Once upon a time in the West: Sergio Leone’s Postmodern
fairy-tale is one of the greatest Westerns ever made
Director Sergio Leone’s magnum opus, Once upon a time
in the West(1968), starring Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Charles Bronson and
Jason Robards, is considered one of the greatest Westerns ever made. Like the
title suggests, its an exaggerated, fairy-tale for adults, set in the old West.
“the rhythm of the film was intended to create the
sensation of the last gasp that a person takes just before dying. Once Upon a
Time in the West was, from start to finish, a dance of death, all of the
characters in the film, except Claudia are conscious of the fact they will not
arrive at the end alive…”.
Sergio Leone
The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard called Sergio Leone
the first postmodernist film director . Though I am not exactly sure about
that, Leone certainly was the first director to bring Postmodernism to the
genre of Western . Leone came on the scene when the appeal of the
traditional Hollywood western was waning. His Dollars
Trilogy infused fresh blood into a dying genre and made a star out of Clint
Eastwood. Leone came from a family with deep roots in the Italian film industry.His mother was a silent movie actress
and his father directed and acted in films during the silent era. Leone grew up
admiring the American westerns of director John Ford. He loved those
movies to death, but he did not agree with their ‘politics’ and their
optimistic worldview. So when it came time to make his own westerns, he took
the basic themes and characters from the Hollywood
westerns and then transported them to a bleak, arid, surrealistic landscape.
His worldview was un-apologetically amoral and pessimistic. He turned the
archetype of the moral Western hero into a ruthless killer who is concerned
only with his own survival . His three Dollars films were highly
stylized ,operatic melodramas, which were unabashedly populist entertainment
and was lapped up by audience all over the world. But the populist nature of
those films prevented the critics from fairly assessing his work during their
time and he would have to wait a while before he received his fair share of
critical appreciation.
And talking about ‘Waiting for a While‘, Waiting is
an important component in viewing Leone’s films. The biggest virtue a film
viewer needs to posses in appreciating the cinema of Leone is Patience. Because
it would take a while for things to happen. Though Leone is more closely
associated with Akira Kurosawa,the pacing of his films are very similar to that
of another Japanese master Yasujirō Ozu. Leone’s films move at a slow,
deliberate pace and he is more interested in the gradual build up rather than
the ultimate pay-off , which happens very suddenly and quickly. He did this
intentionally because one of the issues he had with the American films was that
they moved very quickly. Things happened so fast that he never got time to
digest it. His films are specifically designed in such a way that the viewer
feels the passing of time. A Leone scene isn’t just another movie scene.
Attention is paid to every small detail as Leone squeezes the very last morsel
out of every scene. When Wachowski Brothers’ film The Matrix released
in 1999, people were amazed by a new technology used in the film called bullet
time; in which the action is slowed down to such an extend that we can see
the full trajectory of a bullet as it is fired from a gun till it reaches it’s
destination. But almost thirty years before The Matrix, there existed something
called Leone time, where, without any camera tricks or special
effects, the action is slowed down to a point where even someone spitting on
screen becomes an elaborate ritual. And elaborate rituals are what Leone’s
films are made of . Rituals created from vignettes and moments taken from
traditional Hollywood westerns and then
modernized, subverted or reinvented to suit Leone’s European sensibilities. The
manipulation of time, the Postmodernism– where the characters and scenes
has their roots in old Hollywood films rather than real life- , and the
extravagant, operatic quality – thanks mainly to the great music scores by
maestro Ennio Morricone ; the phenomenal work of Photographer Tonino deli coli
and Avant-Garde sets and costumes by Carlo Simi – are the main components of
the Leone film aesthetic. Then there are his visual trademarks; The tight
close-ups of sweaty, sunburned faces inter-cut with wide vistas; the soaring
crane shots that’s timed to a specific piece of music or the use of montage ,
where the scenes are rapidly cut together to music as in a a music video. Each Dollars
film was a step towards a full realization of this aesthetic . The Fistful
of Dollars was a leaner – About 100 Mins long – and fast paced film. The
Next, For a Few Dollars More was more than 2 hrs, with more subplots
and characters than the first one. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was
a true epic at about 3 Hrs long , with the story set in the backdrop of the
American civil war. Once upon a time in the West (OUATITW from now
on), that came after the Dollars trilogy , marked his zenith as a
maker of European westerns and provides a full exhibition of the Leone Style.
Leone’s Dollar movies were made with the backing of European
financiers on small budgets . But OUATITW was bankrolled by Paramount
Pictures with a generous budget, which allowed Leone to run riot with his
imagination. The sets and costumes are far more baroque and spectacular than
his previous films, making OUATITW the best looking film of all Leone Westerns.
There’s an extraordinary amount of detailing through which we get a sense of
the life in the West. Paramount’s backing allowed Leone to shoot the film in Monument Valley, which was his Idol John
Ford’s favorite location. He was also able to hire big stars like Henry Fonda
and Claudia Cardinale.
The opening scene of OUATITW is a classic example of the
Leone aesthetic. It is perhaps ‘the’ greatest opening sequence in movies and
unarguably the best scene that Leone has ever directed. We see three
gunfighters – played by Woody Strode, Jack Elam and Al Mulock–
entering a railway station. It looks like they have come to ‘receive’ someone.
But the train is two hours late , so they have to wait around till the train
arrives. As they wait, the audience is also made to wait, as Leone concentrates
on what each one is doing to kill time . One of them plays with a fly; another
one is cracking his knuckles and the other is distracted by water leaking from
the water tank above. The decrepit windmill in the background is making creaky
sounds which act as eerie background music to the scene.Finally, the train
arrives and we see the three Gunmen getting ready with their weapons. Now it is
obvious that this isn’t a social call. The train stops and the threesome wait
for their man to come out. But it looks like he is not on the train. They are
about to leave, when they hear the ominous sounds of a harmonica. As the train
slowly pulls out of the station, the figure of Charles Bronson appears on the
screen. He exchanges some tense glances and terse dialogue with the Three men.
Then suddenly, violence erupts . The men shoot it out and Bronson is the only
man standing at the end of the shootout. This scene, which is almost 15 minutes
long, has just about 4 lines of dialogue.You
wound not find a purer cinematic moment than this one. No soundtrack music is
played during the scene and natural sounds like turning wheel in the wind
and sound of a train are used. It should be noted that this
opening\credit sequence is very different from the Credit sequences in the Dollars
films; where credits appeared over specifically designed Rotoscopic images of
red and white, accompanied by Ennio Morricone’s loud, quirky score. This is
Leone making a strong statement that this film is going to be very different
from his previous westerns.
This scene has its roots in Fred Zinneman’s acclaimed film High
Noon(1952). But there, the gunfighters wait for the main villain to
arrive, but here,Leone subverts it to show the movie’s hero arriving. Leone’s
homages and subversion continue in the next scene where the McBain family is
massacred by Henry Fonda’s villain Frank. The scene has elements taken from Shane
and The Searchers, two completely different westerns. The scene begins
like in Shane , where the little boy sees the hero coming out of the
woods. But then it morphs into the attack on the homestead by the Comanches
in The searchers, were the Comanche chief Scar wipe out the family of Ethan
Edwards. We expect the arrival of the hero, but its the main villain who is
introduced in this scene. And who would be playing the Villain who wipes out
the entire McBain family, including an angelic little boy?. None other than Henry
Fonda, John Ford’s noble hero, who played Abraham Lincoln and Wyatt Earp.
Casting of the princely, blue-eyed Fonda as the cold assassin is the ultimate
act of subversion by Leone.
The first hour of the film is basically Leone introducing
each of the five main characters in the film. The characters are more or less
broad western archetypes. We get the good guy dressed in white, the bad guy in
dark .The main , or rather only female character in the film Jill,
played by Claudia Cardinale is a mix of the virtuous frontier housewife and the
Whore with a heart of gold.The character
of Jill seems to be inspired from Claire Trevor’s character in John Ford’s Stagecoach
as well as Joan Crawford’s in Johnny Guitar.Then there is the
Good-bad character of Cheyenne , played by Jason Robards.
It’s a typical Leone character ,in the vein of Tuco in The Good the Bad and the
Ugly, who is more of a Man-child and provides the comic relief . Finally, there
is the character of the Railroad Baron, Mr. Morton played by Gabriel
Ferzetti ; the representative of the business class invading the west.
Each character has their own musical theme, as in an opera. The music was
written by Ennio Morricone even before filming began and Leone would play the
music in the background for the actors on set. The score is considered one of
Morricone’s greatest compositions. It takes a while for the audience to
understand the plot of the film. The plot is not Leone’s main concern anyway.
He is more concerned with setting up elaborate set pieces. There is a massacre,
a funeral, an extended scene in a Trading-post, a lengthy action scene set on a
moving train; all building up towards the final fairy tale ending when the
railroad arrives in the town of Sweetwater.
The performances of the actors also mirrors this deliberate, self-conscious
style. They are fully aware of the archetypal nature of their characters they
are portraying . Their every move, every line-delivery looks choreographed.
The ritualistic nature of the film makes it more of a
religious epic, with characters also standing in for broad religious
archetypes. Christianity is one of the most prominent themes in Leone’s films
and its portrayal is always Catholic and Latin. Charles Bronson’s character is
the angel. Bronson has a superhuman control over space and time. He seems to
know everything about every character in the film;their past, present and even
their future. Fonda’s Frank is the devil . At the beginning of the film we see
him destroy the McBain family . The entire family is massacred before ‘ The
Holy Mother‘ Jill can join them . The theme of integration and
disintegration of ‘The Holy Family‘ is there throughout in Leone
films. In A Fistful of Dollars , Its Marisol, her child and
husband who make up the family. They are separated by the villain Ramon and
reunited by Eastwood’s mysterious stranger. In the Good, The Bad and The
Ugly, we have the Ramirez brothers, Tuco and Pablo who are on the opposite
sides of the moral divide; one is a priest, the other is a Bandit. In For a
Few Dollars More ; It is Douglas Mortimer’s quest for revenge against the
Bandit Indio,
for raping and murdering his sister. In this film too,there is the theme of
revenge fueled by the murder of a family member, with Bronson obsessively
pursuing Fonda for murdering his brother . The betrayal by a friend is another
one of Leone’s major themes; with the name of Judas being repeatedly invoked.
In The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Tuco calls Blondie a Judas, here
its Cheyenne
who calls Harmonica with the same name for selling him out for five thousand
Dollars. Claudia Cardinale’s Jill seems to be a mixture of the two Marys from
the new testament; the Madonna and the Whore. In the end, she becomes the
mother of the new town of Sweetwater ,and in
turn, the creator of the new world that would emerge with the arrival of the
railroad and the destruction of the old West of Harmonica, Frank and Cheyenne.
Leone’s films were never as political as the films of Sergio
Corbucci or Damiano Damiani- Both of whom were strong proponent of left-wing
politics through their films. But Leone was also, if not downright critical
,but ambivalent regarding American notions of freedom and progress. We see an
undercurrent of anti-Capitalist commentary in the Dollar films. It is
much more pronounced here in OUTIW, especially with the character of Mr. Morton
and the tactics he uses to outsmart even the evil Frank. It is interesting to
note that Frank ends up becoming a sort of noble figure at the end of the film,
when he rides into confront Harmonica. Frank tried to become a businessman like
Morton, but failed , because he is- as he calls himself – ‘Just a Man’
. And he is no match for businessmen like Morton , who are invading the west
and will ultimately wipe out ‘Men‘ like Frank and Harmonica.. This is
Leone’s most political movie and he may have been influence by his co-writers
(and fellow film-makers) Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento
in this.. But Leone refrains from any extreme form of violent political
activity seen in many Italian Westerns of the 1960’s. Its nowhere near a Django
or A Bullet for the General. This a very somber, very elegiac movie
that is both a celebration and a critique of the American Westerns and
American West. Leone , being a European , brings the outsiders point of view of
‘looking in’ at American cinematic myths . He seems to find them alternatively
thrilling, violent, extreme, repulsive, and often ridiculous and his Westerns
are an amalgamation of all these conflicting feelings. Sometimes We could find
all these emotions pouring out through the course of a single scene. Take the
extended scene at Lionel Stander’s trading post. The trading post is part
stable, part saloon, part storehouse. We see Stander talking animatedly to jill
at the beginning of the scene. Then Jason Robards’ bandit Cheyenne barges in and the tone of the scene
changes. The scene becomes even more ominous, when there is stand off between Cheyenne and Bronson’s
Harmonica , who seems to have been present at the post all the time. But then ,
It is followed by a rather ridiculous scene where Cheyenne puts a gun to another inmate , and
forces him to shoot his handcuffs . Once Cheyenne
leaves with his gang members, Stander resumes his animated conversation with
Jill. This scene with its abrupt shifts in tone , which at first glance looks
rather silly and by the way was entirely cut out of its initial U.S.
release, is the typical Leone scene.
Or take the final shoot-out between Henry Fonda and Charles
Bronson, which again goes on for at least 15 minutes. We have been waiting for
this moment for almost three hours now. But still, Leone is in no mood to hurry
things. He again makes everything very deliberate and ritualistic. The scene is
choreographed like a dance. The characters walk. They wait. They circle each
other. They stare at each other. They squint. They spit. They take off their
jackets. They wince. Just when they finally seem prepared to shoot , Leone uses
a flashback. i mean, right at the point that they are about to pull out their
guns, he goes back in time. Snatches of this flashback has been playing
intermittently throughout the film from Bronson’s perspective, where we see a
tall, dark figure(out of focus) slowly walking towards the screen. Now, Leone’s
camera closes in on Bronson’s eyes, which could be the biggest close-up of all
times, and the figure finally comes into focus.We
realize that it was the image of a young Frank that Bronson has been
reminiscing all this time. The flashback scene is equally bizarre. Its a scene
set in the Monument
Valley and there is a
Roman arch right in the middle of it. We see Bronson as a young boy ,with his
brother standing on his shoulder with a rope around his neck. Fonda thrusts a
harmonica into the boy’s mouth and asks him to play it for his dying brother.
The moment the flashback ends, the shootout happens with Harmonica gunning down
Frank. Its all over in a matter of a seconds.
When Paramount
hired Leone to make another western, they were expecting something
rip-roaringly entertaining as the Dollars films. Instead, what they
got was the biggest , most expensive art western ever made. OUATITW was a
radical shift from Leone’s previous films. Hence it was not the success the
producers were hoping for. After the The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Leone had
decided that he wont make any more westerns. But when Paramount’s generous offer came along, he
couldn’t refuse. So he decided to make this film as a mournful eulogy to the
West and the Western.The film was cut by
about half an hour for the American release, but still the film flopped. It was
a huge success in France ,
where it played for about 2 years in a theater in Paris.. This film was a turning point in
Bronson’s career as he graduated from a ensemble star – in films like The
Great Escape and The Dirty Dozen – to the lead actor. He would go
on to greater success playing variations of the Stone-faced avenging angel in
films like Death Wish. The critical reaction to the film was
very negative, as it was the case with Leone’s films at the time. The American
film critics were prejudiced against Leone , for what they thought was the
corruption of their sacred movie genre by an Italian filmmaker. But sometime in
the Seventies this changed and a new breed of critics started re-assessing
Leone work . Today, both Leone and OUATITW is held in high esteem. Leone’s
influence can be found everywhere; from music videos to films of Tarantino .
OUATITW is considered Leone’s greatest film. Some critics consider it the
greatest Western ever made. Which again is something i am not sure about. For
one, its not a traditional Western. Though it is not exactly a revisionist
western or a send-up of westerns. At best,one could call it an Ironic Western.It is very self-conscious, meta movie,
that always remains at an ironic distance from the viewer. But one thing is
sure; It is one of the greatest films ever made, where we see a great film
Auteur working at the height of his powers.
