Once Upon a Time in the West

Posted by Matthew Alexander (matthew@filmschoolrejects.com) on November 27, 2006

WARNING: SOME SPOILERS ARE FOUND IN THIS CRITIQUE

In 1968, having already gained much notoriety for his Fistful of Dollars trilogy, Sergio Leone directed what many of his admirers consider to be his greatest work: Once Upon a Time in the West, one of the signature Spaghetti Westerns. In many ways, Once Upon a Time in the West is the culmination of the ideas and style which Signor Leone had been developing in his famous trilogy, and indeed the movie scores well in the style category. But I would humbly like to tender my dissenting vote to this film which IMDb ranks, at last count, in the top 25 of all time.

The story revolves around a greedy railroad exec who, in failing to intimidate a land owner off his property, has him and his children assassinated by Frank, played, against type, by Henry Fonda. Then the man’s new wife (Claudia Cardinale’s Jill McBain) arrives to find her husband and step children murdered. Meanwhile, Charles Bronson’s character arrives without a proper name, much like Clint Eastwood’s in the Fistful trilogy, but with a past, a past which is played out for us bit by bit, just as occurred in For a Few Dollars More. At the same time Cheyenne, played by Jason Robards, has been framed for the recent assassination and is on the run from the law. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a pretty good guess that Bronson’s and Robards’ rogues will come to the aid of the new widow.

Before I defile what many consider sacred ground, I feel it prudent to point out the positives as I see them. And for a movie which failed to grab hold of me as I was hoping, there still are a good number of positives in the film, such as the style I noted earlier.

The opening scene is a perfect example of what Sergio was capable of at his best. Three outlaws, you can tell they are outlaws from the moment you lay eyes on them, arrive at a train station in the middle of nowhere, lock the attendant in a closet, and wait for a train to arrive. When it does, Harmonica, the appellation by which Bronson’s character goes, disembarks and the four have a duel.

It’s a simple premise and most directors would be through it in a couple minutes, three at the most. Sergio Leone, however, lingers in the different moments and perspectives and delivers something that could stand on its own as a short film. In fact, it may be that no better example can be found in all of movie history of what a good director brings to the enterprise of filmmaking, going above and beyond the script by digging into and exploring the possibilities. From the slow camera pans to the deliberate, methodical actions of the cool and confident outlaws as they invade the station, Leone draws out anticipation with every frame. One outlaw waits under a water tower for the train’s arrival and has to contend with a leak which drips onto his black hat. Another is beset by a fly of whose bothersome flitting about he half-heartedly tries to rid himself.

When Harmonica arrives, hidden at first by the train but as it passes revealed to be standing on the other side in a very cool and very contrived pose, the outlaws inform him that they have come for him.

“Did you bring me a horse?” he asks them.

“We brought one too few,” replies the leader with a wicked smile.

“You brought two too many,” replies Harmonica in perfect deadpan and the duel is on.

It’s a marvelous way to open a film. A bit over the top, yes, but that’s no sin. It’s merely the style Leone chose. But part of the problem with what happens next is that Leone did what I used to do on Halloween until I finally learned my lesson: he took a good thing to excess and kept going from there. The movie is filled with bad asses in bad ass poses, looking coolly at their adversaries; never sweating; never using three words when two will do; always pausing before replying; always moving slowly and deliberately, as if the world will wait for them (it must be some unspoken but universally accepted code of gunslingers in Leone’s universe). Frankly, it gets to the point where it almost seems to be a parody of itself. The truth is that there is so much emphasis on this style that many scenes, and thus the movie itself, never really seem to get going, all of them trapped in that deliberate fashion which whets ones appetite when it opens a film, but does not satisfy that appetite when it permeates the entire work.

My biggest problem with the film is that Leone is so preoccupied with the individual scene that he seems to forget the composition as a whole. So many scenes that are so ponderously slow to develop weigh down the entire piece. And Leone is not just seemingly unconcerned about the movie’s pace; he appears unconcerned about the story’s coherence as well (and from the way the script was put together, this is no surprise).

It would seem a straightforward plot of two gunslingers, always on the edge of the law, sometimes even crossing over, finding it within their hearts to help a young woman in distress against the might of an evil railroad exec. If we wanted to make the movie more epic in scope we could include a side plot or two as well. But Once Upon a Time in the West meanders around like a ship without a pilot, passing through one abrupt, unforeseen and never-to-be-fully-developed side plot after another, as if Leone were being paid per second of movie. Most of them are interesting scenes in and of themselves, but they don’t seem to fit well with the broader work. The sensation I got was that Leone had certain ideas for scenes which inspired him and he was going to shoot those scenes and put them in the movie no matter their violence to sense and reason. In other words, I like garlic, bananas and mustard so by golly we’re going to bake us a pie!

An example will elucidate what I am saying. Near the end of the film, Jill McBain is in her home serving Cheyenne some coffee. Outside, the railroad workers are toiling away. Cheyenne suggests she take them some water to cool them down during their labors and adds that, if one of them happens to pat her on the backside she should pretend that she doesn’t notice. They’ve earned it, you see. As it’s delivered in the movie it is actually a unique speech, but it comes out of nowhere. Why these railroad workers, who until now have been just shy of completely absent from all but the very periphery of the movie, deserve a cheap feel more than any other blue collar worker is not explained. Nor is it revealed why such a speech is wasted on unimportant, faceless characters in a movie that has never been about them and was only desultorily connected with what they do. It’s a nice speech for another movie, but Leone had to have it in this one.

As we might expect from a movie that suffers from such difficulties, there is a damning lack of momentum that carries us into the climax, a climax which seems to arrive simply because it is about damn time to end the movie. Indeed, nothing was really leading up to the final showdown. No one’s actions, whether intentional or not, force it; no final obstacle is overcome nor sacrifice made at its threshold; no one seems to have been working towards it at all; and there is no good reason the very same thing could not have happened in, say, minute forty three. The characters simply have been doing their back and forth for a couple hours plus and now it’s time to end the movie. Specifically, Frank rides up to Harmonica and wants to know the answer to a question that has piqued his curiosity throughout the film. Harmonica tells him he knew he’d come (it must have something to do with the gunslinger code) and that he would only tell him at the point of a gun. Frank knows this (which also must have something to do with the gunslinger code because I can’t fathom it) and so they ride off to have their duel.

Though considered by many to be the greatest Western ever made, I don’t see the marvel of it. Yes, there are many good things in it, but there are many good things in a garlic/mustard/banana pie as well. A better perspective on the work as a whole might have led the director to rethink his ingredients.

The Upside: The film undeniably has some great style, and many of the scenes are treasures in and of themselves.

The Downside: These treasures are not combined into a very coherent whole.

On the Side: Another weak point might be raised: the majority of the railroad tycoons from the nineteenth century were given tax payer money in accordance with how many miles of track they laid down and over what terrain they laid it. In reality, a tycoon paid in such a fashion would have been more than happy to lay loop-de-loops around Mr. McBain’s property (possibly the only exception was James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railroad, which took not a cent of tax payer money and constructed a very direct line by paying property owners for the right to lay track on their ranches and such). But I suppose if we take this one down for historical inaccuracy we’re going to take down a horde of other period pieces so let’s just leave this point alone.

Final Grade: C+

Read more articles by Matthew Alexander