Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #251 Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
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When a Western TV actor named Clint Eastwood travelled to Italy to make movies he became a God, an icon, a hero the world over. The Paint Your Wagon songbird was fortunate in that he got to work with Sergio Leone, who understood movie stardom like no one else.
Eastwood was the exception. Most struggling American actors who traveled to Europe to take part in the Spaghetti Western boom were like Rick Dalton of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. For them, working in Italy was a lateral move at best. They just went from being b-list western actors in Hollywood to being b-list western actors in Italy.
That was not true, thankfully, of actors lucky enough to work with Leone. Charles Bronson was an established star when he made Once Upon a Time in the West, with credits like The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and The Dirty Dozen to his name yet his performance here was nevertheless a revelation.
As someone who grew up knowing Bronson as a wooden old man who sought bloody revenge and a sizable paycheck in a series of forgettable Cannon vehicles I was gob-smacked by what a badass Bronson could be before the Death Wish era.
Bronson here receives one of the greatest introductions in the history of film, regardless of genre or country. Once Upon a Time in the West opens with three iconic henchmen descending ominously upon a lonely train station in the sparsely populated West.
There’s Stony (Woody Strode), a scowling, effortlessly intimidating mountain of a black man who looks like he was carved out of marble, Snaky (Jack Elam), a hulking brute with a sour expression and aura of pure evil and finally the maniacal Knuckles (Al Murlock, who committed suicide by hanging himself while still in costume for Once Upon a Time in the West).
This treacherous trio is so innately menacing that it doesn’t need to do or say anything to be utterly terrifying. Leone seems to be setting up Stony, Snaky and Knuckles as some of the scariest villains in film history, absolute monsters.
Then a harmonica-playing man of mystery played by Bronson gets off his train and, sensing intuitively that these bad men are there to kill him, mows down all three men in a mere matter of seconds.
THIS, friends, is an introduction. Leone establishes Stony, Snaky and Knuckles as world-class tough guys, only to have the film’s real hero kill them all almost immediately.
“Harmonica", as Bronson’s musically minded murderer is known, is in town on a mission of vengeance against Frank (Henry Fonda, cast brazenly and brilliantly against type), the black-hearted, cold-blooded enforcer for Mr. Morton, a Tuberculosis-stricken railroad magnate intent on finishing a transcontinental railroad before he dies.
Morton is thwarted in his aspirations by Brett McBain (Frank Wolff), a gentleman in a savage land who wisely snapped up land essential to building the railroad and is coldly murdered for his foresight, alongside his three children, including a boy that Frank orders killed in a moment that’s bracingly dark over a half century later.
The railroad man with the fancy clothes and big time aspirations does not realize that before he was killed along with his family Morton married Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale), a lady in fancy hats who toiled as a sex worker in New Orleans.
The much sought after land consequently belongs to Brett’s secret bride, a beauty who looks like she smells like lilacs and the finest Parisian perfume whereas most of the brutes she encounters appear to be unfamiliar with the concept of bathing and/or personal hygiene.
Once Upon a Time in the West is a profoundly physical endeavor, a grimy, visceral experience coated in a thick coat of perspiration and dirt. Leone’s masterpiece is consequently a gritty, nuanced exploration of the decidedly uncivilized process of bringing civilization to the Wild West.
Harmonica and sharp-shooting outlaw Manuel "Cheyenne" Gutiérrez (Jason Robards) take it upon themselves to protect the widow from Frank and his henchmen, motivated by a combination of lust, honor and duty.
Jill wants to realize her dead husband’s dream of building the town of Sweetwater in the middle of nowhere but she’ll need to both survive and hold onto her land to do so.
The sexual politics in Once Upon a Time in the West can best be described as “rapey.” The threat of sexual violence hangs heavy over every scene with its strong-willed heroine.
Cardinale’s retired brothel worker understands that her remarkable beauty is a source of power even as it makes her a target for sweaty, brutal men who seem like they haven’t seen a woman in years, let alone a world-class beauty like her.
Even if she was not formerly in the business of exchanging sex for money, Jill would still see sex as fundamentally transactional, a matter of using what you have to get what you want, even if it’s just to survive to see another day.
My television has never seemed wider or more epic than while watching Once Upon a Time in the West. It’s as if no filmmaker ever took full advantage of the infinite cinematic possibilities of the width.
“Unhurried” doesn’t do justice to Once Upon a Time in the West’s perfectly unhurried pacing. Leone takes his sweet time here, extremely aware that he is a master at the very height of his extraordinary powers. Leone trusts his performers and the power of images to such an extent that words barely seem necessary. That Once Upon a Time in the West has a clever and brilliantly constructed screenplay feels like a bonus.
Re-watching Once Upon a Time in the West made me wonder why I never choose to watch westerns of my own volition when I love movies like this so much. The answer, unsurprisingly is that I fucking love great westerns like Once Upon a Time in the West and The Wild Bunch but find the genre a little sleepily and drearily masculine on the whole.
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