Once Upon A Time In The West

Jill: What's he waiting for out there? What's he doing?
Cheyenne: He's whittling on a piece of wood. I got a feeling that when he stops whittling, something's gonna happen.

I'm not really big on westerns but there are a few that I love and this one tops the chart. Sergio Leone has a penchant for long, epic westerns that for all their tough characters and desert landscapes play like a love poem to the American West. His characters are memorable, exchanging quips with one hand on a gun, with a moral ambiguity that can make it had to tell the heroes from the villains and Once Upon a Time in the West is no different. The story follows Jill McBain a woman who was widowed just before she arrived to join her new husband on his farm. With her husband and his children murdered and thugs trying to intimidate her off her supposedly worthless land, she turns to loveable scumbag Cheyenne and Harmonica, a mysterious gunman searching for a gang leader named Frank.

For it's almost three hour run time, there's very little dialogue. Leone chooses instead to focus on the characters' expressions which gives the whole film a very cool feel. Harmonica is a man of few words but when he speaks, people listen. He's the stoic hero, a man with a mission, and nothing, not even a beautiful, willing woman, will distract him. When Charles Bronson is onscreen, he draws the audience's attention with his silence and the eerie harmonica music he plays.

MILD SPOILERS AHEAD

It's a film that glorifies the lawlessness of the old West and the Old Testament judgement that goes with it. No one's a saint. They've made tough choices to survive but while some can overcome their pasts to a better, more hopeful future, others have defined themselves too much by it and are left with nothing in the end. And at the same time, it shows the inevitable end of that lifestyle. The coming railroad will bring civilization with it and people like Harmonica will no longer have a place in the world. Frank, for all his villainy, has a better understanding of the coming changes. The conniving industrialist will replace the hardened gunman. A man's sense of honor and justice will be replaced by the comfort of the law. It's a bittersweet ending but Jill represents the hope that the change brings.

Leone's sweeping film pays tribute the short lived but most enduring period in American history. It's one of the best westerns I've ever seen and I highly recommend it to everyone.