Once Upon A Time In The West (1968)

Italy/USA
directed by: Sergio Leone
written by: Sergio Donati, Sergio Leone, Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci
starring: Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards
comment: 21st September, 2017

How much of a blasphemy would it be on my side to state that I would be much happier if the character of Claudia Cardinale disappeared from the film along with most of the story connected to her? Probably a lot. It would also indicate my secret worry that I actually don't understand at all what is this film trying to communicate and what's it all about. I understand the Harmonica plot line but not so much the rest, and the Harmonica story could have easily been told in half the final run-time. There is a couple of great scenes in there somewhere (my favourite being the opening McBain farm quail shooting and then of course the fateful memory), but as a whole the film leaves me quite unimpressed.

Leone's style brilliantly peaks in "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". In "The West", however, my eyes see slow and undeniable decay into opulent autotelism. The excess of references to other films and predilection for unsubstantial "coolnes" of characters brings futility to places where I would normally wonder about the hardship of human destiny or what is the best temperature to enjoy revenge. Here I'm wandering if I'd missed something by taking a quick nap and if I'm by any chance getting morally disturbed by the film's romanticising of all those idealised troubles of the given time period.

And here we get to the part that breaks my heart the most: I have to express critical and almost negative feelings towards Morricone's music score. One or two compositions with the harmonica are utterly phenomenal, but none of the others speaks to me that much and they often tend to be too sentimental for my liking of for the story's brutal nature. And the fact that each of the main characters basically has their own theme song that plays every time they turn up almost seems like a parody of itself.

I gave this film a few occasions to prove itself but after several years I still think the same things that came to my mind after the first viewing. Hence I hereby declase this case closed and move on towards torturing my mind with other films, amen.