SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: Week 76 Discussion - Once Upon a Time in the West

[europe1]

By 1985'ish I had discovered the lesser known My Name is Nobody and loved it.

I don't really have anything to say except cheers for making a My Name is Nobody reference.

As a kid I was more of a They call me Trinity mark though (never laughed as hard before or since as I did seeing it age 8).

Frank and his men emerge from the brush.

I love that they materialize amidst the wind and undergrowth -- as if they're emerging out of a haze. It lends them a more sinister edge. It's akin to how Harmonica experiences hazy flashbacks of Frank (those flashbacks and the shoots of the eyes were later referenced in Tarantino's Kill Bill)

Looks like its just me so I'll add some more. The slaughter of the McBain family is a great snapshot of the all around brilliance of this film. I'll post the clip below. The scene starts with the sound of doves taking flight. A gunshot rings out and Mr. MacBain pauses, probably thinking its someone shooting at the doves, then he see's his daughter drop to the ground and realizes what is happening. He runs for his gun but its too late, Frank and his men have set the perfect ambush in motion, gunning down Mr. McBain and then his oldest son.

As Mr. McBain goes limp the viewer immediately hears the running footsteps of the youngest boy as he rushes to see what happened and then the iconic score kicks in as Frank and his men emerge from the brush. The boy freezes as the men close in on him and Frank just looks at him as if deciding what to do. One of Frank's men says, "What are we going to do with this one Frank?" At that point Frank, irritated, says well, now that you called me by name, Frank pulls his pistol and shoots the boy.

Another superb thing about that scene is that it's an inversion of the opening of Shane. In Shane, a little kid scouts a man who would become his hero emerge from the wilderness. In West, it's a small boy that scouts the man who would become his killer (likewise, the beginning is an inversion of High Noon).

"What are we going to do with this one Frank?" At that point Frank, irritated, says well, now that you called me by name, Frank pulls his pistol and shoots the boy.

Just excellent delivery by Henry Fonda. You get the impression that the guy is a bit irritated over having to kill a kid yet it's not going to ruin his day or anything.

And of course, Leone's ultra close-up works wonderfully to magnify Frank's gravitas in this moment. Those baby blue eyes just pop on his wizened visage. And the camera has a slight upwards tilt, to give the subtle impression that you're staring up at him like the little kid is doing.

And let’s talk about that soundtrack. Damn

Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone really are the GOAT director-musician team-up. None can match them in tandem. You won't find better synchronization between sound and image than in a Leone flick.

One of reasons why is I think that Leone himself just had an instinctive understanding of how sound works. Take that opening scene. It was originally scored but replaced with ambiance noises -- and it's fucking impeccable. Leone could perfectly synchronize sound to image no matter what he was working with.

Obviously, Ennio is a mastermind without compare in his own right (especially considering his absolutely insane workload. Just check his IMDB credits for how much he has produced. And then consider that most of it is excellent). It was fucking laughable seeing the Academy give him an Oscar a couple of years back -- like a pack of ants trying to give a titan an present.

That said, I think if you watch other Spaghetti Western with Ennio scores, then you start to noticed how they couldn't handle sound and image as flawless as Leone did. Watch, say, Death Rides a Horse and you'll notice how jarring the soundtrack (which is still great) feels in relation to what you're watching.

I couldn't agree more and the payoff when you realize that Harmonica is the boy who tried to hold up his brother so Frank couldn't hang him is pretty intense.

That moment is fucking amazing. Frank's body is crumbling into death, his life-strenght draining away from him. Harmonica placed the Harmonica in his mouth. The flashback comences. Then, when we return to the presence, you see this slight shift of his eyes, this slight moment of realization, who it was all along...

And then he dies.

That sort of hyper-emphatization of the moment of realization... that's fucking cinematic gold right there.

What I can't figure out is Frank didn't know who Harmonica was, he kept asking him who he was but at the beginning of the film Frank had sent three med to kill Harmonica at the train station.

Well, given the conversation by the train station, Harmonica must have announced that he was coming. He wants Frank to meet him by the station. Instead he faced three goons. Frank must have smelled a rat and realized that whoever this guy was that wanted to meet him -- was big trouble.

“Inside those coats were three men. Inside those men were three bullets.”

That was a cool line.

He plays the harmonica when he should talk... and talks WHEN HE SHOULD BE PLAYING THE HARMONICA!

I would say with Leone's films prior to Once Upon A Time In America there is a bit of a tendency for the big setpeices to be so good they tend to somewhat overshadow everything else.

You consider that a problem?

See, for me, Leone was all about the ritualistic.

A gun-duel isn't just a moment of bang bang. It's a ritual. A build-up. An escapade of close-ups and wide-shots. Everything is played so to emphazise to gravitas of this moment. Leone does everything he can to present this as something more than it is. He wanted to really revel in that moment before death.

I can't think of anyone who does these set-piece duels better than him. Tombstones gundown at the OK Corral is splendid but doesn't match (some of the close-ups feeling rather Leone inspired). The final scene in The Wild Bunch where they march into the fort is utterly raw and badass but lacks Leone's ritualistic edge. And a film like Rio Bravo might be one of the best Westerns of all time but even that pales in comparison (though the final shootout is straight-up mediocre). I think that only the final shootout in Shane can rival any of Leone's work in terms of dramatic build-up and execution.

What I'm trying to say is... set-pieces overshadowing everything else isn't so bad when they're the greatest set-pieces around and the director is doing everything he can to emphasize just how grand and otherwordly these moments truly are.

When Harmonica and Jill finally meet, he randomly grabs her and starts ripping off pieces of her clothing. Not, apparently, to rape her. But just to do it, it seems, with no actual narrative purpose. Does anyone know if there was anything more to this than Leone just wanting to get more skin onto the screen?

He does it because he knows Frank's men are watching. He wants them to think that he's thinking with his dick and not paying attention.

 

[Guestx]

Concerning the framing of shots, costumes, and cinematography, I thought this scene was a good example slice of that pie. We see Jill, the New Orleans whore, arriving at the train station. The score is delicate here, reflecting Jill's femininity, and as she exits the train we see her check her watch with a hand clad in lace. She moves up the side of the train and we see barrels of Olive Oil and other goods that the train brings with it.

As she moves up towards the train station we see the inside of the station, shot through the window. Then we see the shot pan up over the top of the station to reveal the town, and the score reflects that moment wonderfully. Its a 2 minute scene that reflects Sergio's approach to this film.

Yeah, I caught that particular shot too -- through the window and up over the roof to reveal the town. It really is great.

One thing that's important to note is that Leone doesn't try to make EVERY shot something special. Some shots are pretty standard shots, which I think is important because it's only by juxtaposing the incredible shots with something more conventional that you can understand who those awesome shots are as awesome as they are.

Though Leone's awesome-shot-to-standard-shot ratio is significantly higher than most filmmakers.

 

[Guestx]

I was initially confused by this at first, but the sense I made from it is he was using her as a distraction for the two outlaws approaching the house. Since they were too busy checking out boobs, he could get the drop on them and gun them down.

Also, perhaps he was being a little forceful with her because he was peeved that she took a shot at him the previous night when he was outside.

I guess that's as good of explanation as any.

I think it was mostly Leone saying, "We need more cleavage. How can we do that?"

 

[Guestx]

I love that they materialize amidst the wind and undergrowth -- as if they're emerging out of a haze. It lends them a more sinister edge. It's akin to how Harmonica experiences hazy flashbacks of Frank (those flashbacks and the shoots of the eyes were later referenced in Tarantino's Kill Bill)

View attachment 287943

As I'm sure you know, there's a lot of debate about how much Tarantino pays homage to old filmmakers and how much it would be more accurate to say he's ripping them off.

I'd like to see a full side-by-side list of shots that he's stolen.

Another superb thing about that scene is that it's an inversion of the opening of Shane. In Shane, a little kid scouts a man who would become his hero emerge from the wilderness. In West, it's a small boy that scouts the man who would become his killer (likewise, the beginning is an inversion of High Noon).

So Once Upon a Time in the West vs Shane.

Who wins?

Time to choose!

Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone really are the GOAT director-musician team-up.

None can match them in tandem. You won't find better synchronization between sound and image than in a Leone flick.

I think Spielberg and John Williams would have something to say about that.

He does it because he knows Frank's men are watching. He wants them to think that he's thinking with his dick and not paying attention.

Mmm, I'm not sure I find that a satisfying explanation.

 

[MusterX]

I don't really have anything to say except cheers for making a My Name is Nobody reference.

As a kid I was more of a They call me Trinity mark though (never laughed as hard before or since as I did seeing it age 8).

I love that they materialize amidst the wind and undergrowth -- as if they're emerging out of a haze. It lends them a more sinister edge. It's akin to how Harmonica experiences hazy flashbacks of Frank (those flashbacks and the shoots of the eyes were later referenced in Tarantino's Kill Bill)

View attachment 287943


Another superb thing about that scene is that it's an inversion of the opening of Shane. In Shane, a little kid scouts a man who would become his hero emerge from the wilderness. In West, it's a small boy that scouts the man who would become his killer (likewise, the beginning is an inversion of High Noon).

Just excellent delivery by Henry Fonda. You get the impression that the guy is a bit irritated over having to kill a kid yet it's not going to ruin his day or anything.

And of course, Leone's ultra close-up works wonderfully to magnify Frank's gravitas in this moment. Those baby blue eyes just pop on his wizened visage. And the camera has a slight upwards tilt, to give the subtle impression that you're staring up at him like the little kid is doing.

Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone really are the GOAT director-musician team-up. None can match them in tandem. You won't find better synchronization between sound and image than in a Leone flick.

One of reasons why is I think that Leone himself just had an instinctive understanding of how sound works. Take that opening scene. It was originally scored but replaced with ambiance noises -- and it's fucking impeccable. Leone could perfectly synchronize sound to image no matter what he was working with.

That moment is fucking amazing. Frank's body is crumbling into death, his life-strenght draining away from him. Harmonica placed the Harmonica in his mouth. The flashback comences. Then, when we return to the presence, you see this slight shift of his eyes, this slight moment of realization, who it was all along...

And then he dies.

That sort of hyper-emphatization of the moment of realization... that's fucking cinematic gold right there.

A gun-duel isn't just a moment of bang bang. It's a ritual. A build-up. An escapade of close-ups and wide-shots. Everything is played so to emphazise to gravitas of this moment. Leone does everything he can to present this as something more than it is. He wanted to really revel in that moment before death.

1. Yea I sometimes confuse Trinity and Nobody. As a teen when I watched My Name is Nobody, I didn't know who Sergio Leone was. I just remember thumbing through my 6 possible channels of television and stopping on My Name is Nobody. By the end I was a fan and didn't really even know why other than I knew I loved the style of film. Terence Hill was just great in some of those western rolls. It feels like a lot of people don't even remember the guy.

2. The inversion of the scenes with Once Upon A Time and Kill Bill and the inversion of Shane and Once Upon A Time...

3. Henry Fonda seemed irritated his henchman called him by name but yea, that scene goes a long way toward painting Frank as a ruthless assassin who has no limits. Just as he is about to shoot the kid he grins a little. I actually want you to see it again so here it is time stamped. That grin sort of left a mark in my mind about his character.

So what you are going to see is Fonda's mastery of his craft. He grins just a small grin at the boy with a deep look of thought in his eyes. Then his man calls him Frank. The grin disappears with irritation, and then once again as he is going to shoot the boy, the camera lingers on the boys face as he stares at the gun and then his eyes move up to meet Frank's, and then Frank's subtle little grin returns as he shoots.

Timestamped.




4. Yes, the team of Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone is a dream-team of sight and sound for the Western genre.

5. The build up and pay off for the gunfight scenes is next level IMO. As I've said before, Sergio Leone really has no equals in the Western genre, although @shadow_priest_x disagrees. All the little details of the moments that lead up to the gunfights are what is most important, not the 2 seconds of gun fire. I really liked Tombstone, Unforgiven, even 3:10 to Yuma but nobody can make a Western like Sergio. If he had only made one or two then I might not feel that way but he made a half dozen that were anywhere from good to outstanding. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is one of the only Westerns that consistently challenges Once Upon A Time and it was Sergio as well.

 

[the muntjac]

I think it was mostly Leone saying, "We need more cleavage. How can we do that?"

Needing more cleavage in a film?

 

[europe1]

One thing I noticed in the opening scene is the way our protagonist, Harmonica, is introduced. He has the showdown with three guys and he kills them all but he takes a bullet too and has to sling up his arm.

I think it's very telling though that his demeanor doesn't change though. He still has that steely and impeccable persona -- traipsing around as if born invincible. A gunshot to the shoulder does not make him second guess himself or feel a bout of apprehension. His body can be injured. His mind cannot.

My argument get's a 2+ to persuation due to the Born Invincible reference.

Well in fact while watching the movie I felt like he a good guy who was pretending to be bad.

Fonda is just that good at playing a good guy.

Seriously though, Fonda's work in movies like Grapes of Wrath, 12 Angry Men and the Hitchcock picture The Wrong Man are just masterclasses in humanistic acting. I don't think anyone has ever suprassed him when it comes to portraying everyday people in dramatic scenarios.

Eventually Leone decided to create another trilogy which begins with Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), develops into Duck, You Sucker (1971) and ends with Once Upon a Time in America. The ''Once Upon a Time'' trilogy, as it is often referred to, is effectively about "three historical periods which toughened America".

I feel the need to point out that Duck, You Sucker takes place in Mexico...

These IMDB trivias man.

* Afraid of being typecast having made 3 spaghetti Westerns in a row with Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood declined the opportunity to appear in the film.

Seems sort of odd considering how many Westerns Clint would star in since then -- not to mention direct himself.

The performances almost across the board are excellent,

Pretty damn varied as well. Robards is playing this scruffy, verbose highwayman. Bronson is laconic in the extreme. While Cardinale is this vision of serene beauty despite her surroundings.

Everyone is pretty much on the opposite side of the spectrum in terms of characters and use that to compliment each other. Robards gabbyness is often put in contrast to Cardinale's or Bronson's being so taciturn, for example.

I also think this is an example of the cinemotography and music doing a lot of heavy lifting. It's always easier to present gravitas when you have such amazing visuals and music to back you up.

He was supposed to be menacing but I only found him to be halfway so. He certainly was no Jack Palance in Shane.

Palance in Shane is just matchless when it comes to presenting unbridled sinisterness. But Fonda's character is not really in the same seat. Palance is never upended once in the entirety of Shane until the final shootout.

However, In West, Bronson is sort-of always in the driving seat in relation to Fonda. It's Fonda that is worrying about Bronson, not the other way around as it usually is with villians and heroes (another one of those Spaghetti stylings that seperated American westerns from Italian ones). Even when Fonda has Bronson captured -- Bronson doesn't budge an inch. Fonda slapps and abuses him, yet no matter what, Bronson is always this picture of unflappability and laconicness. He just keeps repeating the names of people Fonda killed... much to Fonda's irkesomness.

Fonda isn't the usual all-powerful villian. It is the villian who has to figure out the hero. Not the hero the villian.

More than anything else, the one thing that stuck out to me the most was the framing of certain shots. If you say nothing else about Leone, you must acknowledge that he's clearly a master of composition.

Yeah Leone could just use compisition and other audio-visual tricks to make scenes feel so grand. Take those three gunmen in the beginning for example. Without his skills with the camera, they would not have felt as important or impactful as they did. They would just have been three assassins to jumpstart the film.

Someone like Woody Strode was in what-must-have-been a dozen westerns before he worked with Leone (he was John Ford's go-to black guy). But he never seemed as cool as he did in 15-minutes of Once Upon A Time in the West, despite having barely any lines at all! It's just a testement to how you can heighten the grandioseness of a scene through visuals.

Speaking of Jill, Claudia Cardinale used to be pretty hot

(assuming "pretty hot" is an understatement)

Oh, and something else that comes to mind. . . The dubbing of the voices. Man. ADR has never felt so much like ADR. I eventually got used to it but it was straight up off-putting at first.

I've actually wondered if the very visually-oriented approach of a lot of Italian cinema has to do with the standardized use of ADR. Almost every movie was filmed without sound being recorded on set (thus keeping costs down). So they had to ADR it afterwards. Naturally, this always makes the dialogue feel rather jarring and abnormal. Was the visual-inventiveness a development meant to complement the lack of convincing dialoge?

The "ADR-everything" policy also produced some funny stories. I remember listening to an interview with Malcolm McDowell about Caligula. He talked about how while he was playing out this uber-dramatic death scene -- where he would scream at the sky in lamentation -- carpenters hammering in the background and assistans where going around asking everyone what they wanted for lunch. It was a bitch to work in Italy since there was no silence on set -- you were always drowned out by the noise from the crew.

Ultimately this is a film about the revenge of a boy he once let live.

Considering how long it took for Frank to figure out whom Bronson was -- he probably thought of that boy as no threat at all. He probably thought he was sparing an ant.

I enjoyed Once Upon a Time quite a bit, but it's not the kind of film I'm going to watch over and over. If it's a Friday night and I'm just chilling and want to pop in a movie then it will probably rarely be this film. Tombstone, however, I can watch over and over and in fact I have watched it many times. It is just SO DAMN GOOD in every aspect of its existence, from the story to the performances to the production design to the direction, and most importantly it is a hell of a lot of FUN!

Personally I don't mesure my likability of a film primarely on it's rewatchability or level-of-entertainment. I think something like gravitas is more important. How much does it affect you? Tombstone is a lot easier to rewatch on a work-day but the grandness of Once Upon A Time affects me in a much more powerful manner.

They all blend together on YouTube with Terence Hill

Funny how Terence Hill started out as a little-value spaghetti-western star and then exploded when he started making slap-o-ramas. His pre-comedy stuff is really mediocre.

One thing that's important to note is that Leone doesn't try to make EVERY shot something special. Some shots are pretty standard shots, which I think is important because it's only by juxtaposing the incredible shots with something more conventional that you can understand who those awesome shots are as awesome as they are.

I think it's worthwhile to compare West with something like Batman vs Superman.

Both are visually-heavy stories. But in West everything feels cohesive. There is a smoothness to the visual narrative. Meanwhile, in BvS there are a lot of great shots but a lot of times they lack impact or resonance. Snyder couldn't meld the visuals into a cohesiveness. You got a series of moments instead of a visual narrative, an escape of vignettes.

As I'm sure you know, there's a lot of debate about how much Tarantino pays homage to old filmmakers and how much it would be more accurate to say he's ripping them off.

I'd like to see a full side-by-side list of shots that he's stolen.

Overall, I think that while Tarantino obviously borrows heavily from other filmmakers, he's skilled enough to work these moments as pastiches instead of straight out theft.

(btw, this video misses a lot of things so it's by no means complete. And some of those moments are so vauge that they might not be deliberate)


http://wiki.tarantino.info/index.php/Kill_Bill_References_Guide

However, Resorvor Dogs is the one film that I would say he straight-up stole a lot of shit for. It's basically a remake of a Ringo Lam film called City on Fire (which Tarantino blatantly denied when people called him out on it, despite it being rather obvious).

So Once Upon a Time in the West vs Shane.

Who wins?

Time to choose!

I think in the last Top 25 movie list I did I had West as nr 4 and Shane as nr 5. But obviously, I love both of them in the extreme.

That's an idea for the club btw, why not let every member do a top 25 list?

I think Spielberg and John Williams would have something to say about that.

Don't get me wrong. They're an excellent team-up. But Williams doesn't elevate the moments in the same way Morricone does, doesn't give them the same gravitas. He's more conventional, giving the film a sense of rythm, speed and elation. There is am emotional resonane which Morricone grants Leone's films. Just listen to the wailing of that harmonica, or that rattle in critical moments, it's like the music itself is calling attention to the closeness of death in these scenes.

5. The build up and pay off for the gunfight scenes is next level IMO. As I've said before, Sergio Leone really has no equals in the Western genre,

One interesting tidbit is that Leone was a dyslexic who did not storyboard his movies of duel-scenes at all and always presented meager, detail-less scripts. He worked out every detail of his movies in his head, every visual snippet. He spent years just ruminating on those moments -- trying to think up how to make them perfect.

 

[MusterX]

My argument get's a 2+ to persuation due to the Born Invincible reference.

I'm sure that as you typed that, you let out your victory laugh, so I grant you the +2 persuasion based on invincibility.

 

[europe1]

Thought I'd ruminate on the film a little. A bit of stream-of-consciousness posting.


One thing about Once Upon A Time in the West is that it manages to present its gunslingers as downright mythic in character. A person like Harmonica is impossibly stoic, laconic in the extreme. Even when he gets shoot he seems mentally impervious to damage. The flesh may be wounded but he does not develop doubt, hesitation or even physical enfeeblement as a result of this. His willpower is unearthly. He seems almost ethereal in his dedication to follow his ritualised vengeance through.

This is what I mean with mythic. He isn't very human in behavior. He seems ruled by fate and determinism instead by human vagrancies and emotions.

Of course this mythic quality extends to his gunskills as well. He's inhumanly good with a gun -- able to outdraw three men in a duel. Classic western hero's weren't like this. They were flesh and blood characters, stuck in a historic milune. They didn't outdraw three men -- that would have seemed infeasible and ridiculous in those old Hollywood films.

When John Wayne as the Ringo Kid dueled three men in Stagecoach (1939) he dived for the ground so to gain a strategic advantage when firing at them. When Gary Cooper played Will Kane in High Noon (1952) and faced four men he sprinted for cover and took them out one-by-one amidst the town. When Glen Ford dueled one man in The Fasters Gun Alive (1956), a third of the movie was just building up the courage to do so.

Western heroes almost never dueled in this ritualistic manner as Leone had them do. They were to realistic. To human in character.

I think that Once Upon a Time in the West and Shane actually have a lot of similarities in terms of theme.

Both are set in the frontiers region, where civilization is in the process of conquering wilderness. In Shane it's homesteaders, in West it's a potential train station.

The train station as a symbol of comming civilization is a well-worn Western trope. West is Leone's most American western in this respect. He uses well-used locations like Monumental Valley and everything.

Both these budding locations of civilization are fought over. But the men who do so are not of civilization. In Shane, everyone who lives in the valley are fully-fleshed human characters (even the bad guys), and those from outside the valley, from outside the outpost of civilization, are mythic gunslingers who rode out from the wilderness, mysterious and inhumanly good with a gun.

It's similar but different in West. The cruelty of Frank's banditry days are already legendary and he and Harmonica seem impeccable gunslingers. Frank knows that civilization is coming -- and that he must transition. He must change the gun for the desk. Harmonica, another character from the days when the West was wild, is out to stop him from transitioning into the civilized world.

I don't think it's a coincidence that West is a movie about a ghost from the past who comes out to haunt a guy when he's trying to leave his violent old life behind him. The Wild West won't allow him to just leave it all behind.

Harmonica holds no pretenses of becomming civilized. When Frank is dead and the train at last rolls in he departs the outpost for parts unknown. He rides out into history, the last vestige of a mythic past. The death of a rover like Cheyenne likewise signals the end of the Wild West.

In Shane, it was a profoundly painful experience for Shane that he could not transition into civilized life. He couldn't change his mold -- the character he developed in the Wild West days. But Harmonica, again, seems ruled by destiny. He seems to feel little-to-no existential angst that there is no place for him in the new world. He just is what he is. Shane is a mythic character that desperately yearned to become part of a collective -- he was mythic yet still painfully human, there are no such conflict in West.

(Shadow said something about wanting more cleavage)

In Shane, civilization is for the homesteaders. In West, civilization is more gendered. Civilization is represented by Cardinale. Leone's cowboys are some of the most rugged and sun-baked rovers in history. Cardinale's femininity, smoothness of skin and urbane sense of fashion stands in stark contrast to them. She ends up becoming the den mother for this budding outpost -- bringing water to the railroad workers near the end. She has a matriarchal position in this new world, unlike the mythic gunslingers who either die in the transition or depart it for ever.

Speaking of Cardinale, she seems pretty impervious to trauma herself. Her newlywed husband is murdered -- and later on she's raped by his killer. She acquiesce to his advances in a bid to save her life. As Frank says "I might feel a bit sorry killing you. You like being alive."

Despite these potential traumas -- she comes out seemingly undamaged in the end. Unlike everyone else she has a future. The frontier is a formative place and she can make her place in it. She's hardy enough to bear the pain until it all rides out.

 

[Guestx]

I feel the need to point out that Duck, You Sucker takes place in Mexico...

These IMDB trivias man.

It sounds like the trivia piece is referencing a direct quote, though.

(assuming "pretty hot" is an understatement)

Well, her face is just a little goofy. . .

The "ADR-everything" policy also produced some funny stories. I remember listening to an interview with Malcolm McDowell about Caligula. He talked about how while he was playing out this uber-dramatic death scene -- where he would scream at the sky in lamentation -- carpenters hammering in the background and assistans where going around asking everyone what they wanted for lunch. It was a bitch to work in Italy since there was no silence on set -- you were always drowned out by the noise from the crew.

That's hilarious. It seems like even if they weren't recording sound that the director would still call for silence so that the actors can get into the right headspace to give their best performance.

Personally I don't mesure my likability of a film primarely on it's rewatchability or level-of-entertainment. I think something like gravitas is more important. How much does it affect you? Tombstone is a lot easier to rewatch on a work-day but the grandness of Once Upon A Time affects me in a much more powerful manner.

I can see it both ways, but for me, when it comes down to it, the movies that end up at the top of my list are those for which I grow a FONDNESS that makes me want to rewatch them over and over.

While I recognize that The Godfather is ultimately a "better" film than The Fast and The Furious, there's no doubt that TF&TF is a much more important film to me than The Godfather is. The movies that I enjoy the most are those that have a strong FUN FACTOR and/or that engage me in some special way mentally.

For instance, take the Indiana Jones films, Sleepy Hollow, The Mummy, Top Gun or even something like Fargo. These films all have that "fun factor" and they are films that I've returned to over and over throughout the years.

Or take films like The Shining, Mulholland, and Primer. These all engage me mentally in a way that makes me want to figure them out, and so I devote a lot of time rewatching them and trying to put the puzzle together.

That's an idea for the club btw, why not let every member do a top 25 list?

What do you mean exactly? Like just do a special thread where we all list and discuss our Top 25 films?

Don't get me wrong. They're an excellent team-up. But Williams doesn't elevate the moments in the same way Morricone does, doesn't give them the same gravitas.

You think so?

I can't say I agree with that. Just taking Jurassic Park as an example, there are moments in that film where the soundtrack soars and, combined with the visuals, I find these moments to be some of the most powerful in cinema history.

 

[Guestx]

In Shane, civilization is for the homesteaders. In West, civilization is more gendered. Civilization is represented by Cardinale. Leone's cowboys are some of the most rugged and sun-baked rovers in history. Cardinale's femininity, smoothness of skin and urbane sense of fashion stands in stark contrast to them. She ends up becoming the den mother for this budding outpost -- bringing water to the railroad workers near the end. She has a matriarchal position in this new world, unlike the mythic gunslingers who either die in the transition or depart it for ever.

Speaking of Cardinale, she seems pretty impervious to trauma herself. Her newlywed husband is murdered -- and later on she's raped by his killer. She acquiesce to his advances in a bid to save her life. As Frank says "I might feel a bit sorry killing you. You like being alive."

Despite these potential traumas -- she comes out seemingly undamaged in the end. Unlike everyone else she has a future. The frontier is a formative place and she can make her place in it. She's hardy enough to bear the pain until it all rides out.

Just to comment briefly on this, I remember thinking in that final scene where she's bringing out the water--one beautiful woman surrounded by a horde of rough men--that her present circumstances were not safe ones for her. It was just hard for me to believe that all of those guys would behave themselves.

 

[JayPettryMMA]

Finally got around to watching this one again. It's an all-time great. Seriously I think it could be in any self-respecting top five western list, and if not 5 because whatever, it's in every top ten. Wouldn't make sense otherwise.

I've been sick lately, had a nasty sinus infection that shut me down for a while. Coupled with the sudden cold rush, it did a number on me. As I mentioned in another thread, I tried watching it a week and so ago, and conked out about a half hour in. Heavy medicine and such. You can't blame me though, long periods of silence leading up to something terrible usually, I just wouldn't make it until something major happened. I did this time, and made sure to pay attention several things this time around like the cinematography and the sound. The little details enhance this picture to the level of the masterpiece that it is, ranging from ambient windmills to the sheer all-encompassing sound of a trash passing right overhead, while in my full 5.1 surround sound. I have had this stereo system for quite some time now, and I imagine many films can change in their impact based on the stereo you have. The music really plays a factor as well. Think of the opening shootout - silence as Charles Bronson looks at them, says a few lines, they respond, and then the music slowly rolls in. As it builds to a mild crescendo, it abruptly stops, and they shoot. Then, silence as the ambient noise of the windmill whines in the background, and next to nothing as Charles Bronson picks himself up and walks away. As so much of westerns like these have long stretches without dialogue, the details in the background really stand up and shout.

I want to piggyback on what SPX said earlier - every shot is a self-contained film of its own. You could pause the film almost anywhere and get something marvelous. I went to California in 2014, and while going through SF and LA, I noticed several memorabilia shops that had major films preserved with blown up images of authentic film clips. There were some good ones, but there were also a lot of junk, and not as in a movie I didn't enjoy, but as in the images they chose to memorialize were silly. There was one for one of the Harry Potters, and it was just a few shots of Daniel Radcliffe standing somewhere in a scene. A lot of films would be like that, where they have a few scenes that could be pulled out and looked at iconically, like for example the thumbs up scene from T2, but then the rest is not worth keeping. You know a film is special when you could pause it at almost any given scene and blow up the frame into a poster and it would look good, and Once Upon a Time in the West is that kind of rare film. I don't have to use any shots for emphasis, as he already posted a bunch earlier in the thread.

Henry Fonda had practically always been the hero, up until this point. I wonder what the marketing and promotion was going into this - did Paramount let everyone know Fonda was the bad guy? Things worked differently back then, so word likely wouldn't have gotten around, compared to something like Benedict Cumberbatch's role in Star Trek Into Darkness, that was the worst kept secret in Hollywood but had it been the early 80s, people would have been blown away. I have to imagine a lot of people came into this familiar with Leone's body of work with the Eastwood trilogy, but had no idea the stone cold killer would be Henry Fonda. Sure he played Jesse James's brother before, but I don't think he played a character anywhere near the evil that we got from this role. We (the audience) were used to him as Tom Joad, Juror 8, Wyatt Earp, and other more heroic or at least good characters. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during one of the first American screenings of this film, one in Hollywood that was screened for all the major directors and actors of the era, and watch them freak out as the camera pans up to Henry Fonda in the dust and then he shoots a kid. I bet someone fainted.

This film is definitely a love letter to beloved westerns that came before, from the cinematography to the layout of major scenes to costumes to music. You can see the influences of Shane, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and so many more as the film progresses. It doesn't harp on those, as modern films seem to, when those kinds of films practically stop the action to go "remember this thing?" It just flows instead, and doesn't disrupt anything.

Thinking about Sergio Leone's legacy for a minute there, I can't help but realize I never saw the "sequel" to this film, "Duck, You Sucker!" I've seen everything else he's helmed but that isn't saying much, basically his two trilogies and his first film about Greece I saw a few years ago thanks to Dan Carlin's shows. Strange that a director so acclaimed only made seven films, and I wonder why it took him so long to finish Once Upon a Time in America. I know it was an unpopular idea given how successful he was with spaghetti westerns, but come on, he must have earned a little wiggle room with his four powerhouses. I would have loved to see his takes on other genre films, but alas, it was not meant to be.

Something I have always enjoyed about this western over many others is that there is no "man in the white hat." There's bad and there's neutral. We never really get to know Charles Bronson's character at its core, but he's definitely not a hero. He guns down those three killers right out of the gate, so he's not good nor evil. He's something else. He's the man in the grey hat. Even though there's no inherent struggle of good vs evil in this picture (at least I don't see it that way), it does follow the Leone trope of having a nameless "protagonist" who speaks softly but carries a big stick. It does break the mold by the villain being the main character, I would argue.

Ennio Morricone, like usual, nails the music for this film. It's very minimalist, with just a few drum beats, chimes/bells, and a good reverb effect, and yet the music sets scenes brilliantly. It's ominous, exciting, and has some other intangible that I can't match with other composers off the top of my head. I will say that a good score can enhance a scene from great to beyond, and some directors/composers mesh so well together, the score feels like an extension of the director's camera eye.

9/10 +. I'm not sure it's a 10/10 but it's certainly not far off. I gave Shane a 9 so it's only fair to give this a 9 as well. I'm glad I went through this again, I picked up so many more small things this time around. For instance, the flashback shot of baby Charles Bronson and his brother, when they did the slow zoom outward, it was absolutely magnificent. The whole final sequence, you could teach a course about, really.