Top Westerns: 2. Once Upon a Time in the West
10 July 2008
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Just piped to the top spot as the number one Western is Once Upon a Time in the West was director Sergio Leone's sprawling spaghetti Western epic released in 1968 and is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished movies of the genre.
The film brought together a distinguished cast of Henry Fonda unusually cast as the villain Frank, Charles Bronson as his nemesis "Harmonica", Jason Robards as the generally benign bandit Cheyenne and Claudia Cardinale as a newly-widowed homesteader with a past as a prostitute, Jill.
Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti), the power-hungry owner of a railroad company, hires Frank (Henry Fonda, playing against type), a gunfighter without a conscience, to kill anyone who stands in the way of the completion of the railroad.
After Frank murders land owner Brett McBain (Frank Wolff), McBain's widow (Claudia Cardinale) hires two killers of her own to protect her and gain revenge: a mysterious, harmonica-playing desperado (Charles Bronson) and his rogue sidekick (Jason Robards).
Despite having made The Good the Bad and the Ugly, and Serigo Leone was renowned as a director of Westerns, the film was a box office flop in America.
However in Europe the film was a massive hit and soon gained a cult following although it was not as popular as the "Dollars trilogy".
However forty years on Once Upon a Time in the West is now considered a classic as film goers and critics have come to appreciate Leone's individual and, at the time, previously unseen filming techniques for the genre.
The director used widescreen closeups as well as taking advantage of the Ennio Morricone's emotive score to create tension which made the film a masterpiece in style.
The film became the first part of a loose trilogy of epic films followed by 1971's A Fistful of Dynamite (known alternatively as Once Upon a Time... The Revolution or Duck, You Sucker) and 1984's Once Upon a Time in America.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
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