Film

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

Director: Sergio Leone

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

The Western is dead - or so they tell us. Long live Leone's timeless monument to the death of the West itself, rivalled only by Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid for the title of best ever made. We're talking favourite films here, so only superlatives will do. Worth starting at the beginning: a stakeout at a deserted station, Jack Elam and a fly - the most audacious credit sequence in film history. A soundtrack never bettered by any Dolby knob-twiddlers - unnatural sounds of 'silence' and Morricone's greatest score, handing Bronson his identity with a plangent, shivery harmonica riff, carrying Leone's crane shots upwards over a railhead township, clip-clopping Robards into the rigorous good/bad/ugly schema. Countercasting (sadist Fonda) and location choice (Monument Valley) that render an iconic base for Leone and collaborators (Bertolucci and Argento, no less) to perform their revisionist/revolutionary critique of the Classic American (i.e. Fordian) Creation Myth. And more, too. Critical tools needed are eyes and ears - this is Cinema.

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