Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

Widower Brett McBain (Frank Wolff) and his children own a seemingly worthless chunk of land dubbed "Sweetwater," but he foresees great profits when it appears the thriving and quickly-expanding westward railroad will have to depend on his land, which he plans to considerably build up into a rail depot and town and live off the influx of wealth it promises to create. He's set to marry a young woman from New Orleans named Jill (Claudia Cardinale, 8 1/2) who is herself making the bulk of her journey by train and traveling by buggy the rest of the way to Sweetwater. Unfortunately, when she arrives, she finds her would-be husband and stepchildren dead, slaughtered by a hired gun named Frank (Henry Fonda, 12 Angry Men) who plants evidence that he hopes will frame another outlaw known as Cheyenne (Jason Robards, Max Dugan Returns) for the killings. At the same time, a mysterious gunslinger known only as "Harmonica" (Charles Bronson, The Dirty Dozen) appears on the scene as an ally of Jills, helping her by joining forces with Cheyenne to ward off Frank's further advances to eliminate her and sieze Sweetwater at the behest of a disabled railroad tycoon named Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti).

As alluded to above, Once Upon a Time in the West owes much of its success to the incredible work of the director and cinematographer. Leone and Delli Colli's work is so faultlessly executed that they routinely transform otherwise terribly mundane and static shots and slow-moving scenes into literal works of art; perhaps no director and cinematographer tandem have ever demonstrated this much raw craftsmanship in a movie. Leone's handiwork is evidenced immediately; he draws out a scene featuring three men awaiting a train for minutes on end, and without dialogue or action that amounts to more than a sway, a glance, or the most subtle of movements, he manages to create the single-most captivating sequence in the movie. Leone's entire film follows suit, playing as a textbook and museum-worthy piece of effective subtleness throughout. Sure, Once Upon a Time in the West is "slow," but this a picture where the relaxed pacing is a plus, allowing the audiences extra time to soak up not only the story and the performances and the unbearably hot sun beating down on the film canvas, but to step back from the story for just a moment and recognize Leone's unique penchant for storytelling and structure and Delli Colli's impeccable lensing. Indeed, Leone builds his film as much through inaction as action; as much is said through stares, glances, and visual juxtapositions as through more traditional forms of storytelling advancements such as dialogue and exaggerated physical movement. Once Upon a Time in the West is a spellbinding treasure that's perhaps the definitive showcase of how cinema as art is more effective than cinema as sheer noise and dumbed-down entertainment.

The amazing craftsmanship aside, Once Upon a Time in the West's secondary attributes are simply too good not to earn near equal praise. Perhaps most readily evident, the film uses sound – not only music – to wonderful effect. Background sound effects – a creaky windmill, the singing and silencing of insects, the low thump-thump-thump cadence of a stationary train – run the gamut of mood-setters and reinforcers, playing sometimes hauntingly, sometimes menacingly, sometimes forebodingly, sometimes playfully. They represent signs of things coming and going in the literal and figurative senses alike, serving as storytelling elements that are just as critical to the plot as anything else in the film. The cast is superb, too; none of them are as truly critical to the film's success as Leone's work behind the camera, but it would certainly be to the film's detriment without any or all of the quartet of Bronson, Robards, Fonda, and Cardinale, all of whom understand that in this film it's the looks and the way the words are said and the style with which they carry themselves that are more important than the superficial actions and dialogues. As for the story they play out, it's a rather simple one, really, but one made to seem superior by the gathering of the peripheral elements that elevate it to rarely-achieved heights. The story speaks on the juxtaposition of old and new, the settled and unsettled, the known and unknown. It's as deeply-rooted in clashes over money and power and politics as it is the machismo on the ground level where the men maneuver themselves to take part in the highest-stake game of all where it's all-in for all the marbles, one shot, six chances. It's about properly carrying oneself whether in good and evil, where the pull of the trigger is less important than the wheres and whys and hows. Leone reinforces this throughout with his long, drawn-out sequences that are more representative of the intricacies of life and less concerned with the in-the-moment action, which does come but is made all the more purposeful and destructive when framed in this proper context.