I just read back through and saw this post. I can’t speak for TGBU, but I know what you must be talking about. Once Upon A Time In The West is a movie that, if you haven’t seen for a while, the parts that stick with you most are the shocking, dramatic parts (Henry Fonda and the little boy, for instance), but while watching a new print on the big screen, I was struck by how funny it is. Not that it’s a comedy, but humorous moments abound. The cowboy who’s standing there waiting for the train, looking all badass, when water starts dripping from the ceiling onto his bald head. He just calmly puts on his hat, waits a while for there to build up a good bit of water on his brim, then takes it off and drinks it.
Or Jack Elam, also waiting for the train bringing Harmonica (Charles Bronson), having trouble with a fly that keeps buzzing around his face, but he tries to get rid of it by facial expressions and blowing air out of his mouth. It’s a scene that seems to last several minutes, and it’s funny, but you keep thinking, damn man, just use your hand and wave it off! But then he traps it in his gun barrel. There’s humor and tension at the same time. It’s scenes like that that you have have patience for, and just appreciate for what Leone is doing. He’s not furthering the plot much. These people don’t have long to live. It’s just there for you to appreciate and have fun with.
I had also forgotten Jason Robard’s low-key humor, a very dry humor. When you first see him, he’s just shot the men who were taking him to jail (off screen, but you hear what just happened, though it doesn’t become immediately clear what did just happen) and is seemingly menacing a bar full of people without even pulling a gun. The tension level is sky high, but yet he’s very easy-going and subtly witty, and continues to be that way throughout most of the film. Later, he gets caught and carted off to jail and you think, aw damn. But then he just shows up again and the plot goes on, and no one comments about it. You realize that this harkens back to when you first saw him, and while you feel bad for the lawmen who are just doing their job, it’s darkly funny too.
Leone definitely had a gift. Oh what I wouldn’t give to see a new print of Once Upon A Time in America on the big screen.
One thing I love about this opening scene, is that it silently develops these characters, lavishing all this time and camera work on them, yet in the end they are just disposable thugs. It’s the same in most or all of the Leone westerns - minor characters are creatively drawn as individuals, even if their fate is nothing more than to get quickly gunned down in a way that are almost incidental to or plays only a tiny role in the plot ( “If you’re going to shoot, shoot - don’t talk.” ).
Needless to say I’m yet another huge fan of the Eastwood trio and Once Upon a Time in the West.
I love the Clint Eastwood trilogy, especially GBU" Still about Leone, I liked his “Once Upon a Time in America,” which is not a Spaghetti Western, much more than “Once Upon a Time in the West.”
Exactly, very well-put. I’m not sure things like this can be appreciated watching on a small screen for the first time. It’s understandable that some people would want to use the fast-forward on their remote. I once tried to get my dad, who ONLY ever watched westerns or war movies, to watch this. He hated it, just hated it. I don’t think we made it even halfway through before he made me turn it off.
Needless to say, I never recommended The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford to him.
I thought they were alright, and I also liked High Noon (which, obviously is not a spaghetti western, but still), even though most of the people I watched it with hated it because they thought it was boring and slow. I loved the real-time aspect of it. I should probably watch the trilogy again.
I may be wrong but I’m guessing that what Harmonious Discord means by “real spaghetti westerns” are the dozens of cheesy non-Leone knock-offs that the Italian film industry churned out during the late 60’s and 70’s.
I haven’t followed the genre closely at all but I wanted to chime in to say that it’s fascinating to me that another culture is so fascinated with ours.
Some guy(s) over in Italy were compelled enough by the myth of the American West to make a movie about it. It would be like if I wanted to tell the Russians what life was like under the czars, then wrote a screenplay, found funding, and lined up actors to play the parts, packaged it for audiences to love, and so on. I better really know my stuff about the czars—the audience already knows all the legends—and I better be able to distill it into something finer.
The thing that strikes me about Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo—The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, named in Italian as my hommage to the film—is that they identified the essential element and amplified it. In a “Lord of the Flies” sort of way, men don’t talk or negotiate or pontificate or anything else: they act.
If there’s a more testosterone-filled film, I don’t know what it is.
I don’t claim to be a film expert but I would put the Eastwood trilogy up there with the best of all westerns. And I’m a big John Ford fan. Once Upon a Time in the West I would rank as one of the best films of all time regardless of genre. It would probably be my pick for film with the best movie villian in history.
Once Upon a Time in America is also one of my favorites (director’s cut of course) but not a spagetti western.
Oh god yes. How chilling is Henry Fonda? I think one of the many reasons my dad hated it is that he didn’t like seeing Fonda as a cold-blooded killer. Not just cold-blooded, but totally sociopathic, without any redeeming qualities. It’s probably a good thing he didn’t watch it all way through, because he didn’t see why Harmonica was after Frank. I can’t imagine how shocking it must have been back then for people to see the genial and beloved Fonda like that. I’ll bet he had a ball playing the character.
Whaaaat? There’s a DIRECTOR’S CUT of America??? Is it on DVD?
I’m not sure that there was anything officially called the director’s cut. I know there have been several versions of the movie. On advice of Siskel and Ebert I never watched the American theatrical release abortion that cut out something like an hour and a half of the movie. Back when I had a working laserdisc player I had the 4 hour version. I think Leone wanted to be even longer.
ETA: The wiki article on the movie is interesting. It says that Leone’s daughter is planning to release a real director’s cut version on DVD soon. Don’t know if that is accurate.
[Hijack]
“For a Few Dollars More” was my favorite of the Man with No Name trilogy. Am I the only one?
IMO, it isn’t as slow and meandering as TGTBTU, or as hard to follow as Fistful.
[/Hijack]
).
