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Once Upon A Time In The West (Blu-ray)

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    Ian Jane
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  • Once Upon A Time In The West (Blu-ray)



    Released by: Paramount
    Released on: 6/2/2011
    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 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.

    NOTE: This Blu-ray release contains the international cut of the film and a newly restored version that puts back in roughly forty seconds of footage not seen prior which reinstates a few cut shots but doesn't change the storyline at all.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    Once Upon A Time In The West looks great in this AVC encoded 2.35.1 1080p high definition widescreen transfer. Paramount's new transfer brings out an incredible amount of detail and texture and while the DVD release looked great for its day, this Blu-ray improves on the picture quality in every way you'd expect it to and then some. Facial close ups look fantastic, you can count every line and crevice in Bronson's haggard face while medium and long distance shots allow us to marvel at the texture of the wood grain noticeable in the sets or the dirt and grit that shows up around the railroad sequences. The picture quality is consistently strong, showing great sharpness without any evidence of digital tweaking. There are no issues with obnoxious noise reduction nor are there any compression artifacts or edge enhancement problems to complain about. There are a couple of spots where you might notice some noisiness if you really look for it and a few spots where the film's grain gets a bit blotchy, but aside from that, and a few minor bits of noticeable print damage, this transfer looks good. A few shots look a bit blown out, contrast wise (you'll notice that hills sort of disappear into the background skies in a few outdoor shots) Black levels look great, skin tones are nice and natural if a bit beaten down by the harsh sun of the film's location, and Paramount has just really done a great job here.

    As far as the audio options are concerned, there's an English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix, and Dolby Digital Mono tracks offered in English, French and Spanish with subtitles offered in those same three languages and in Portuguese. While it would have been nice to have a lossless mono track, the 5.1 remix sounds excellent. Morricone's score has never had more 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.

    Paramount has carried over almost all of the extras from their two disc special edition DVD release minus the cast bios and the hidden Easter Egg trailer. So what we have kicks off 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 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 is the film's theatrical trailer and a 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. 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. All of the extras on the disc are in standard definition except for the trailer.


    The Final Word:

    It's a minor bummer that Paramount didn't carry over every single one of the extras from the two-disc DVD set but the key word there is minor. There's such an improvement in the audio and video department's that there's absolutely no reason not to jump all over this release, particularly as it's being made available at such an affordable price. The movie itself holds up incredibly well as one of the finest westerns ever made, and the Blu-ray debut of Once Upon A Time In The West should rightly be considered essential.

    Click on the images below for full size Blu-ray screen caps!



















    • Ian Jane
      #2
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      Ian Jane commented
      Editing a comment
      In hindsight, this is good feedback. She's stunning in this movie.

    • Todd Jordan
      #3
      Todd Jordan
      Smut is good.
      Todd Jordan commented
      Editing a comment
      I like doing that when I don't care about the movie at all. Screen caps of women.

    • Mark Tolch
      #4
      Mark Tolch
      Senior Member
      Mark Tolch commented
      Editing a comment
      I have 2 copies of this on order, one for me and one for my stepdad for Father's Day. Stoked, to say the least.
    Posting comments is disabled.

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