Sergio Leone is a director often snubbed by film intellectuals for prioritising style over substance, and they may be forgiven for assuming so. His camera cannot get too close or too far away from the action, and the sound design can instantly range from still silence to the most deafening score that Enio Morricone could muster.
Stylistically, Once Upon A Time In The West is no exception. But beneath the melodrama, beneath the plot-driven dance of death between good and evil, Leone bids a solemn farewell to his favourite period of US history, the old West, as it transitioned to the new.
Note: This article contains spoilers.
Manifest Destiny
From the time of the Louisiana purchase in 1803 (the US grew twice its size when it bought the land from Napoleon Bonaparte), expansion to the Pacific was inevitable. As industrialism swept across from the East, there was need for a railroad that would span the breadth of the continent. In reality, the construction of the first trans-North American railroad began in both the East and the West and met in the middle, however Once Upon A Time In The West has the construction beginning in the East and ending in the West, to symbolise the dawning of the new West in clearer terms.
For most folks in the old West, the railroad brought within reach the libertarian ideals of the United States proper, and more importantly, the enterprising opportunities that came with it. In Once Upon A Time In The West, one such enterprising individual is Brett McBain (Frank Wolff), who lives with his children on a remote farm called Sweetwater. McBain has cleverly purchased the land, knowing that the railroad will eventually have to pass through his property, as it's the only place within miles that has access to water. He plans on building a train station and an entire town in which his family can live like kings.
The Robber Baron
What also came from the East was organised corruption, and this is symbolised by Mr Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti), the "robber baron" who lives on his train, crossing the country and paying bandits to kill landowners so that he can take over their land. Mr Morton introduces a new form of power to the old West, power in the form of wealth. Frank (Henry Fonda) is a bandit hired by Mr Morton to kill McBain.
Together, they pin the blame on Cheyenne (Jason Robards), the leader of a notorious gang. Cheyenne teams up with Harmonica (Charles Bronson), a mysterious stranger seeking out Frank to exact veangance for the childhood murder of his brother. Together they help McBain's widow Jill (Claudia Cardinale), to protect her land from Morton and Frank. Jill has come from the East (New Orleans) to live with McBain and his children, only to find her new husband dead on arrival.
Men Of The Old West
Frank, Cheyenne and Harmonica each represent different perspectives in the old West at the time:
Frank idolises Mr Morton for understanding money in a way he never could. Frank has only ever known how to wield power through violence. Mr Morton teaches him that he can become less hands-on with his work and delegate to others instead. Mr Morton understands the power of being well-organised, but this is also his downfall. Frank, being from the old West, is adaptable to a constantly changing environment, and this is where he gets the upper hand over Mr Morton. It's interesting to note that Frank, as the only one of the three men who readily adopts the mindset of an Easterner, is the one who is most inherently evil.
Cheyenne is an outlaw who could never adapt to a civilised society. His parting advice to Jill, who is from the East, speaks volumes of the film's historical and cultural significance. Cheyenne suggests to Jill that if the men helping build her station lay a hand on her, she should forgive their impulsive nature. Order has come to a place where previously there was no order. There will be many a residual old Western soul, socially displaced by the simplest of graces that we in the modern world take for granted. Cheyenne himself never makes the transition into the new West, and rightly so. He would never find his place there.
Harmonica's lonely goal being fulfilled when he gets his veangance, the obvious choice would be to stay with Jill and help her establish the town, now that his soul is free to love again. But it's not that easy. Harmonica has been searching for Frank for so long, he's forgotten himself along the way. He tells Jill he'd like to return some day, but right now it all seems too much for him. Harmonica represents the inability of a fundamental, survival-based mindset to accept the complexities of the freedom of choice of how to live one's life.
What binds the three men is they are all comparatively primitive beings whose lives and identities are thrown into turmoil when they come into contact with the more "sophisticated" ideologies of modern man.
Death Of A Genre
Once Upon A Time In The West consists almost entirely of references to traditional American Westerns (the script was deliberately written that way), however it is told at a slower and more sombre pace than Leone's other Spaghetti Westerns, making it not only his tribute to the old West, but his own personal farewell to the conventional Western genre.
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