Once Upon a Time in the West by Sergio Leone (1968)
The first word that immediately comes to mind when reflecting on Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West is “sprawling.” Clocking in at nearly two-and-a-half hours, it’s perfectly content to take its own sweet time. Case in point: The opening sequence is ten minutes long, almost wordless, and largely focused on a trio of gunslingers simply ambling about a dilapidated station in the middle of nowhere while waiting for a train to arrive. And yet, it’s frequently riveting — and culminates in one of the most iconic shootouts in cinema history. That’s a pretty succinct description of how I feel about the entire film. It’s certainly trying at times; Leone hardly ever seems to be in a hurry to move his story — an elaborate web involving a young widow, a harmonica-playing stranger, a railroad tycoon, and a violent psychopath — along. But that same languid pacing and sprawling nature gives Leone plenty of time to fill the screen with some truly indelible images, be it the searing, sun-blasted desert of the American Old West (though much of the film was actually shot in southern Spain), Henry Fonda’s ice-blue eyes, or Charles Bronson’s leathery visage.
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