As someone who has never particularly been a fan of the western genre, I'm sure that I don't fit much into the demographic for Once Upon a Time in the West. Still, I was able to find enough to admire here. Sergio Leone is a director who, if nothing else, knows damn well how to stage a scene. The first hour is basically a combination of extended introductions to our main characters, but each one is incredibly tense and memorable. We meet the mysterious Harmonica (Charles Bronson) gunning down those who were out to kill him, the villainous Frank (Henry Fonda) as he shoots a child, the mischievous Cheyenne (Jason Robards) as he escapes custody and the beautiful Jill (Claudia Cardinale) as she arrives off her train.
Each sequence is drawn out but doesn't feel overlong, giving us a first look at the characters that sticks with the viewer until long after the credits roll. That opening hour doesn't delve into the plot much, or the characters themselves, but it's easily my favorite area of the film as it shows a lot of what Leone is best at doing. In these scenes Leone shows his gift for building suspense, utilizing silence when it's appropriate as opposed to trying to ratchet up the tension with directorial tricks. He lets the silence build it all, giving an eerie calm so that when the violence occurs it startles you, shakes you up. In a time so desensitized to graphic violence on film, Leone knows how to make his bullets matter.
The four main characters are all memorable and solidly well-acted, potentially with the exception of Harmonica. I found Bronson serviceable in his role, but the role itself wasn't one that I cared for; the whole mysterious stranger playing his harmonica because he's a badass thing was something that I found laughable almost immediately and it was hard for me to take seriously throughout the film. Bronson allowed me to get over it after a while, along with lessened use of his theme that I found incredibly grating in the opening act, but I still had a hard time not laughing at the basic idea of the character. The other three were sources of great enjoyment for me, though. Fonda goes against his persona and plays a vile bad guy, which is a genius bit of casting on Leone's part, and he uses those baby blue eyes to penetrate you so he can rip out your heart. I think it's one of his finest performances, seeing someone so adored for being wholesome take on such a cruel bastard.
Claudia Cardinale is stunningly gorgeous here, but she also brings a lot of womanly fire to the boy's club. Working against people like Fonda and Bronson, it could have been easy to fall into the role of the helpless woman, but Cardinale makes Jill McBain maybe the most aggressive character in this show. She's got a ton of passion and refuses to let the men push her around. Cardinale may be my favorite performance in the film, but I'd have to say that my favorite character belongs to Jason Robards' Cheyenne. While the feud between Frank and Harmonica rages on, battling with each other while Jill is caught in the middle, Cheyenne is just a wild outlaw having fun in the midst of it all; and oh what fun Robards makes him. You can tell that Robards had a great time shooting this, and seeing him in this character brings a levity to the film that is a welcome relief.
There are definitely a lot of things that I liked about this film, but for everything that I liked there was something that I disliked as well. As great as Leone is at crafting individual sequences, the film became rather tiresome once it tried to actually start doing something with it's characters and narrative. The first hour is exciting and the final half hour or so was a nice conclusion, but everything in the middle dragged on and on. I enjoyed the characters but I didn't particularly care about them, and the script writes them all so thin.
Everything is too black-and-white, with a meaningless plot that was clearly created around the individual scenes. It's like they were writing their cool characters and cool sequences but then realized they had to actually make a narrative to have them exist in so they just tossed something together. It doesn't have a drive at all, despite such excellent moments. Once Upon a Time in the West is a film with a lot to admire, but for me it ended up being less than the sum of it's parts.
Each sequence is drawn out but doesn't feel overlong, giving us a first look at the characters that sticks with the viewer until long after the credits roll. That opening hour doesn't delve into the plot much, or the characters themselves, but it's easily my favorite area of the film as it shows a lot of what Leone is best at doing. In these scenes Leone shows his gift for building suspense, utilizing silence when it's appropriate as opposed to trying to ratchet up the tension with directorial tricks. He lets the silence build it all, giving an eerie calm so that when the violence occurs it startles you, shakes you up. In a time so desensitized to graphic violence on film, Leone knows how to make his bullets matter.
The four main characters are all memorable and solidly well-acted, potentially with the exception of Harmonica. I found Bronson serviceable in his role, but the role itself wasn't one that I cared for; the whole mysterious stranger playing his harmonica because he's a badass thing was something that I found laughable almost immediately and it was hard for me to take seriously throughout the film. Bronson allowed me to get over it after a while, along with lessened use of his theme that I found incredibly grating in the opening act, but I still had a hard time not laughing at the basic idea of the character. The other three were sources of great enjoyment for me, though. Fonda goes against his persona and plays a vile bad guy, which is a genius bit of casting on Leone's part, and he uses those baby blue eyes to penetrate you so he can rip out your heart. I think it's one of his finest performances, seeing someone so adored for being wholesome take on such a cruel bastard.
Claudia Cardinale is stunningly gorgeous here, but she also brings a lot of womanly fire to the boy's club. Working against people like Fonda and Bronson, it could have been easy to fall into the role of the helpless woman, but Cardinale makes Jill McBain maybe the most aggressive character in this show. She's got a ton of passion and refuses to let the men push her around. Cardinale may be my favorite performance in the film, but I'd have to say that my favorite character belongs to Jason Robards' Cheyenne. While the feud between Frank and Harmonica rages on, battling with each other while Jill is caught in the middle, Cheyenne is just a wild outlaw having fun in the midst of it all; and oh what fun Robards makes him. You can tell that Robards had a great time shooting this, and seeing him in this character brings a levity to the film that is a welcome relief.
There are definitely a lot of things that I liked about this film, but for everything that I liked there was something that I disliked as well. As great as Leone is at crafting individual sequences, the film became rather tiresome once it tried to actually start doing something with it's characters and narrative. The first hour is exciting and the final half hour or so was a nice conclusion, but everything in the middle dragged on and on. I enjoyed the characters but I didn't particularly care about them, and the script writes them all so thin.
Everything is too black-and-white, with a meaningless plot that was clearly created around the individual scenes. It's like they were writing their cool characters and cool sequences but then realized they had to actually make a narrative to have them exist in so they just tossed something together. It doesn't have a drive at all, despite such excellent moments. Once Upon a Time in the West is a film with a lot to admire, but for me it ended up being less than the sum of it's parts.