Once Upon A Time In The West

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Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Little Big Man and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are my two fave westerns, and they aren't much like other westerns either.
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Little Big Man and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are my two fave westerns, and they aren't much like other westerns either.
I second those two films and would like to add The Outlaw Josey Wales as a another recommendation.



Once Upon a Time in the West was enjoyable, but I liked The Good, The Bad and the Ugly better.
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I found OUATITW to be a little too slowly paced for me. The opening scene seemed to take 3 months.
It was good, but I probably wont watch again.



Sorry Harmonica.......I got to stay here.
I remember working a 300-person meeting in a big hotel ballroom. The night before, we were running computers to a big 40' screen for slide presentations, and I popped the DVD in for fun. Looked awesome up there. A couple of our bigshot clients walked in and I thought thats it, I'm fired. They sat down and made me rewind it and watched the entire thing! LOL. Love this movie.
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Finished here. It's been fun.
Maybe it's my lack of knowledge about the "western" film genre, but I didn't really like this film all that much. I mean the Morricone score is amazing as always, and the film is stunning visually. But it just seems cold and detached. Like there's sequences where for like 5-10 minutes, where the characters just stare at one another without saying a word.Again, not hating on this movie. But with all the praise and love it gets, I was expecting to Love it. As it stands Unforgiven is my favorite western I've seen yet.



Like there's sequences where for like 5-10 minutes, where the characters just stare at one another without saying a word.
That's where the magic of this film resides. The parts where there is stuff happening where the boring ones for me.

Again, not hating on this movie. But with all the praise and love it gets, I was expecting to Love it. As it stands Unforgiven is my favorite western I've seen yet.
Unforgiven is in my top 5 fav westerns, I guess the other 4 may be Leone's movies. Though I haven't watched the less famous spaghetti westerns.



Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
Leone is the master of suspense, so these 'boring' scenes are extremely exciting.
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The music was wonderful for this movie (it's Morricone, after all) but I think the film itself could have been at least 30 minutes shorter. I really liked it but it had some boring parts too, unfortunately.

I think The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and For a Few Dollars More are both better.



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I saw the movie a couple of times now and just watched it again. I kind of like it, but what was wondering, why is the Cheyenne character, even in the movie? It seems to me that if you take him out, or combine him with the Harmonica character, it wouldn't have made any difference and he just seems like an unnecessary character. I also do not understand what his motivation was. He seems like a gang leader type, who all of a sudden decides he wants to build a railroad and gets his gang to help. Why?

I also do not quite understand why Jill, enjoyed sex with Frank so much, after what Frank has done. She may be so depressed that she needs to get laid but does she have to get laid that bad, to the point where she smiled throughout and everything? She really enjoyed it, so if she wants it that bad, why not get laid with Cheyenne instead of Frank, for example?

And why didn't Frank just shoot Harmonica when he had the chance, as oppose to making it a fair duel? This guy murders children, and has no problem with it, so why would he care about having some sort of code of honor, when it comes to grown men?



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WARNING: "Once Upon a Time in the West" spoilers below
If Once Upon a Time in the West can be said to be about the Wild West was quote-unquote civilised by the expansion of railroads and such, then Cheyenne represents the Wild West that is about to die out - and he knows it, which is why he ultimately offers to help Jill out (and you can argue there's a more pragmatic reason in that he can make money more easily from the station than by continuing a life of crime that he ultimately proves too old to keep up considering that he gets captured multiple times and mortally wounded by the railroad tycoon near the end). He shares enough difference to Harmonica (who has a completely different motivation and is shown to be smarter than Cheyenne) that they can't simply be combined into one character, plus they share a good dynamic together anyway.

It's established that Jill used to be a sex worker before getting married so it makes sense that she'd put on a convincing enough act during sex with Frank, which even he acknowledges as nothing more than her attempt to "save her skin" after she has been targeted for death by the tycoon. That's why her next scene after that involves her trying to sell the land for cheap in order to get both Frank and the tycoon off her back.

As for Frank not killing Harmonica, I think it's not quite so much about honour as it is about solving the mystery of Harmonica's true identity, which is clearly gnawing away at Frank the whole time (and it is only once Harmonica reveals it to him that he finally dies). Harmonica certainly has quite a few chances to kill Frank before that point as well, but he doesn't take them either - take the scene where he keeps saving Frank from other gunslingers. He wants Frank to remember who he is first, and Frank wants to remember who he is as well.
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So much so that I'm kinda depressed that I saw what is probably the best western when I've just started to explore the genre. There's plenty of things to love about it, as a predominantly visual person, of course I was most impressed with the HUGE shots but it also features one of the most impressive sound designs I've heard which brings an unprecedented tension to the film.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
WARNING: "Once Upon a Time in the West" spoilers below
If Once Upon a Time in the West can be said to be about the Wild West was quote-unquote civilised by the expansion of railroads and such, then Cheyenne represents the Wild West that is about to die out - and he knows it, which is why he ultimately offers to help Jill out (and you can argue there's a more pragmatic reason in that he can make money more easily from the station than by continuing a life of crime that he ultimately proves too old to keep up considering that he gets captured multiple times and mortally wounded by the railroad tycoon near the end). He shares enough difference to Harmonica (who has a completely different motivation and is shown to be smarter than Cheyenne) that they can't simply be combined into one character, plus they share a good dynamic together anyway.

It's established that Jill used to be a sex worker before getting married so it makes sense that she'd put on a convincing enough act during sex with Frank, which even he acknowledges as nothing more than her attempt to "save her skin" after she has been targeted for death by the tycoon. That's why her next scene after that involves her trying to sell the land for cheap in order to get both Frank and the tycoon off her back.

As for Frank not killing Harmonica, I think it's not quite so much about honour as it is about solving the mystery of Harmonica's true identity, which is clearly gnawing away at Frank the whole time (and it is only once Harmonica reveals it to him that he finally dies). Harmonica certainly has quite a few chances to kill Frank before that point as well, but he doesn't take them either - take the scene where he keeps saving Frank from other gunslingers. He wants Frank to remember who he is first, and Frank wants to remember who he is as well.
WARNING: "spoiler questions" spoilers below

Oh okay, she actually really seemed to enjoy the sex so it fooled me too. As for putting on an act to save her skin, did she have to smile during the sex to save her skin. Couldn't she just look away during and not smile and Frank wouldn' thave killed her anyway? Does smiling during really make all the difference in if he was going to kill her or not?

As for Cheyenne being captured, didn't he agree to be captured to pay for Jill's property, so he was collusion in his own capture, rather than thinking he is too old for the West, because he got captured, didn't he?

That makes sense about Frank and Haromonica what you said.



It's the first western movie I ever loved. I had seen plenty of others, but Once Upon a Time in the West was what got me into Sergio Leone.