Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Average Rating: 9/10
Reviews Counted: 51
Fresh: 50 | Rotten: 1
A landmark Sergio Leone spaghetti western masterpiece featuring a classic Morricone score.
Average Rating: 7/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 1
A landmark Sergio Leone spaghetti western masterpiece featuring a classic Morricone score.
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Average Rating: 4.3/5
User Ratings: 60,442
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Movie Info
In Sergio Leone's epic Western, shot partly in Monument Valley, a revenge story becomes an epic contemplation of the Western past. To get his hands on prime railroad land in Sweetwater, crippled railroad baron Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti) hires killers, led by blue-eyed sadist Frank (Henry Fonda), who wipe out property owner Brett McBain (Frank Wolff) and his family. McBain's newly arrived bride, Jill (Claudia Cardinale), however, inherits it instead. Both outlaw Cheyenne (Jason Robards) and
Dec 21, 1968 Wide
Nov 18, 2003
Paramount Pictures
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Cast
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Charles Bronson
Harmonica -
Claudia Cardinale
Jill -
Henry Fonda
Frank -
Jason Robards
Cheyenne -
Gabriele Ferzetti
Morton -
Frank Wolff
McBain -
Keenan Wynn
Sheriff -
Jack Elam
Knuckles -
Lionel Stander
Bartender -
Woody Strode
Stony -
Paolo Stoppa
Sam -
John Frederick
Member of Frank's Gang -
Dino Mele
Harmonica as a Boy -
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Claudio Mancini
Harmonica's Brother -
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Marco Zuanelli
Wobbles
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All Critics (52) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (59) | Rotten (1) | DVD (31)
'Once Upon a Time...' now looks like an over-cooked mess of style, metaphor and reference.
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.
Top CriticLeone (1921-1989) is here at the peak of his epic powers.
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.
It is mostly fun for the way it cherishes movie styles and attitudes from the past.
The movie stretches on for nearly three hours, with intermission, and provides two false alarms before it finally ends.
Leone shows his skills with superb mastery over the medium.
Sergio Leone's Western is his undisputed masterpiece, a lush, sensuous, elegiac operatic film made on epic yet intimate scale.
One of the pinnacles of world cinema.
Sergio Leone's titanic saga of vengeance and progress doubles as a stunning reassessment of John Ford's west and makes for one of Paramount's best releases thus far this year.
...a mythic tale in mythic proportions, with bigger-than-life, mythic characters. (Blu-ray edition)
Heroes, villains, desperados, and the inevitable shoot-outs: You'll find them all in what a lot of fans consider Leone's best film.
A bold film that you won't soon forget.
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
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.
Sergio Leone's masterpiece.
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.
Audience Reviews for Once Upon a Time in the West
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Wobbles: You can trust me, Frank.
- Frank: Trust ya? How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders, a man who can't even trust his own pants?
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- Jill: Hey, you're sort of a handsome man!
- Cheyenne: But I'm not the right man. And neither is he.
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- Harmonica: Your friends have a high mortality rate Frank.
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- Frank: People scare better when they're dyin'.
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- Cheyenne: You know Ma'am, when you've killed four, it's easy to make it five.
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- Harmonica: I saw three of these dusters a short time ago, they were waiting for a train. Inside the dusters there were three men.
- Cheyenne: So?
- Harmonica: Inside the men there were three bullets.
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| roger why u failed? | 7 days ago | 1 |
| Best scene | 5 months ago | 0 |
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Foreign Titles
- Spiel mir das Lied vom Tod (DE)
- Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una volta il West) (UK)
