To cushion the blow, let me get the good bits in first. Continuing with his ‘more realistic version’ of the West, an aesthetic Leone adopted with A Fistful Of Dollars in 1964, his first western, Once Upon A Time is miles away from the sanitised and often ludicrous ‘wild’ West that Hollywood favoured to show moviegoers in its 1950s films.
In Tinseltown’s West, the main characters always wore laundry-clean and seemingly freshly pressed shirts and trousers, their pistols sparkled, they always found time to shave every morning (though off-camera). The women were good-hearted folk always neatly turned out and made up to the nines.
Where they got their lipstick and eye-shadow from is anyone’s guess. Even the ‘good-time girls’ were of the kind you might care to bring home and introduce to your mum.
Leone changed all that, and Once Upon A Time was celebrated for its gritty and supposedly ‘authentic’ depiction of life in the West, those who lived and killed there and the conditions they endured. I do, though, suspect it is just as
phoney as the traditional clean-cut Tinseltown version.
Leone changed all that, and Once Upon A Time was celebrated for its gritty and supposedly ‘authentic’ depiction of life in the West, those who lived and killed there and the conditions they endured. I do, though, suspect it is just as
In Leone’s take on the West squalor is de rigueur, and you can almost smell the characters, which to me suggests he rather overshot his mark (although he did set a new course for directors to follow).
Another ‘good bit’ is the cinematography which does at times become a feast for the eyes, although like much else in the film that also tends to overstay its welcome.
The acting? Well, as Leone shot with both American and Italian actors, each speaking their lines in their own language, there is not a great deal of dialogue, but there is a great deal of dubbing.
Another ‘good bit’ is the cinematography which does at times become a feast for the eyes, although like much else in the film that also tends to overstay its welcome.
The acting? Well, as Leone shot with both American and Italian actors, each speaking their lines in their own language, there is not a great deal of dialogue, but there is a great deal of dubbing.
A great deal of that acting is distressingly two-dimensional with all-too-often the men doing that ‘hard I’m a bastard look and nothing frightens me!’look, and the women doing their ‘I might be of the weaker sex, but by God I have spirit!’ bit.
The actors can’t be blamed, though: they are doing simply as Leone directed, and there is a great deal of that posing and striking of attitudes, from all concerned, which those ‘fiery Latin types’ are so fond.
As fore the dubbing, whoever was responsible for the sound effects gets it very wrong rather often – a punch in the face or a slap never sounds like a stick being snapped in half.
The ‘plot’ is really nothing much out of the ordinary, either, though in context – the film premiered in 1968 – it might well have been ‘different’ and thus notable. I don’t remember.
Finally, there’s the score: ah, that damn schlocky, sugary, sentimental score. It never lets up, ever. You want it to stop, but it doesn’t: ‘this’, the score rams into your heart without any remorse, ‘is the moving bit’, so there! Oh, dear Christ!
I have a rule of thumb that if a film score is pretty much schlocky, sugary, sentimental crap, the film is largely sailing under a false flag. OK, many might like that kind musical confection, but I don’t.
I don’t care whether the composer Ennio Morricone (who Leone first met at school) is also venerated and celebrated: to my ears his film scores – the ones I have heard, that is – are all from the same mold. That eery harmonica was effective the first time we heard it. Heard for the hundredth time, it gets less and less eery and begins to verge on cliché.
I must remind myself, though, to be charitable, because Leone’s westerns were very much of their age and very much the product of an Italian sensibility. Fifty-five years ago when we first came across that sensibility in the English-speaking world, it was still novel and gained many points for being novel. Fifty-five years on, the crows’ feet are, however, rather obvious.
In an interview with Britain’s Sunday Times about making his biopic about Abraham Lincoln, Steven Spielberg said something like ‘I felt I had to wear a suit and tie when making that film’, and apparently he did.
Usually togged out in jeans and a baseball cap on set, Spielberg claimed he turned up every day dressed like some bloody civil servant because he wanted to be part of the finery of that era’. As ‘that era’ also saw four years of a very bloody civil war in which half a million men were slaughtered, it might not have all been as fine as Spielberg implies.
More to the point and reading between the lines, the not-so-subtle suggestion from Spielberg was that because Lincoln was and is more or less the American saint, his status demanded that he be treated as such, and only wearing a suit and tie would do while he made his film. I don’t doubt that had it been practical Spielberg might well have directed the whole shebang while down on his knees, but – well, that would not have been practical.
Something similar goes on when many consider and review Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West. As he is seen as one of the ‘greats’ of the film world, not to toe the line as I find it difficult to do here is decidedly infra dig. OK, the Dollar films stand out, but even by the time he made The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, ol’ Sergio was – to be blunt – recycling himself and his schtick rather too much.
In fact, his palette is not at all full: his best-known routine is what has become known as the Mexican stand-off. It might have been a dramatic ploy used by directors before Leone, but it certainly became very popular after he adopted it. It can be very effective, even now when we are familiar with it, but not only does Leone milk it for all its worth, he goes way, way beyond that.
Yes, it is a useful way of creating tension, and it was impressive the first time you saw it. But it was and is increasingly unimpressive with each subsequent outing, and boy does Leone give it a great deal of outings.
We got more than a decent helping of it in The Good etc, and we are served up even more of it in Once Upon A Time. And, frankly, it becomes very bloody tedious indeed: if you’ve seen ten such stand-offs, you’ve seen eight too many. It no longer ‘adds to tension’ but contributes more mundanely to boredom.
That brings me to ol’ Sergio’s second schtick, one he also uses far too often with ever diminishing returns. It is holding on to a scene, usually wordless, for about ten times longer than it need be to make point. Such ‘artistic’ longuers, lasting for several long and increasingly dull minutes, are intended, as far as I can see, to convey ’meaning’.
Well, that in my book is as close to faking it as a respected filmmaker dare get, though Leone is by no means the only ‘celebrated’ director to adopt that ploy. It’s ‘art’, see, and the great thing about including such ‘meaningful scenes’ is that if you don’t ‘get’ them, you are you are to blame and simply revealing yourself as boorish schmuck with no soul at all.
In fact, over the years many have described the film as ‘art’. Well, fine but in that case I am bound to remind the world that ‘art’ comes in three flavours – good art, mediocre art and bad art. And for my money the ‘art’ in Leone’s subsequent post-Dollar films can vary between quite good mediocre to downright bad.
In Once Upon A Time those long ‘meaningful’ scenes just don’t come off. A good case in point might be the film’s opening: three gunman arrive at a remote rail station and wait for a train. Once it arrives, they shoot a fourth character: that sequence last for almost fourteen minutes. That’s ‘art’, see. Or not, just lack of judgment.
OK, that sequence is also part of the film’s – minimalist – title sequence, but the tension it initially creates dissipates rather fast after the first few minutes, and after nine minutes when still nothing has happened, you begin to wonder whether you have the time to go into the foyer to fill up on more popcorn without missing anything.
I am a firm believer in the notion that in art – make that ‘art’ – less is more. Sadly, Leone was obviously not.
The film has also been described as ‘operatic’, and, in context, the word is used to suggest grandeur, quality and something of which we should be in awe. Yes, some of the scenes are ‘operatic’, but like ‘art’, ‘opera’ also comes in three flavours. See above.
Leone’s original film was 186 minutes long, but for release in some parts of the world Paramount cut it by 40 minutes. From what I read, the longer version was ‘a critical success’ whereas that cut version was not. I version I saw was the longer version, however, and perhaps Paramount’s cut wasn’t a good one, because what Leone more certianly needed was a very competent, sympathetic but honest and ruthless editor. Cutting the film by at least half might have produced a better film. As it was . . .
There, I’ve done it, I’ve insulted one of the saints of ’contemporary cinema’. Well, someone had to. Incidentally, the same criticisms apply to Terrence Malick The Thin Red Line. That film is also ’revered’ as ’art’ but it, too, is mutton dressed as lamb. Maybe I am nothing but a boorish, philistine schmuck.
The actors can’t be blamed, though: they are doing simply as Leone directed, and there is a great deal of that posing and striking of attitudes, from all concerned, which those ‘fiery Latin types’ are so fond.
As fore the dubbing, whoever was responsible for the sound effects gets it very wrong rather often – a punch in the face or a slap never sounds like a stick being snapped in half.
The ‘plot’ is really nothing much out of the ordinary, either, though in context – the film premiered in 1968 – it might well have been ‘different’ and thus notable. I don’t remember.
Finally, there’s the score: ah, that damn schlocky, sugary, sentimental score. It never lets up, ever. You want it to stop, but it doesn’t: ‘this’, the score rams into your heart without any remorse, ‘is the moving bit’, so there! Oh, dear Christ!
I have a rule of thumb that if a film score is pretty much schlocky, sugary, sentimental crap, the film is largely sailing under a false flag. OK, many might like that kind musical confection, but I don’t.
I don’t care whether the composer Ennio Morricone (who Leone first met at school) is also venerated and celebrated: to my ears his film scores – the ones I have heard, that is – are all from the same mold. That eery harmonica was effective the first time we heard it. Heard for the hundredth time, it gets less and less eery and begins to verge on cliché.
I must remind myself, though, to be charitable, because Leone’s westerns were very much of their age and very much the product of an Italian sensibility. Fifty-five years ago when we first came across that sensibility in the English-speaking world, it was still novel and gained many points for being novel. Fifty-five years on, the crows’ feet are, however, rather obvious.
In an interview with Britain’s Sunday Times about making his biopic about Abraham Lincoln, Steven Spielberg said something like ‘I felt I had to wear a suit and tie when making that film’, and apparently he did.
Usually togged out in jeans and a baseball cap on set, Spielberg claimed he turned up every day dressed like some bloody civil servant because he wanted to be part of the finery of that era’. As ‘that era’ also saw four years of a very bloody civil war in which half a million men were slaughtered, it might not have all been as fine as Spielberg implies.
More to the point and reading between the lines, the not-so-subtle suggestion from Spielberg was that because Lincoln was and is more or less the American saint, his status demanded that he be treated as such, and only wearing a suit and tie would do while he made his film. I don’t doubt that had it been practical Spielberg might well have directed the whole shebang while down on his knees, but – well, that would not have been practical.
Something similar goes on when many consider and review Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West. As he is seen as one of the ‘greats’ of the film world, not to toe the line as I find it difficult to do here is decidedly infra dig. OK, the Dollar films stand out, but even by the time he made The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, ol’ Sergio was – to be blunt – recycling himself and his schtick rather too much.
In fact, his palette is not at all full: his best-known routine is what has become known as the Mexican stand-off. It might have been a dramatic ploy used by directors before Leone, but it certainly became very popular after he adopted it. It can be very effective, even now when we are familiar with it, but not only does Leone milk it for all its worth, he goes way, way beyond that.
Yes, it is a useful way of creating tension, and it was impressive the first time you saw it. But it was and is increasingly unimpressive with each subsequent outing, and boy does Leone give it a great deal of outings.
We got more than a decent helping of it in The Good etc, and we are served up even more of it in Once Upon A Time. And, frankly, it becomes very bloody tedious indeed: if you’ve seen ten such stand-offs, you’ve seen eight too many. It no longer ‘adds to tension’ but contributes more mundanely to boredom.
That brings me to ol’ Sergio’s second schtick, one he also uses far too often with ever diminishing returns. It is holding on to a scene, usually wordless, for about ten times longer than it need be to make point. Such ‘artistic’ longuers, lasting for several long and increasingly dull minutes, are intended, as far as I can see, to convey ’meaning’.
Well, that in my book is as close to faking it as a respected filmmaker dare get, though Leone is by no means the only ‘celebrated’ director to adopt that ploy. It’s ‘art’, see, and the great thing about including such ‘meaningful scenes’ is that if you don’t ‘get’ them, you are you are to blame and simply revealing yourself as boorish schmuck with no soul at all.
In fact, over the years many have described the film as ‘art’. Well, fine but in that case I am bound to remind the world that ‘art’ comes in three flavours – good art, mediocre art and bad art. And for my money the ‘art’ in Leone’s subsequent post-Dollar films can vary between quite good mediocre to downright bad.
In Once Upon A Time those long ‘meaningful’ scenes just don’t come off. A good case in point might be the film’s opening: three gunman arrive at a remote rail station and wait for a train. Once it arrives, they shoot a fourth character: that sequence last for almost fourteen minutes. That’s ‘art’, see. Or not, just lack of judgment.
OK, that sequence is also part of the film’s – minimalist – title sequence, but the tension it initially creates dissipates rather fast after the first few minutes, and after nine minutes when still nothing has happened, you begin to wonder whether you have the time to go into the foyer to fill up on more popcorn without missing anything.
I am a firm believer in the notion that in art – make that ‘art’ – less is more. Sadly, Leone was obviously not.
The film has also been described as ‘operatic’, and, in context, the word is used to suggest grandeur, quality and something of which we should be in awe. Yes, some of the scenes are ‘operatic’, but like ‘art’, ‘opera’ also comes in three flavours. See above.
Leone’s original film was 186 minutes long, but for release in some parts of the world Paramount cut it by 40 minutes. From what I read, the longer version was ‘a critical success’ whereas that cut version was not. I version I saw was the longer version, however, and perhaps Paramount’s cut wasn’t a good one, because what Leone more certianly needed was a very competent, sympathetic but honest and ruthless editor. Cutting the film by at least half might have produced a better film. As it was . . .
There, I’ve done it, I’ve insulted one of the saints of ’contemporary cinema’. Well, someone had to. Incidentally, the same criticisms apply to Terrence Malick The Thin Red Line. That film is also ’revered’ as ’art’ but it, too, is mutton dressed as lamb. Maybe I am nothing but a boorish, philistine schmuck.
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