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Once Upon A Time In The West

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    Ian Jane
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  • Once Upon A Time In The West

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    Released by: Paramount
    Released on: 11/18/2003
    Director: Sergio Leone
    Cast: Claudia Cardinale, Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, Woody Strode, Gabrielle Ferzetti, Jack Elam, Lionel Stander
    Year: 1969
    Purchase From Amazon

    The Movie:

    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 it's 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 a regretful air of 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.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    Paramount deserves a serious round of applause for the restoration job and transfer that they have delivered here. Print damage is virtually non-existent and there aren't any compression problems to report on. Some very minor edge enhancement is the only notable flaw that's really visible and even then, it's only slightly noticeable. Colors look dead on, with particular attention paid to the specific hues of red and brown that Leone used to compose many of the scenes. All of his trademark close ups come in crystal clear and look sharp as a razor and the blacks are deep and clean looking, never murky or pixilated.

    Paramount has supplied a brand new Dolby Digital 5.1 remix for the film, and have also included the films original Mono track as well. The 5.1 track does add a bit of depth to the film, especially in the scenes where the trains are featured and where there are gunfights, but overall, it not an overly aggressive mix and luckily it remains quite faithful to the original sound. Morricone's legendary musical score also benefits from the remix and it does have a bit more power on the remixed track that it lacks on the Mono track. Speaking of the Mono track, the quality on it is just as good. There aren't any hiss or distortion issues on either mix, clarity is near perfect, and everything sounds very, very nice.

    On the first disc, the extras are limited to 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 it's 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.

    Moving over to the second disc, we're treated to 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 on this disc. 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.

    The only thing keeping the extras from being totally perfect in my opinion are the lack of involvement from Dario Argento and Ennio Morricone and a slight softness in the video that is noticeable throughout that might possibly have been caused from a PAL to NTSC conversion. Minor quibbles, but quibbles none-the-less. That aside though, there are plenty of great supplements here and it's nice to see the film so well represented with this material. While this is interesting from a historical perspective, the fact that subtitles are included over the narration makes it a bit odd to sit through.

    Next up on the disc are two trailers, both of which are anamorphic widescreen and one of which is a hidden Easter Egg! It's nice to see them included and they're both in pretty good shape here.

    A few nicely made still galleries are up next. 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. Both galleries are run as slide shows and set to music, the first runs for about four and a half minutes and the second one just over five minutes. There are a lot of great images here and it's worth your time to sit through them.

    Finally, rounding out the supplements are some informative cast profiles, each one set to the theme music for their specific character from the film (I thought it was a nice touch).

    The Final Word:

    Paramount has done an exceptional job bringing one of the finest films ever made to DVD in a well priced, feature packed special edition. This set comes highly recommended and is one of the best DVDs of 2003.
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