Once Upon a Time in the West () is a 1968 epic spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone from a screenplay he co-wrote with Sergio Donati. It stars Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson, Gabriele Ferzetti, Woody Strode, Jack Elam, Lionel Stander, Paolo Stoppa, Frank Wolff, and Keenan Wynn. The widescreen cinematography was by Tonino Delli Colli and the film score was composed and conducted by Ennio Morricone.
After directing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone decided to retire from Westerns and aimed to produce his film based on the novel The Hoods, which eventually became Once Upon a Time in America. However, Leone accepted an offer from Paramount Pictures providing Henry Fonda and a budget to produce another Western. He recruited Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci to devise the plot, researching other Westerns in the process. After Clint Eastwood turned down an offer to play the protagonist, Bronson was offered the role. During production, Leone recruited Donati to rewrite the script due to concerns over time limitations. The film is the first installment in Leone's Once Upon a Time trilogy, followed by Duck, You Sucker! and Once Upon a Time in America, though the films do not share any characters.
The original version by the director was 165 minutes when it was first released on December 21, 1968. This version was shown in European cinemas, and was a box-office success. For the U.S. release on May 28, 1969, it was edited down to 140 minutes by Paramount and was a financial flop.
In 2009, the film was selected for preservation in the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film is regarded as one of the greatest Westerns and one of the greatest films in history.
Plot
A train arrives at the Old West town of Flagstone where a man with a harmonica (later dubbed "Harmonica") kills three men attempting to ambush him. Although Harmonica was expecting an outlaw named Frank, he concludes the men belonged to the outlaw Cheyenne's gang. Meanwhile, Frank and his gang murder Brett McBain and his three children as they prepare for a celebration at his ranch Sweetwater. Shortly after, a former prostitute arrives at Sweetwater and reveals she is Jill McBain, who had married McBain a month earlier in New Orleans. Frank leaves evidence at the murder scene implicating Cheyenne. Jill searches for a motive behind the murders.
Railway tycoon Morton hired Frank to intimidate, not murder, McBain. McBain intended to profit by building a watering station on Sweetwater, knowing that the railroad from Flagstone would pass through his property. However, if the station was incomplete by the time the railroad reached Sweetwater, the property would revert to the railroad. McBain's murder puts Morton at odds with Frank, who desires the land for himself. Jill, as McBain's surviving widow, now owns Sweetwater.
Harmonica encounters Cheyenne, now a fugitive, who denies his men tried to ambush him. Harmonica saves Jill from two of Frank's men and spies out the railway carriage where Morton (owing to his spinal tuberculosis) is confined on crutches. Harmonica discovers the connection between Frank and Morton but is captured. Frank is called away and Cheyenne rescues Harmonica. The two collaborate to help Jill save Sweetwater, using stockpiled materials to start building a station.
After a threatening sexual encounter with Frank, Jill is forced to auction the land; however, Frank's henchmen intimidate bidders so Frank can buy it at a low price. Harmonica appears with Cheyenne in tow and bids $5,000, which is the bounty on Cheyenne as a wanted fugitive. Frank is unsuccessful in buying Harmonica out, and wonders why Harmonica is pursuing him. Morton bribes Frank's own men to kill him, but Harmonica intervenes to save Frank, due to having unfinished business with him.
Cheyenne escapes custody, and he and his gang engage Frank's remaining men in a gunfight on Morton's train. Except for Cheyenne, who heads to Sweetwater, everyone is killed, including Morton. Upon seeing the aftermath of the fight, Frank rides to Sweetwater, where Harmonica is waiting. Cheyenne arrived earlier, but remains inside the ranch house with Jill. Outside, Harmonica and Frank engage in a showdown. Through a flashback, it is revealed that Frank had once prepared to hang a man, forcing his younger brother to support him on his shoulders while playing a harmonica. Eventually, the boy collapsed, dooming his brother. Now Harmonica, the boy grown up, beats Frank to the draw and, as Frank lies dying, he pushes the harmonica into Frank's mouth.
After Harmonica and Cheyenne leave Sweetwater together, Cheyenne collapses and dies from a gunshot wound he received during the fight with Morton. Harmonica puts Cheyenne's body on his horse and rides off as Jill serves water to railroad workers.
Cast
In addition to the credited cast, uncredited actors in the film include Enzo Santaniello (Timmy), Simonetta Santaniello (Maureen), and Stefano Imparato (Patrick) as the McBain children; Al Mulock as the third station gunman Knuckles; Conrado San Martín as Vecino, Marco Zuanelli as Wobbles, and Claudio Mancini as Harmonica's brother.
Uncredited actors playing members of Cheyenne's gang include Aldo Sambrell, Lorenzo Robledo, and Bruno Corazzari. Members of Frank's gang include Benito Stefanelli, Román Ariznavarreta, Frank Braña, Antonio Molino Rojo, and Fabio Testi.
Production Origins After making his American gunfighter epic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone had intended to make no more Westerns, believing he had said all he wanted to say. He had come across the novel The Hoods by the pseudonymous "Harry Grey", a fictionalized book based on the author's own experiences as a Jewish hood during Prohibition, and planned to adapt it into a film (17 years later, it would become his final film, Once Upon a Time in America). Leone, though, was offered only Westerns by the Hollywood studios. United Artists (which had produced the Dollars Trilogy) offered him the opportunity to make a film starring Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas and Rock Hudson, but Leone refused. When Paramount offered Leone a generous budget along with access to Henry Fonda—his favorite actor, and one with whom he had wanted to work for virtually all of his career—Leone accepted the offer.Frayling, Christopher. Sergio Leone: Once Upon a Time in Italy. Thames & Hudson, 2008.
Leone commissioned Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento to help him devise a film treatment in late 1966. The men spent much of the following year watching and discussing numerous classic Westerns, such as High Noon, The Iron Horse, The Comancheros and The Searchers at Leone's house, and constructed a story made up almost entirely of references to American Westerns.
Style and pacing For Once Upon a Time in the West, Leone changed his approach over his earlier Westerns. Whereas the "Dollars" films were quirky and up-tempo, a celebratory yet tongue-in-cheek parody of the icons of the Wild West, this film is much slower in pace and somber in theme. Leone's distinctive style, which is very different from, but very much influenced by, Akira Kurosawa's Sanshiro Sugata (1943), is still present, but has been modified for the beginning of Leone's second trilogy, the so-called Once Upon a Time trilogy. The characters in this film are also beginning to change markedly over their predecessors in the Dollars trilogy. They are not quite as defined and, unusually for Leone characters up to this point, they begin to change (or at least attempt to) over the course of the story. This signals the start of the second phase of Leone's style, which was further developed in Duck, You Sucker! and Once Upon a Time in America.
The film features long, slow scenes with very little dialogue and little happening, broken by brief and sudden violence. Leone was far more interested in the rituals preceding violence than in the violence itself. The tone of the film is consistent with the arid semidesert in which the story unfolds, and imbues it with a feeling of realism that contrasts with the elaborately choreographed gunplay.
Leone liked to tell the story of a cinema in Paris where the film ran uninterrupted for two years. When he visited this theater, he was surrounded by fans who wanted his autograph, as well as the projectionist, who was less than enthusiastic. Leone claimed the projectionist told him, "I kill you! The same movie over and over again for two years! And it's so SLOW!"
Locations
Interiors for the film were shot in Cinecittà studios, Rome.The Wages of Sin (2003) , part two of the making of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West The opening sequence with the three gunmen meeting the train was one of the sequences filmed in Spain. Shooting for scenes at Cattle Corner Station, as the location was called in the story, was scheduled for four days and was filmed at the "ghost" railway station in the municipality of La Calahorra, near Guadix, in the Province of Granada, Spain, as were the scenes of Flagstone. Shooting for the scenes in the middle of the railway were filmed along the Guadix–Hernán-Valle railway line."La Calahorra, una estación de cine para los 'western' españoles" , 20 Minutos, March 1, 2013 (in Spanish). Retrieved March 17, 2017."Estados Unidos en Granada. La Calahorra: escenario de Westerns" , Guía Repsol, October 10, 2015 (in Spanish). Retrieved March 17, 2017. Scenes at the Sweetwater Ranch were filmed in the Tabernas Desert, Spain; the ranch is still located at what is now called Western Leone. The brick arch, where Bronson's character flashes back to his youth and the original hanging incident, was built near a small airport 15 miles (24 km) north of Monument Valley, in Utah, and two miles from U.S. Route 163 (which links Gouldings Lodge and Mexican Hat). Monument Valley itself is used extensively for the route Jill travels towards her new family in Sweetwater.
Casting
Henry Fonda did not accept Leone's first offer to play Frank, so Leone flew to New York to convince him, telling him: "Picture this: the camera shows a gunman from the waist down pulling his gun and shooting a running child. The camera tilts up to the gunman's face and... it's Henry Fonda". Fonda also had not seen any of Leone's previous work including his Dollars Trilogy with Clint Eastwood so Leone arranged a screening of the trilogy for the actor. After the screening and a meeting with Leone, Fonda called his friend Eli Wallach, who had co-starred in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Wallach advised Fonda to do the film, telling him "You will have the time of your life."
When he accepted the role, Fonda came to the set with brown contact lenses and a handlebar mustache. Fonda felt having dark eyes and facial hair would blend well with his character's evil, and also help the audience to accept this "new" Fonda as the bad guy, but Leone immediately told him to remove the contacts and facial hair, saying he did not want Fonda to look like a cliche villain.
Leone said he cast Claudia Cardinale in part because she was an Italian national and, as such, they could get a tax break.
Leone wanted the three men who ambush Harmonica and are subsequently killed to be played by Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in a symbolic killing of the Dollars Trilogy which Leone wanted to put behind him. However, though Wallach was willing, Van Cleef was unavailable and Eastwood was not interested in the role.
French actor-filmmaker Robert Hossein was set to play a supporting role as a member of Frank's gang, and is listed in the cast by some sources (including the AFI Catalog of Feature Films). However, Hossein stated in a 2015 featurette for his film Cemetery Without Crosses that he did not actually appear in the film.
Localization