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Rating: 1968: for Sergio Leone, a crucible called "Once Upon a Time in America" begins.
The ambitious fresco on the reality of the Jewish mafia in New York would find some financiers only 12 years later: Globus and Golan would put in the money, but cut a good amount of film, making the already complex film indecipherable.
The director's anxiety for gigantism found partial outlet in the tale of the last days of the West; naturally, the pressures to do a fourth film of duels and horses were very strong, as thanks to these, Leone filled box office coffers. And so, there was nothing left but to shelve the dream of a lifetime (and "Once Upon a Time in America" would indeed narrate the dream of a lifetime) and dust off the Colts. But magnificently. 12 years later, in the splendid finale of "Once Upon a Time in America," the camera would spy the blissful opium smile of Noodles in the same way the disappointment of Jill would be spied as she searches for the secret of her mad Irish husband (Frank Wolff).
For "Once Upon a Time in the West" Leone demanded and achieved maximum splendor. The barren plains of Almeria should not be seen but the peaks of Monument Valley (the cathedral of Father John Ford and his confreres; its red sand transported to Rome in tons to connect the interiors shot at Cinecittà, with figures being Americans and not sombrero-wearing Mexicans). The natural sets were Arizona and Utah, and a crumb of Sardinia. Entire towns were reconstructed nail for nail like the real ones; for the costumes, Carlo Simi no longer needed to rummage through Western Costume clearance but to find the best that could be had. The train Morton moves on is of Viscontian precision decor. Enio Morricone's music abandons beat/contemporary harshness (aside from the Harmonica theme) and opens in Wagnerian-styled overtures. This film is a melodrama, indeed.
And the cast.
All first-rate stars and a semi-unknown with the right face: Charles Buchinski, professionally known as Bronson, who became a star precisely with this film, playing Harmonica, a melancholic and stony variant of the Eastwood stranger. For each of them, Leone had a series of elephant-sized show cards made with their face.
The celebrities were Claudia Cardinale, more stunning than ever and embodying Jill, the Whore and the Matriarch; Jason Robards Jr., a great versatile and measured actor (also watch him in Sam Peckinpah's Cable Hogue, a film that, in a different way, tells the same story a bit) in the role of Cheyenne, the Bandit; Gabriele Ferzetti, Morton is, the Entrepreneur, the man with his rails laid from the Atlantic to the Pacific and with his new systems, is killing the West of Real Men.
And above all, Henry Fonda, the American Actor, the Good, the democratic President, playing Frank, the cold Killer in Morton's pay, fascinated by new means but in conflict with them. His exuberant physical health fights against the train magnate's bone tuberculosis. We will discover that there is a power stronger than one's flesh and that, despite Morton's death, things cannot stop anymore.
When Fonda reached the set, he showed up with a beard and black contact lenses (Fonda’s blue eyes are a symbol of American Honesty); Leone gradually uncovered his face, and the actor understood that more than Frank, it was Fonda who had to shock the viewers with his ferocity (he kills a child at the beginning of the film...). It wasn't the first time the actor had an ambiguous role; see the foolish general in "Fort Apache" massacre or the ambiguous gunslinger with golden Colts in the significant "Warlock" but no one had dared to present the ultimate Good in such a perverse and irredeemable light.
This becomes evident in the final scene: Frank is killed in the duel, then Harmonica leaves, rejecting Jill's smile. He knows that despite the bad entrepreneur and his armed arm being dead, progress cannot be stopped. It's up to a healthy Jill to carry on with those rails, watering the workers, receiving a few pats on the backside (as Cheyenne suggests).
We know that things didn't go so smoothly in history; how many Mortons have reaped money and power, regardless of a country's even dramatic, irreversible transformation?
This anti-modern epic by Sergio Leone presents, in enlarged forms, the author's strengths and limits: we have the mother-scenes realized with great mastery (the wait at the station of the three killers, Elam, Mulloch, and Strode) the love scene between Frank and Jill, the hunt for the killer in the city under construction, and above all, the magnificent final duel, where the famous flashback completed with the showdown between the two is interwoven.
The flaws are in the linking parts: even in the restored version (thanks to clavie Salizzato), the story's development, written four hands by the young Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci, is asthmatic and cumbersome.
The faces of the secondary actors, moreover, weaken the film that wanted to be (and often is) of high-class and elevated melodrama. Aldo Sambrel, following Cheyenne caught by the sheriff (Keenan Wynn) or the scene of the old man getting his nose crushed when trying to stake claims for Jill's lands, for example, make Leone a would-be but can't be. His old teacher, Luchino Visconti to whose spirit "Once Upon a Time in the West" comes close, would never have made these mistakes, caring for the grand and the detail alike.
The rhetoric put in the mouths of the Last Men, while on one side memorable, for the rest is truly naive and sounds like a dirge in Mark Knopfler’s style (a lover of this film, not surprisingly).
There are three endings, each beautiful taken individually but too many even for a superfilm like this (at the time it was released with four parts and three intermissions).
Leone is a child who dreams big, as one might once dream, reading Sandokan and going to see cowboys in the parish cinema. In the zest to live great scenes through imagination, inconsistencies are skipped over. But: this desire to dream, this idea of a big cinema, bigger than life, makes me overlook my criticism.
Yes, today there is not as much money but neither the desire to fill the viewer’s eyes; one settles on minimalism-maxibon and believes to have made a masterpiece. We are depressed and dearly miss Leone's titanism. Tornatore couldn't revive it, but at least showed that if one wants, the money can be found.
Once upon a time the Italian cinema?
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