Once Upon a Time in the West

Once Upon a Time in the West (Italian: C'era una volta il West, "Once upon a time (there was) the West") is a 1968 epic spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone, who co-wrote it with Sergio Donati based on a story by Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci and Leone. It stars Henry Fonda, cast against type as the villain, Charles Bronson as his nemesis, Jason Robards as a bandit and Claudia Cardinale as a newly widowed homesteader. The widescreen cinematography was by Tonino Delli Colli and the acclaimed film score was by Ennio Morricone.

After directing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone decided to retire from Westerns and aimed to produce his film based on the novel The Hoods, which eventually became Once Upon a Time in America. However, Leone accepted an offer from Paramount Pictures providing Henry Fonda and a budget to produce another Western. He recruited Bertolucci and Argento to devise the plot of the film in 1966, researching other Western films in the process. After Clint Eastwood turned down an offer to play the movie's protagonist, Bronson was offered the role. During production, Leone recruited Donati to rewrite the script due to concerns over time limitations.

The original version by the director was 165 minutes when it was first released on December 21, 1968. This version was shown in European cinemas, and was a box-office success. For the US release on May 28, 1969, Once Upon a Time in the West was edited down to 140 minutes by Paramount and was a financial flop.

The film is the first installment in Leone's Once Upon a Time trilogy, followed by Duck, You Sucker! and Once Upon a Time in America, though the films do not share any characters in common.

In 2009, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The film is regarded as one of the greatest Westerns of all time and one of the greatest films of all time.

A train arrives at the Old West town of "Flagstone" where a man with a harmonica (later dubbed "Harmonica") overcomes an ambush by killing three men in dusters. Although Harmonica was expecting to meet an outlaw named Frank, he concludes by the dusters the men belonged to the outlaw Cheyenne's gang. It is not yet revealed why Harmonica seeks Frank. Meanwhile, Frank and his gang murder Brett McBain and his three children as they prepare for a celebration at his ranch called "Sweetwater." Shortly thereafter, a former prostitute arrives at Sweetwater and reveals she is Jill McBain, who married McBain a month before in New Orleans. Frank leaves evidence at the murder scene implicating Cheyenne. Jill is shocked at the murders and searches for a motive. Frank is a hired gun for railway tycoon Morton, who directed Frank to intimidate, not murder, McBain. McBain intended to profit by building a watering station on Sweetwater, because he knew the railroad from Flagstone would eventually pass through his property. However, if the station was incomplete by the time the railroad reached Sweetwater, the property would revert to the railroad. McBain's murder puts Morton at odds with Frank, who desires the land for himself. Jill's unexpected appearance makes her the owner of Sweetwater as McBain's surviving widow.

Harmonica encounters Cheyenne, now a fugitive, who denies his men were sent to ambush him. Harmonica saves Jill from two of Frank's men and spies out the railway carriage where Morton (owing to his spinal tuberculosis) is confined on crutches. Harmonica discovers the connection between Frank and Morton but is seen and captured. Frank is called away and Cheyenne rescues Harmonica. The two collaborate to help Jill save Sweetwater, using stockpiled materials to start building a station.

After a threatening sexual encounter with Frank, Jill is forced to auction the land; but, Frank's henchmen intimidate the bidders in order to purchase it for Frank at a low price. Harmonica appears with Cheyenne in tow and bids $5,000, which is the price on Cheyenne's head as a wanted fugitive. Frank is unsuccessful in buying Harmonica out, and wonders why Harmonica is pursuing him. Morton bribes Frank's own men to kill him, but Harmonica intervenes to save Frank, because of his unfinished business with him.

Cheyenne escapes custody and he and his gang engage Frank's remaining men in a gunfight on Morton's train. Except for Cheyenne, who heads to Sweetwater, everyone is killed, including Morton. When Frank sees the aftermath of the fight, he rides to Sweetwater too, where he finds Harmonica waiting. Cheyenne has arrived earlier, but he remains in the ranch house with Jill. Outside, Harmonica and Frank engage in a showdown. Through a flashback, it is revealed that Frank had once shoved a harmonica into the mouth of a boy while he supported his older brother on his shoulders as Frank was hanging him. When the boy collapses, the instrument flies from his mouth. Now Harmonica beats Frank to the draw and, as Frank lies dying, he pushes the harmonica into Frank's mouth.

After Harmonica and Cheyenne leave Sweetwater together, Cheyenne collapses and dies from a gut wound he received in the gunfight with Morton. Harmonica puts the body on Cheyenne's horse and rides off as Jill serves water to the railroad workers.

In addition to the credited cast, uncredited actors in the film include Enzo Santaniello (Timmy), Simonetta Santaniello (Maureen), and Stefano Imparato (Patrick) as the McBain children; Al Mulock as the third station gunman Knuckles; Conrado San Martín as Vecino, Marco Zuanelli as Wobbles, and Claudio Mancini as Harmonica's brother.

Members of Cheyenne's gang are played by Aldo Sambrell, Lorenzo Robledo, and Bruno Corazzari. Members of Frank's gang are played by Román Ariznavarreta, Frank Braña, Antonio Molino Rojo, and Fabio Testi.

After making his American gunfighter epic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone had intended to make no more Westerns, believing he had said all he wanted to say. He had come across the novel The Hoods by the pseudonymous "Harry Grey", a fictionalized book based on the author's own experiences as a Jewish hood during Prohibition, and planned to adapt it into a film (17 years later, it would become his final film, Once Upon a Time in America). Leone, though, was offered only Westerns by the Hollywood studios. United Artists (which had produced the Dollars Trilogy) offered him the opportunity to make a film starring Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas and Rock Hudson, but Leone refused. When Paramount offered Leone a generous budget along with access to Henry Fonda—his favorite actor, and one with whom he had wanted to work for virtually all of his career—Leone accepted the offer.

Leone commissioned Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento to help him devise a film treatment in late 1966. The men spent much of the following year watching and discussing numerous classic Westerns, such as High Noon, The Iron Horse, The Comancheros and The Searchers at Leone's house, and constructed a story made up almost entirely of references to American Westerns.

Beginning with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which originally ran for three hours, Leone's films had usually been cut (often quite considerably) for box-office release. Leone was very conscious of the length of Once Upon a Time in the West during filming and subsequently commissioned Sergio Donati, who had worked on several of Leone's other films, to help him refine the screenplay, largely to curb the length of the film toward the end of production.

For Once Upon a Time in the West, Leone changed his approach over his earlier Westerns. Whereas the "Dollars" films were quirky and up-tempo, a celebratory yet tongue-in-cheek parody of the icons of the Wild West, this film is much slower in pace and somber in theme. Leone's distinctive style, which is very different from, but very much influenced by, Akira Kurosawa's Sanshiro Sugata (1943), is still present, but has been modified for the beginning of Leone's second trilogy, the so-called Once Upon a Time trilogy. The characters in this film are also beginning to change markedly over their predecessors in the Dollars trilogy. They are not quite as defined and, unusual for Leone characters up to this point, they begin to change (or at least attempt to) over the course of the story. This signals the start of the second phase of Leone's style, which was further developed in Duck, You Sucker! and Once Upon a Time in America.

The film features long, slow scenes with very little dialogue and little happening, broken by brief and sudden violence. Leone was far more interested in the rituals preceding violence than in the violence itself. The tone of the film is consistent with the arid semidesert in which the story unfolds, and imbues it with a feeling of realism that contrasts with the elaborately choreographed gunplay.

Leone liked to tell the story of a cinema in Paris where the film ran uninterrupted for two years. When he visited this theater, he was surrounded by fans who wanted his autograph, as well as the projectionist, who was less than enthusiastic. Leone claimed the projectionist told him, "I kill you! The same movie over and over again for two years! And it's so SLOW!"

Interiors for the film were shot in Cinecittà studios, Rome. The opening sequence with the three gunmen meeting the train was one of the sequences filmed in Spain. Shooting for scenes at Cattle Corner Station, as the location was called in the story, was scheduled for four days and was filmed at the "ghost" railway station in the municipality of La Calahorra, near Guadix, in the Province of Granada, Spain, as were the scenes of Flagstone. Shooting for the scenes in the middle of the railway were filmed along the Guadix–Hernán-Valle railway line. Scenes at the Sweetwater Ranch were filmed in the Tabernas Desert, Spain; the ranch is still located at what is now called Western Leone. The brick arch, where Bronson's character flashes back to his youth and the original lynching incident, was built near a small airport 15 miles (24 km) north of Monument Valley, in Utah, and two miles from U.S. Route 163 (which links Gouldings Lodge and Mexican Hat). Monument Valley itself is used extensively for the route Jill travels towards her new family in Sweetwater.