Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Sergio Leone
Stars: Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards, Woody Strode, Jack Elam.
Screening at the Astor for a limited two week season from November 22.
Italian director Sergio Leone only made a handful of films, but three of them are, arguably, cinema classics. Leone also become hugely influential with his trilogy of spaghetti westerns (A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, and the brilliant The Good, The Bad And The Ugly) which revitalised and reinvigorated the western genre. Although they were filmed in Rome, Leone’s films brought to the western a suitably gritty and credibly dirty look, amoral characters, and a brutal level of realistic violence that has since been copied. While The Good, The Bad And The Ugly is a masterpiece and remains one of the best westerns ever made, his revisionist 1968 epic Once Upon A Time In The West is also a very good, nihilistic example of the genre.
Written by the heady combination of Leone, Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci, the film is set against the sprawling background of the expansion of the frontier through the laying of the railroad across the country. A ruthless and corrupt rail baron is driving people off their valuable land with the help of a gang of ruthless killers, led by Frank, a sadistic gunslinger (played chillingly by Henry Fonda, cast against type). The only things standing in his way are a feisty widow (Claudia Cardinale), a desperado named Cheyenne (Jason Robards), and a taciturn, inscrutable, harmonica-playing drifter with no name (a superbly cast stone faced Charles Bronson in a role originally intended for Clint Eastwood).
On the surface, the plot itself is rather simple, but Leone suffuses the film with many complex layers and rich back-stories. Many of his signature touches are evident throughout – the extreme close-ups, the long dialogue free passages that add to the dramatic tension, the sudden bursts of stylised violence, and Ennio Morricone’s haunting and effective score. The film also features some of Leone’s regular plot devices – revenge, divided loyalties, mysterious past of the characters, and a more cynical version of the mythology of the west popularised in the films of John Ford and John Wayne.
When first released, Once Upon A Time In The West was misunderstood and its massive length was cut by the studios. The Astor Cinema is screening a limited season of a fully restored version of the film, including some 20 minutes of footage that has rarely been seen before. However, it has been seen numerous times on television, cropping up regularly as one of the staples of classic movie stations. But this magnificent epic deserves to be seen on the big screen, which does justice to Leone’s epic sweep and spectacular vision. And the large screen at the Astor does justice to Tonino Delli Colli’s beautiful cinematography, which superbly captures the harsh landscapes of Monument Valley, where much of the film was shot.
****