A Man Does Need To Trust His Pants

Wobbles: You know me Frank. You can trust me.
Frank: How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders? the man can't even trust his own pants.

About two minutes later, Wobbles was dead in the desert.

I watched Once Upon a Time in the West this afternoon. I'd only watched it once since I got it for Christmas, and that was in January. I kept meaning to watch it again and review it, but to do that, you have to set aside about 3+ hours. Unless I was going to try live-blogging it, which I didn't.

There are a couple of plots, for those that haven't seen it. A woman named Jill (Claudia Cardinale) hjas traveled west to see her new husband's home for the first time. Except he and his three kids are dead, supposedly at the hands of a man called Cheyenne (Jason Robards). Cheyenne doesn't take kindly to have the murder of a kid pinned on him, and arrives on her doorstep, as they both try and figure out why her husband was killed. Added to this is an unnamed man with a harmonica, who is pursuing a man named Frank (who is the one who actually killed the McBains). Everybody's problems swirl together around the construction of a transcontinental railroad, and are generally settled with lots of shootin' and killin'.

I've been under the impression that this was the epic sort of Western Leone wanted to make, and with the success of the earlier Eastwood westerns, he could get the budget and actors he needed to do it up right. I don't know if that's an accurate impression, though Henry Fonda was certainly a bigger name at the time of the film, than the actors Leone had for A Fistful of Dollars or The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. That being said, I still enjoy those* more than Once Upon a Time in the West. Part of it (a lot of it, probably) is I prefer Eastwood to Bronson. I like Harmonica well enough**, but I like Joe/Manco/Blondie more. There isn't really anyone in this film that brings the manic energy that Eli Wallach did as Tuco. Cheyenne has a bit of it, the cheerful, sometimes friendly exterior hiding a serious potential for violence, but he's not the same. Which is for the best, because I don't know if Robards could play a Tuco character as well as Wallach did, and if he couldn't, it would be ugly to try. It wouldn't have fit the tone of this movie as well, either, since I think Leone was going for more serious, less comic this time around. There is a bit of dark humor, but there aren't many laughs.

Henry Fonda being a villain still strikes me as horribly off somehow. It actually makes his viciousness more effective, because I keep thinking how unusual it is to see a Henry Fonda character behave this way. I expect him to snap back to be a honest, upright trustworthy fellow like in 12 Angry Men. Or even the uptight arrogant fool he was in Fort Apache. Doesn't happen, though.

Claudia Cardinale does get a larger role than any female character did in any of the earlier Leone Westerns, but shes' still relegated to being caught in the midst of all these guys and their power struggles. In that regard, she's not terribly different than Marisol in A Fistful of Dollars, the woman Ramon took away from her husband and son because he wanted her. Jill constantly has guys barging into her home, making demands, trying to take what's hers, and she can't really do anything about it. When Frank forces her to auction the land, then uses his men to scare all the other potential buyers so he can get it cheap, she isn't able to do anything. It comes down to Harmonica and Cheyenne.

Personally, I've always liked, as far as women in Leone Westerns go, Conseulo Baxter, the matriarch of the Baxter family in A Fistful of Dollars. Her husband may have been the "sheriff", and supposedly leader of one of the two gangs, but she was the one who ran the show. Joe went to her first with information on the Rojas', not her husband. When her husband was uncertain, she told him straight, give Joe some money, and he did it. I've wandered off-topic somewhat.

Leone still has that tactic where if we can't see something (because it isn't in the shot), the characters can't be aware of it, either. He did that a lot in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (as when Blondie and Tuco completely miss they're riding up on a massive Union encampment), somewhat less so here, but it still pops up occasionally. It's an interesting technique, to tie their awareness to ours, though the characters are actually even more hamstrung, since there are times we can see something they (or at least one of them) can't. We know where men are hidden to take care of Frank (and so does Harmonica), but Frank himself doesn't.

One thing I love about the movie is the music. Ennio Morricone strikes again. I love the piano (or is pianee? pianny?) combined with the plucking of a guitar (or is it a banjo?) that makes up Cheyenne's theme. It even incorporates whistling later on, which is a nice touch. I could see Cheyenne whistling it randomly to himself out in the wilderness (he doesn't do that, but I could see him doing it). Harmonica's theme is haunting, which is appropriate. I'm not as big a fan of the rising, operatic bit they tend to use for Jill, but it easily distinguishable from the others, which help set her apart, it's more refined and cultured than the others, which fits since the railroad station she'll own is going to help the progress of civilization, hopefully. Plus, it's an more hopeful, uplifting theme. Harmonica's is spooky, lonely, something that would send chills down your spine if you heard it echo out of a cave. Cheyenne's is sort of jaunty, but also has a plodding pace. Maybe it's in no hurry to get where it's going, or maybe it has nowhere to go to begin with.

Even if I don't like Once Upon a Time in the West as much as some of Leone's other Westerns, I'd still highly recommend it to a Western fan, especially if you like Leone's work. So you can make your own comparison.

* The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and For a Few Dollars More for certain. Once Upon a Time in the West might be ahead of a Fistful of Dollars.

** It's certainly convinced me more characters need to carry musical instruments with them to help announce themselves.