Once Upon a Time in the West

STILL A SHOCKER OF A MOMENT

The most shocking, audacious moment in all of Henry Fonda’s movies comes in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West. It’s possible even today’s jaded audiences will find it jaw-dropping when Fonda actually shoots the little boy; if you’re watching the picture as a repeat, you still can’t quite believe he’s going to do it. Initially turning down the role, he showed up on the set with a mustache, beard and brown contact lenses. When seeing the transformation, Leone shouted, “Shave! Throw away the brown eyes! Where are the blue ones? That’s what I bought!” Making Fonda a villain extraordinaire is of course the trademark of Leone; in his tributes to American westerns, he alters the face of iconolatry not exclusively by means of role reversing—far too simple—but by enlarging the object of adulation to mythic proportions. The widescreen close-ups of Fonda, or other actors Leone uses like Charles Bronson, Lee Van Cleef, Jack Elam, Jason Robards, Claudia Cardinale and Eli Wallach, become epic grotesques, the general vagueness of characterization a standard of presumed deformity to replace the tired American western heroes who talk too much and who can quickly bore audiences. We’re rarely bored by Leone’s brand of savagery—he knows how to work up anticipation of violence and execute it without too much overkill. The sets are almost always a hoot in their falsely humongous size and detail, Ennio Morricone’s music ominous and epitaphic (that harmonica!), and Tonino Delli Colli’s eye for panorama is so strong as to become awesome: when Cardinale is in a wagon riding through the landscape of the west, the views are as spectacular as those in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. I’ve never sat through an American western I really liked, and television as the vast recycler no doubt a deterrent in having a more receptive response. (Very recently attempted to watch Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp for the umpteenth time, and I still can’t recall any scenes.) It took an Italian to revitalize the genre by serving up infidels as pasta over which stylistic slaughter is poured. Would the men Leone studied under—Melvyn Le Roy, Raoul Walsh, Fred Zinnemann, Robert Wise and William Wyler—have ever given Fonda a sex scene with Cardinale? Might be Bernardo Bertolucci’s major contribution to the script, the genesis of which is reportedly Joan Crawford’s screamer Johnny Guitar.

Despise Wesley Snipes and have no intention of commenting on Gallowwalkers, directed by Andrew Goth and released in 2012. However, the curiosity about the movie is in being a storyboard tribute to Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, only the deaths are exceedingly more gruesome. Even has its own Claudia Cardinale. The title has been changed several times; the poster at the left reads Gallowwalker and chosen because it hides Snipes’s face.

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ralphbenner@nowreviewing.com