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Released by: Paramount Studios
Released on: May 14th, 2024.
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: Claudia Cardinale, Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, Woody Strode, Gabrielle Ferzetti, Jack Elam, Lionel Stander,
Year: 1969
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Once Upon A Time In The West – Movie Review:
An eccentric Irish immigrant named Brett McBain (Frank Wolff of The Great Silence) is busy preparing his home and his family for a celebratory banquet to be held in honor of the arrival of his new wife, Jill (the lovely Claudia Cardinale of Federico Fellini's 8 1/2) whom he was recently wed to a month prior during a trip to New Orleans. While McBain and his three children anticipate the arrival of the newest addition to their family, a gang of gunslingers mercilessly shoots them down. Frank (Henry Fonda, who was convinced to take this role by Eli Wallach after his experiences with director Sergio Leone on the set of The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly) is the leader of this group that was put up to the hit by a railroad tycoon named Morton (Gabrielle Ferzetti of Lucio Fulci's Murder To The Tune Of Seven Black Notes) in hopes of securing from the McBain's their land, which sits square in the spot that the planned railroad tracks will be passing through soon.
A half-breed named Cheyenne (Jason Robards of Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, in his most convincing role) is an ex-con accused of the crime that Frank and his crew committed just as Jill finally does show up only to find her new family dead, thus inheriting the land as her own. A mysterious man, referred to only as Harmonica (expertly played by the late, great Charles Bronson of Death Wish and The Magnificent Seven) seems to be following Cheyenne around, but for reasons unknown.
Jill decides that auctioning off the land as quickly as possible will get her out of this mess she's fallen into easily enough, until Harmonica gets the money together and comes out as the high bid by turning when he captures Cheyenne and turns him in to the local authorities and claiming the $5000.00 award.
As Jill begins to fall for Harmonica, he makes his intentions clear and seems more likely to want to settle his issues with Frank than in settling the land or bedding the redhead, but of course there is a lot more to his story than what we know initially and it all leads up to a tragic but utterly fitting ending for some and a suitably happy ending for others.
One of the longest and most engrossing credits sequences in movie history leads us into what would end up as one of the greatest cinematic achievements in motion picture history. The first fourteen minutes of the film, in which we see the three gunmen arrive at the train station in hopes of surprising Charles Bronson's character move at a languid and dreamy pace but are so beautifully composed that the viewer can't help but be sucked into the world Leone has made for us. You can almost feel the fly land on the face of one of the thugs, and every squeak of the fan blowing in the wind cranks the tension up one notch higher.
Leone creates an atmosphere as rich and as dirty as the land and the era he's trying to capture and does so with such finesse that at time, it's hard to believe we're watching a movie and not sitting in a tree somewhere watching these characters with our own eyes. The Techniscope camera captures all manner of subtleties that most directors wouldn't bother with and the attention to detail in the sets, props, and mannerisms of everyone on screen are al etched out carefully but naturally resulting in an ambience unparalleled in any other western and few other films of any genre.
Equally impressive in this production is the score by regular Leone cohort Ennio Morricone. His instantly recognizable combination of surfy guitar, shrill female vocals, and operatic orchestral compositions becomes as much a part of the film and tells as much of the of the story as any of the characters themselves and in fact, each of the main characters has their own theme which perfectly captures the musical equivalent of their personality in its sound.
While I personally prefer The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly for personal reasons, I'm hard pressed to deny that Once Upon A Time In The West is the better-made film from a technical standpoint and from a story telling standpoint. I think that Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach bring a certain sense of unabashed fun to the earlier film but Bronson and Robards give such stern performances and do so with such an air of regretful sadness that you really can't help but feel for these men, regardless of whether they deserve what's coming to them or not.
All in all, it's a testament to Leone's skill as a director that this film, which he only took on to secure financing so that he could make Once Upon A Time In America, that eventually suffered many edits, and didn't perform exceptionally well at the box office, turned out to be the epic masterpiece that it is in spite of itself.
Once Upon A Time In The West – UHD/Blu-ray Review:
Paramount Studios brings Once Upon A Time In The West to UHD framed at 2.35.1 in an HVEC encoded 2160p transfer with HDR10 and DolbyVision enhancement on a BD-66. While this is definitely a noticeable upgrade over the older Blu-ray edition in terms of detail, depth and texture, it isn’t the sterling example of 4k perfection that many of us had hoped for. We’ll start with the issues, the most obvious being a few scenes where grain doesn’t resolve properly and things get a little lumpy looking. You’ll see this most often in exterior shots in wide open spaces, where the blue skies exhibit this odd trait and you'll notice that smoke gets very smeary and muddy looking. Some shots have definitely had some DNR applied, resulting in some overly smooth textures and skin tones at times. This does, not, however, completely ruin the viewing experience. When compared to the older Blu-ray release, detail is markedly better and we get impressive depth and texture in many scenes. Compression could have been a bit better (putting a nearly three hour movie on a 66GB disc instead of a 100GB disc seems to be a cost saving measure that clearly came at the expense of picture quality), but the colors on the disc look excellent with the DolbyVision and HDR work really bringing out nuances in the various hues that make up each frame that weren’t as evident on the older edition. Black levels are nice and deep and skin tones look nice and accurate and ultimately, while this could have been much better, it is quite a bit better than the older Blu-ray in some ways (even if it definitely does leave room for improvement and will be a disappointment to hardcore videophiles).
As far as the audio options are concerned, there's an English language 24-bit DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix, and Dolby Digital Mono tracks offered in English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish with subtitles offered in those same languages. While it would have been nice to have a lossless mono track, the 5.1 remix sounds really good. Morricone's score has impressive depth to it and it's spread out beautifully across the soundstage. Dialogue is crisp and clear and never difficult to understand while gunshots and other related effects have a good amount of punch to them. The trains rumble across the tracks with a nice, bassy rumble while the levels remain consistently well balanced throughout. There isn't a ton of surround usage here, it's mostly just the score and some periodic ambient effects that use the back channels, but that's fine - the movie sounds great, but it would have been great to get an Atmos mix here.
There are a few new extra features included on this UHD/Blu-ray combo pack, starting with a commentary track from Jay Jennings and Tom Betts, the hosts of The Spaghetti Western Podcast. It’s an insightful discussion about the film, going over its history, detailing the contributions of the different cast and crew members and exploring some of the themes in which it deals. It also, of course, goes over Leone’s work and Morricone’s contributions to the picture. It’s a good mix of history and critical analysis.
Also new to this edition is a six minute piece called A Look Back With Leonard Maltin wherein the famous film critic and author shares his thoughts on the effectiveness of the film's cinematography, details of the production, the different edits that were made of the film and what makes it historically significant.
The rest of the extras are ported over from the older two-disc special edition DVD release starting with a commentary track from John Carpenter, John Milius, Alex Cox, Claudia Cardinale, Sheldon Hall, and Christopher Frayling (author of the excellent Leone biography, Sergio Leone: Something To Do With Death, which takes its name from this film). Each participant was recorded separately so this is more of a scene specific track as opposed to a running commentary, and some of the people involved are a little more interesting. Alex Cox in particular has a lot to say about characterizations and how Leone was able to work their personalities into the film visually. Overall, despite a couple of weaker spots, this is a great track that should please most fans of the movie or the genre in general.
Also carried over is a feature length documentary that Paramount has split into three distinct chapters. Everyone from the commentary track is once again on hand here, and this time Gabrielle Ferzetti, Bernardo Bertolucci and Tonino Delli Colli are on hand as well. The first chapter is entitled An Opera Of Violence and it deals with Leone's personal story - how he was raised in a family that were heavily involved in show business and how he grew up around the Italian film industry. It follows him through the early part of his career right up the feature films that he made and even touches on some of the casting choices that he had to make in regards to Once Upon A Time In The West. This is the longest section of the three parts and runs just short of twenty-nine minutes. One of the more interesting aspects of it is an interview shot with Henry Fonda around the time that the film was made where he relays the famous story, in his own words, of how he showed up on set looking completely different than how Leone had hoped he would.
The Wages Of Sin is the second part and here we deal with the shooting locations and actual photography of the film during its production. Leone wanted to use many of the same locales that John Ford had made famous in his earlier westerns. Budgetary restraints and concerns are also discussed, as are more details about some of the pre-production details involved in filming. This section runs just over nineteen minutes in length.
The third and final phase of the documentary, entitled Something To Do With Death, deals with Morricone's score (which oddly enough was completed before the film had even started to roll) and with the various editing and cutting that Leone had to inflict on his film when he realized that it was going to end up at about five hours in length. It's interesting to look back at the movie and hear from those involved, though Morricone himself is not interviewed here for this piece, which is a shame, as his score is truly amazing and I would have loved to have heard from him on this film. The final part of the film, it runs a few seconds over eighteen minutes.
A second, unrelated featurette is also included here. Titled Railroad - Revolutionizing The West, this piece, which is a hair under seven minutes in length, gives us a quick history of just how the railroad impacted the settlement of the area at the time and how the movies used that to their advantage.
From there, we get few nicely made still galleries. The first one is Locations - Then And Now, which fades in and out of still from the film to shots of the locations that these still were taken on in the present day. The second gallery is a collection of production stills taken during the shooting of the film.
Finishing up the extras are the film's theatrical trailer, menus and chapter selection options. This release comes packaged with a slipcover in which the front panel folds open to reveal a reproduction of the film's original one-sheet.
Once Upon A Time In The West - The Final Word:
Once Upon A Time In The West holds up incredibly well as one of the finest westerns ever made, rife with fantastic performances, impressive production values and some of the finest cinematography ever committed to film. The UHD/Blu-ray edition from Paramount offers up a new commentary and a brief featurette and carries over the extra from the last Blu-ray release, which is a nice touch. As to the presentation? It is definitely a step up over what we've seen before but hardly the perfect transfer that the film deserves.
