Sergio Leone loaded up for another Spaghetti Western and shot out his magnum opus with this follow-up to the Dollars trilogy. Charles Bronson stars as an ominous stranger known only as Harmonica -- on the account of that instrument being the only other th
Once Upon a Time in the West (1969)
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Reviews Counted:47
Fresh:46
Rotten:1
Average Rating:9/10
Consensus: A landmark Sergio Leone spaghetti western masterpiece featuring a classic Morricone score.
Runtime: 2 hrs 45 mins
Genre: Westerns
Synopsis: 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... 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). Using techniques previously unseen in the genre, Sergio Leone utilizes close-ups, color, and Ennio Morricone's trademark score to create a tense and somber meditation on death which is widely considered to be one of the best westerns in cinematic history. Soon-to-be legendary Italian directors Dario Argento (SUSPIRIA) and Bernardo Bertolucci (THE LAST EMPEROR) collaborated with Leone on the screenplay. [More]
Starring: Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson
Starring: Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson, Gabriele Ferzetti, Paolo Stoppa, Woody Strode, Jack Elam, Keenan Wynn, Frank Wolff, Lionel Stander
Director: Sergio Leone
Director: Sergio Leone
Screenwriter: Sergio Leone, Sergio Donati
Story: Dario Argento, Sergio Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci
Producer: Bino Cicogna
Composer: Ennio Morricone
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Reviews for Once Upon a Time in the West
These days, cartoonish, genre-pastiching movies are everywhere, but Leone’s films in this vein are still more enjoyable than most.
The Everest of the 1968 spaghetti western is a violent, poetic elegy.
‘Once Upon a Time…’ now looks like an over-cooked mess of style, metaphor and reference.
Quite simply a masterpiece, Leone's revisionist western is a mythic spectacle of a film and a landmark in cinema history.
Sergio Leone’s 1969 masterwork, in which he pulls together most of the themes of his three Dollar films, and also contributes one of the most famous credit sequences in history, will wet your lips all over again.
For a lesson in how to resuscitate a dying genre, you could do worse than Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone’s masterpiece from 1968.
Perhaps the clearer and crisper this film appears, and the more its reputation grows, the more unsettling its indulgences and ellipses appear to be. Well ... never mind. It's still a landmark.
Leone's film, authentic yet hyper-stylised, complete with the coolest cowboy fashion (gunslingers in long coats has never been bettered), mainstreet shootouts and raw, memorable characters, is a tough, leathery sundried masterpiece.
There are plenty of unforgettable moments, such as that sublime crane shot over the new settlement of Flagstone, accompanied by Ennio Morricone's achingly romantic music.
Sergio Leone's frontier parable is a landmark in Westerns, and features not only one of the greatest opening sequences ever made, but also the best use of a harmonica in cinema.
One of the greatest ventures into the myth and legend of the Wild West.
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.
If only the first 10 minutes of Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West still existed, this most hyperbolic of oat operas would still be acknowledged as one of the genre's greatest exhumations.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 45% 45% | Ice Age: Dawn of the D… |
| 19% 19% | Transformers: Revenge … |
| 55% 55% | Orphan |
| 43% 43% | The Proposal |
| 26% 26% | Land of the Lost |
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie |
|---|---|
| 98% 98% | Up |
| 88% 88% | Ballast |
| 67% 67% | The Merry Gentleman |
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