a relentless drive for revenge.  A harmonica hangs around his neck (earning him the nickname ‘Harmonica’) but he doesn’t seem to play because he enjoys it.  His grating tune sounds more like a warning or maybe a calling card for anyone still standing when he leaves.

The man he’s chasing is Frank, a hired killer played by Henry Fonda.  Fonda, who is mostly remembered for All-American roles in movies like Young Mr. Lincoln and The Grapes of Wrath, is an inspired choice as the quiet but merciless bounty hunter.  His black hat, steel peppered hair, and striking blue eyes are, to me, as iconic an image as Leone ever put on screen.  He’s fantastically terrifying and, while you won’t know for some time why Bronson has been tracking Frank, it only takes five minutes of screen time to convince us he deserves what he’s got coming.

Along the way, Harmonica get tangled up in the affairs of the newly married and newly widowed Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale), whose fledgling family was targeted for assassination by Frank, and the loud but loveable bandit Cheyenne (Jason Robards), whose gang is being framed for the McBain murders.  Robards puts a funny, sweet, and wise heart inside Cheyenne’s scruffy, cynical frame, and (naturally) he gets the best lines in the movie.  Claudia Cardinale is not my favorite damsel in distress, but I enjoy her transformation from refined city debutante to independent frontier woman.  And, of course, both stand up well next to Bronson and Fonda, who absolutely kill.

Now, I can’t lie to you: Once Upon A Time in the West can be tough to get through and maybe that’s why it’s not more often watched.  The plot is complex, weaving railroad barons and land contracts around revenge, deception, and uncertain allegiances.  It took me a few viewings to really grasp everything I was watching.  It’s also a long movie (over 2½ hours) with a lot of lengthy silences, so you may want to put on a pot of coffee before settling into it.

But if you can stay focused in between the gunshots, there’s some really fantastic stuff to be found at the movie’s core.  Stuff—like that opening sequence—that will demand your attention and stick with you long after the credits have rolled.  For me, it’s just once or twice a year that I’ll see in my head Cheyenne’s wonderful, blustery entrance into the dusty roadside bar or be reminded of the beautiful Ennio Morricone score (which, by the way, I think is the best thing he’s ever written) and need to fish out my DVD for a rewatch.  It isn’t the most famous movie Sergio Leone’s ever made, and it may not be his best, but Once Upon A Time in the West is something special and a film that deserves its place amongst the all-time greats.

Intermission!

• Reportedly, this was the movie Sergio Leone had to make in order to finance the movie he wanted to make (that’d be the gangster flick Once Upon A Time in America with Robert DeNiro).  In other words, he was phoning this in and still made a masterpiece.
• Originally, Leone wanted the three gunmen from the opening sequence to be Clint Eastwood, Lee van Cleef, and Eli Wallach (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly respectively).  When Clint was unavailable, the idea was scrapped.
• In the opening scene, the fly bothering one of the gunmen was “controlled” by smearing jam on the actor’s face, ensuring it would never be far away.
• The reveal of Flagstone from over the roof of the train station is repeated exactly for Hill Valley in Back to the Future Part III.
• The script was written by Dario Argento (Suspiria) and Bernardo Bertolucci (Last Tango in Paris)

Groovy Quotes:

Morton: Tell me, was it necessary that you kill all of them? I only told you to scare them.
Frank: People scare better when they’re dying.

Frank: How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders?  The man can’t even trust his own pants.

[with the three gunmen]
Harmonica: Did you bring a horse for me?
Snaky: Well… [snickers] looks like we’re shy one horse.
Harmonica: No.  You brought two too many.

Cheyenne: 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.

Cheyenne: Harmonica, a town built around a railroad…you could make a fortune.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars.  More than that–thousands of thousands.
Harmonica: They call them “millions.”
Cheyenne: “Millions.” Hmm.

Harmonica: I saw three of these dusters a short time ago, they were waiting for a train. Inside the dusters, there were three men.
Cheyenne: So?
Harmonica: Inside the men, there were three bullets.

Cheyenne: You know, Jill, you remind me of my mother. She was the biggest whore in Alameda and the finest woman that ever lived. Whoever my father was, for an hour or for a month – he must have been a happy man.

Jill: If you want to, you can lay me over the table and amuse yourself. And even call in your men. Well. No woman ever died from that. When you’re finished, all I’ll need will be a tub of boiling water, and I’ll be exactly what I was before – with just another filthy memory.
Cheyenne: [sighs] You make good coffee, at least?

Cheyenne: Hey, Harmonica – when they do you in, pray it’s somebody who knows *where* to shoot.

Morton: How does it feel sitting behind that desk, Frank?
Frank: Almost like holding a gun… only much more powerful.

Cheyenne: [to Jill] You know what? If I was you, I’d go down there and give those boys a drink. Can’t imagine how happy it makes a man to see a woman like you. Just to look at her. And if one of them should pat your behind, just make believe it’s nothing. They earned it.

If You Liked This Movie, Try:

• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
• High Noon
• Unforgiven