Once Upon A Time In The West
- Director: Sergio Leone
- Italy/US, 1968
A single set on Once Upon A Time cost as much as the entire production on one of Sergio Leone’s previous films. Certainly the director made full use of big studio backing to deliver his vision, one of cinema’s most bewitching and monumental works and the death of the western genre (which has had nothing useful to add since).
Leone’s masterstrokes are many: mixing together all the great colours of the cinematic West to create something new and powerful; moulding a strong female into the pivotal role (against his own better judgment); painting Hollywood hero Henry Fonda in a new and frightening shade of evil.
It’s also a brave film: the long, excruciatingly tense opening sequence and the slow burning plot will doubtless have turned some off. Yet even if this film didn’t set the US box office on fire, it was still arguably the finest achievement of Leone’s oeuvre, a justly revered classic the world over.
