10 / 10
Official trailer
Once Upon a Time in the West is the Sergio Leone-directed Western that closed his Dollars trilogy era and opened his epic-Americana phase. Leone directed and co-wrote with Sergio Donati. Leone, Dario Argento, and Bernardo Bertolucci developed the story. Henry Fonda plays Frank, a hired killer working for the railroad. Charles Bronson plays Harmonica, the mysterious gunfighter whose presence drives the plot. Claudia Cardinale plays Jill McBain, the widow of a slain rancher whose land sits on the future site of a railroad water stop.
Jason Robards plays Cheyenne, a bandit who arrives at the McBain ranch under suspicion of the killing Frank committed. Gabriele Ferzetti plays Mr. Morton, the consumptive railroad baron whose track is racing west. The plot follows the four characters’ converging interests at the McBain ranch and the eventual confrontation between Harmonica and Frank.
Once Upon a Time in the West is my favorite Western, and I don’t think it’s close. Leone takes his time, and I wouldn’t trim a single one of those long stares and loaded silences. Every face, every gunshot and every note of Morricone’s score feels chosen, and the film plays like an opera staged in the desert. It’s the easiest 10 I’ve ever handed out.
The film made approximately twenty-six million dollars worldwide in initial 1968 release. The American commercial performance was poor.
Paramount cut twenty minutes from the U.S. release. The European reception was strong. Later decades reframed the film as Leone’s masterpiece and as one of the major Westerns ever made. The full 165-minute cut has been the standard version since the 1980s. The film is now consistently cited among the great films of any genre.
The Opening Sequence
The film’s opening sequence is a hugely influential cold open.
Three gunmen arrive at a desolate train station to wait for the next train. The sequence runs approximately ten minutes with almost no dialogue. The men kill flies, drink water from a barrel that drips on one of them, and rattle their pistols against a windmill. A train arrives. The expected target steps off carrying a harmonica. The four men shoot. Three die. Harmonica remains standing.
The sequence is the film’s argument for what kind of Western it intends to be. Leone refuses the conventional Western pacing entirely. The opening establishes that the film will move at its own speed. The audience either accepts the rhythm or rejects the film. Most Westerns of the 1960s would have used those ten minutes to introduce three characters with dialogue, motivation, and exposition. Leone uses them to establish atmosphere, anticipation, and the cinematic tone the rest of the film will work in. The opening tells you exactly what kind of film you’re in.
I could watch that opening on a loop. The fly, the dripping water and the pistols rattling on the windmill build more tension than most shootouts manage with a hundred bullets. Leone asks for patience there, and I think he pays it back with interest.
For Writers
An opening sequence can establish a film’s rhythm so completely that the rest of the work has to follow. Once Upon a Time in the West’s opening teaches the audience how to watch the film. The lesson is that early pages establish reader expectations about pacing. Whatever speed the first chapter sets becomes the speed the reader expects the book to continue at. Pick that speed deliberately. Slow openings demand patient readers. The patience is something you have to earn in the opening itself.
The Fonda Casting
Henry Fonda’s casting as Frank is a much-cited inversion in American cinema. Fonda had spent forty years building a screen persona as the straight-arrow American everyman. The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Twelve Angry Men (1957). Leone cast him because of this history. The first time Frank’s face appears on screen, the audience expects another decent man. The face belongs to a killer who has just shot a small child at point-blank range. The casting inverts the entire American Western tradition.
Fonda’s performance commits to the inversion. His Frank is calm, professional, and unhurried about killing. The character’s specific menace comes from how comfortable he is.
The audience reads this directly through Fonda’s body language, the body language they’ve learned to trust over four decades of his career. Casting can be its own form of storytelling. Leone wrote the role and then made it carry the additional weight of forty years of audience expectations being deliberately betrayed.
Fonda is the reason this film unsettles me as much as it thrills me. That familiar, decent face on a man who has just shot a child is a betrayal I feel in my stomach, and I think it’s the bravest piece of casting Leone ever pulled off.
For Writers
Casting against type works when the type itself becomes part of the character’s meaning. Henry Fonda as a killer is more disturbing than an unknown actor as a killer because Fonda’s career history is part of what the audience sees. The lesson applies to writers: established readers bring expectations to your work. If you’ve built a reputation in one tone, working against that tone produces specific effects. Use the expectations as material. The reader’s surprise is part of the experience.
The Music
Ennio Morricone composed the score before production began. Leone played the music on set during filming so the actors could time their performances to the cues. The technique is unusual and the results are visible throughout. Each major character has their own theme. Harmonica’s theme is the harmonica itself. Frank’s theme is dissonant electric guitar. Jill’s theme is a soaring soprano voice over orchestra. Cheyenne’s theme is a rolling banjo and harmonica combination. The themes interweave through the film as the characters’ arcs converge.
The “Man with a Harmonica” theme is among the most-quoted pieces of film music in the medium’s history.
The cue plays whenever Harmonica encounters Frank, building toward the final flashback that reveals their shared history. The audience doesn’t learn what the harmonica means until the closing duel. The music has been preparing the revelation for three hours. Film scoring can carry information that dialogue and image can’t communicate by themselves. The music is doing structural work the rest of the film depends on.
Morricone’s score is the part of this film I’d fight hardest to keep. Frank’s electric guitar sounds dangerous, and Jill’s soprano theme is so lovely it almost hurts. I think Leone playing the music on set is why the whole film moves like a dance.
For Writers
A motif that recurs without explanation builds reader investment in the eventual explanation. Harmonica’s theme appears throughout the film. The audience doesn’t know what it means until the climax. The waiting is part of the experience. The lesson is that recurring elements (objects, phrases, locations) in fiction create anticipation when their meaning is withheld. Place the motif early. Let it return. Reveal the meaning at the climax. The reader will have been preparing for the reveal across the entire work.
Craft Note
The closing duel between Harmonica and Frank is the film’s most economical structural payoff. The two men face each other in a circular yard. The camera moves through specific compositional positions: extreme close-ups on eyes, wide shots establishing distance, the slow pivoting movement that’s been Leone’s signature since A Fistful of Dollars. Morricone’s “Man with a Harmonica” theme plays. Mid-duel, the camera cuts to a flashback that finally reveals what Frank did to Harmonica’s brother decades earlier.
The harmonica we’ve been hearing is the one Frank shoved in young Harmonica’s mouth while his brother died slowly. The duel ends. The revelation makes Harmonica’s three-hour pursuit comprehensible. The closing sequence shows how Leone’s specific stylistic vocabulary (extreme close-ups, sustained takes, music carrying narrative weight) can produce emotional payoffs no other Western director achieved at this scale.
Does Once Upon a Time in the West still hold up?
It’s a 10, and I wouldn’t budge on it.
The opening, Fonda’s cold killer, Morricone’s themes and that final duel are what I picture when someone says the word Western. My only gripe belongs to Paramount, which cut twenty minutes from the American release, so track down the full 165-minute cut. After that, go to Once Upon a Time in America (1984) and the Dollars trilogy for more Leone.
