Stars: Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson, Gabriele Ferzetti
Director: Sergio Leone
Oscar History: In one of the worst decisions in the history of the Academy, the film received no Oscar nominations, making it arguably the best film ever made to never receive an Oscar nomination.
(Not So) Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars
(Spoilers Ahead) The film is hard to summarize into one simple paragraph as we so often do in my reviews, but here goes. The movie takes place in a land where modernity and the wild west meet-a train magnate named Morton (Ferzetti) is making his way to the Pacific Ocean before he dies of a debilitating illness (it feels like muscular dystrophy, but the illness is never identified in the picture). In order to get there in time, he hires a ruthless band of thugs, led by one of the nastiest villains in film history, Frank (Henry Fonda, of all people, playing a truly cruel baddie that totally upends his longtime nice guy persona), to kill an Irishman and his family on the eve of his wedding to a New Orleans prostitute named Jill (Cardinale). Unknown to Frank, Jill is not in fact his fiancé but his wife, having gotten married in New Orleans and is therefore the legal owner of his desert ranch, which it's later revealed is a shrewd investment since the railroad must run through it to get there, and her husband McBain (Frank Wolff) planned on building a train station and making a fortune. While trying to figure out what to do with Jill & the ticking clock of the railroad, we are dealing with two mysterious men in the story. One is Cheyenne (Robards), a bandit whom Frank impersonates while killing McBain in order to frame him for the murders, and Cheyenne is none-too-happy about this, vowing revenge on Frank and his men. The second is a man that only goes by Harmonica (Bronson), his real name never being revealed, who is known for playing his eponymous instrument and always keeping a cool head and his strategy to himself. The movie ends with a showdown between Frank and Harmonica where it's revealed (wasn't kidding about that spoiler alert) that Frank killed Harmonica's brother many years earlier, not by shooting him but by hanging his brother from a noose and then having Harmonica serve as a living gallows, knowing that he can't stand forever but having him fight to keep his brother alive. It's a nasty reveal in the showdown, when you finally realize why Harmonica has to win, and why he's hated Frank with such a blaze.
The film, as I mentioned above, is the greatest western of all time, a much-maligned genre for those who simply think of Peter Griffin saying "pilgrim" when they think of the classics of this era, rather than realizing the rich history of the many westerns that challenged the John Wayne tropes (even Wayne's own The Searchers would do just that). The movie's genius lies in the way that it starts a ticking bomb in its first, meandering opening scenes, where Harmonica kills three nameless robbers (played by veteran character actors Woody Strode, Jack Elam and Al Mulock). From then on, both Harmonica and Frank are marching to their inevitable end, and the film in some respects feels like one long ending. This wouldn't work in virtually any other film, but it's the ending of a story that began long ago, of the men who created the west, but were too rough and too violent to make a proper civilization in this short-lived period of American history. Frank, Harmonica, and Cheyenne are relics, and they know it as the film progresses, each realizing their way-of-life is not just threatened, but gasping for air, and it will be Jill, thoughtful, planful, and modern, who will bring the new world to the West. This is a tall order for a film to carry, and almost any other director would have fallen under the weight of such a task as creating a gargantuan epic about the decline of the American West, but Leone was clearly the kind of director who took such tasks to heart. The last thirty minutes makes for one of the best endings to any movie, period. Think of the risk of having Harmonica's true reason for killing Frank come just seconds before Frank's death, an ending where we don't entirely know if Frank understands why he's being punished by this mysterious man. Or the gravitas that Bronson brings to his still-faced goodbye to Jill, his "someday" not being literal but in fact that men of his nature will eventually come to save the world from evil if they are ever needed...that should read as so hokey, but it really never does. It's hard to grasp how many jumps the film makes with its viewer that could fall flat, but Leone's confidence that he's making just a near-perfect film won't be deterred, and it pays off.
The film received no Oscar nominations, which is an unforgivable sin. I'd argue it's not just the best movie of the year, but arguably of the decade, and it was probably ignored because Leone's film performed poorly at the box office (the western being on its last legs of Hollywood glory at the time as well), but has been rescued in decades since by filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, who both consider it a landmark. The film surely deserved nominations for Cinematography, Art Direction, Film Editing, and the top prizes, but perhaps most egregious would be Supporting Actor and Score. The performances are uniformly good, with Claudia Cardinale tasked with a tough part, playing the introverted hooker-with-a-heart-of-steel, and Jason Robards a brute who is also kind underneath. But it's Bronson and Fonda who deserved the most credit. Bronson's lone wolf is mesmerizing, the sort of performance you don't know an actor has in him until you give him the script. Known for his tough guys and the Death Wish pictures, Bronson gives a soulful, deeply-felt performance as Harmonica, and it's hard to look at this and still see the caricature he's known as in popular culture. Fonda is his equal as nasty, vicious Frank. Villains are Oscar's raison d'être for Supporting Actor, so I don't know why the Academy ignored Fonda here since he was woefully without an Oscar (he'd win one 13 years later for the fine but not remotely as good On Golden Pond). Both men deserved nominations more than any performance I've seen from that category in 1968, and the same surely goes for Ennio Morricone with the most luscious score in film history. Seriously-this is the best work from one of cinema's finest composers, lilting and iconic, frequently associating specific music with each of the four leads and it's instantly recognizable. Morricone's work, not to get too hyperbolic, is my favorite cinematic score of all-time, and as a result it's a crime that it wasn't victorious, much less nominated. Still, though, Oscars are one thing, but a critical reputation that grows almost every year since it's release is another. Once Upon a Time in the West may not have gotten the attention it deserved when it came out, but a movie this good will always be found, and thankfully critics and film-lovers have done just that.
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