cinema history class: once upon a time in the west (1968)

The session: "And the Train Kept a Rollin'"
We look at Spaghetti Westerns with an eye toward trains and how they helped change the West

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 1: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Directed by Sergio Leone

My Impressions Going In:
I'd seen his film a few times before and thought very highly of it..

Plot:
A widow fights to keep the land her husband died for, while a mysterious gunman fights his own little war for reasons nobody understands.

Reaction and Other Folderol:
By the time Sergio Leone had made his third Spaghetti Western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, he had pretty much perfected the genre. But more than that -- he had figured out how to turn Spaghetti Westerns into epics.

And, with Once Upon a Time in the West he continued in that mode -- making a sprawling movie that tells a compelling story but is still bigger than simply the story it tells. It's meant to be an exemplar of is time, making a grand statement about the taming of the Wild West, with the railroad being the major catalyst. In the opening (which, by the way, is among the best opening scenes in cinema history) and second scenes, we see a world where the law is irrelevant and guns rule the day. As the  movie closes, a town is being born out of scraggly desert as a host of hopeful people cooperate in the enterprise. In between, we see the tension between he lawless avatars of the old west and the disciplined civilized people who finally tame it. While I'd seen this movie several times before, including once on the big screen, I had never really caught on to the level of its ambition. It took Keith's email (about  the session) and his introduction to make me make the connection.

Charles Bronson, as Harmonica, is playing to his strength as a man of few words. But the real stars are Jason Robards, who steals every scene he's in, and Henry Fonda. Fonda is in the unfamiliar position of playing an evil antagonist. But he does such a perfect job, one almost wishes he would have made a career out of it.

In some ways, One Upon a Time is more ambitious than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which was Leone's prior effort. Yet I don't think it quite lives up to the high standard set by its predecessor. While Good/Bad/Ugly is a 10 in my book, Time is just a shade lower.

Ratings
Me: 9.8
Bob-O: 9.8
Christina: 9.7
Dave: 9.8
Ethan: 8
Evelyn: Good Movie
Joe: 10