ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1969) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1997 Ted Prigge
Director: Sergio Leone Writers: Segio Donati and Mickey Knox (from a story by Sergio Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Dario Argento) Starring: Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, Keenan Wynn
Following the international sucess of such spag westerns as "Fistful of Dollars," "For a Few Dollars More," and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" (all starring Clint Eastwood), Italian director Sergio Leone made a rather Hollywood film in what would seem to be a typical Hollywood western. I mean, it stars Henry Fonda. But, being the cool-ass guy that he was, he went and made a brilliant anti-Western Hollywood style, most notably shown in his at first questionable casting of Fonda as...the villain.
"Once Upon a Time in the West" has pretty much nothing to do with the previous "Man With No Name Trilogy," except that it takes place in the west and has a man with no name, this time playing a harmonica and played by Charles Bronson instead of Eastwood. Also, the lead character in this film is not the man with the harmonica, but rather a woman (Claudia Cardinale, who was in Fellini's "8 1/2" and the first and last "Pink Panther" movies), although she's a whore who was giving up her profession for a nice little marriage to a farmer in the west.
The film starts off with one of Leone's classic drawn-out scenes, involving a 10 minute wait while the credits appear in interesting forms and a group of killers wait for their victim to arrive on a train. It's Bronson who easily gets rid of his killers. Cut to the farmer in the west who's preparing a feast for his family and his new wife, who his son is going to pick up at the train station. But Fonda, a crook working for a train entrepeneur, comes in with his bandits and kills the whole family, save the little boy, who Fonda personally shoots (I can't believe Henry would kill a kid).
The wife (Cardinale) arrives with no one to pick her up, discovers her family is dead, and one by one runs into Bronson, Fonda, and eventually a very hairy escaped con played by Jason Robards. What will occur is a kind of war between these three over her property, even though Robards and Bronson form a partnership sometime into the film, while Fonda needs to help his boss get rid of Cardinale so he can build train tracks through her property (doesn't this sound a bit like the premise of "Blazing Saddles?")
As in all of Leone's films, the plot twists over and over again, and there are original gunfights (one involving bandits hidden all over a town, all aiming for one guy, while another shooter decides to help the lone target. This film is fueled by hidden pasts, and characterization. We never know who Bronson really is until the end, in a dazzling duel between he and Fonda. And we also get the classic drawn-out plot, sometimes not having any dialogue.
The acting is actually very good. Cardinale, who's a good actress but who's looks sometimes seemed to overpower her performance (i.e. "8 1/2"), gives a strong performance in a role that would usually be weak. Yes, she was a whore, but she's gotten past that point and finds herself all alone at one point in the film. Fonda, who had NEVER played a bad guy in a film before, is surprisingly awesome in the villain role. He's creepy as hell in some scenes, especially where he shoots the kid (and where he nearly has sex with Cardinale, but for other reasons - he's like 50 or so in this). And Bronson and Robards are awesome, as they always are (okay, I think Bronson rocks).
"Once Upon a Time in the West" is a classic which has been kind of underrated (I never even knew it existed until I started disecting the career of Leone). Evn so, it's still not as cool as Leone's previous films, but is an all-around better film than all of them except "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." And, of course, it's a kick-ass flick.
MY RATING (out of 4): ****
Homepage at: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/8335/
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