Once Upon A Time In the West (1968) Revisted   

Review: written July 2026

An epic opera of violence

I must have only been about 11 or 12 when I first came across Once Upon A Time In The West, coming on at 11pm on television on BBC2, when I was already overdue to go to bed. But I couldn’t stop watching it. My parents relented and let me stay to watch, on condition I turned out the lights when I went to bed. That evening is indelibly inked on the pages of my memory.

So what has made this film so memorable to me and to many others, who consider this one of the greatest Westerns ever made? When pushed to pick my favourite movie, it’s this one that often comes to mind, knowing how it made me feel all those years ago, and knowing how no matter how much I watch it.. I still enjoy it. It isn’t (despite Sergio Leone’s meticulous attention to detail) a period movie to admire for its verisimilitude, or a rollicking rootin’ tootin’ adventure in the Hollywoood mould. It’s closer in spirit to an opera – a piece of art using heightened drama visuals and music – especially music – to create a mood. Where the style of the visuals and feeling of the music are designed to penetrate your soul in a way that mere plot can’t. That’s not to say there isn’t plot, and that there isn’t political subtext or even commentary on the nature of Western movies themselves, that’s all there – but it is a movie I can come back to over and over, in the same way I can come back to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez or Puccini’s Madame Butterfly.

So what to expect – it’s a highly stylized story, using 4 disparate characters symbolising aspects of the West, to chart the arrival of the railroad and its associated transformation of both the country and those touched by it. We meet this movies “man with no name” played by Charles Bronson, mournfully playing on his harmonica and looking for a man called Frank for some kind of reckoning from his past. Along the way he meets Jason Robards’ renegade. Renegade he might be, but he has a certain nobility and his own code. When we do meet Frank, played memorably menacing by Henry Fonda, he is a relic of the Old West , but one who wants to adapt, and will try to delegate violence so he can embrace the promise of wealth the railroad brings. And yet, he is so corrupted he cannot help but become dragged back to his gunslinging roots. And then there is Jill McBain, played by Claudia Cardinale. She may have an ignoble past, but it doesn’t really matter. She is the future, looking ahead, a survivor, who ultimately comes to understand the potential of the railroad. The movie has her at the core.

The opening scene sets out the stall early, that conventional Hollywood moviemaking is out the window. There is a lengthy scene which involves three men waiting for a train. That’s it. Just waiting for a train, for around ten minutes or more. And yet, it becomes intensely memorable because of the images, and the sounds. The images involve perfect framing, with close ups of characterful faces which form the unspoken sentences of the story, combined with unrelated and idiosyncratic sounds which form the punctuation. When violence does break out, it is accompanied by Leone’s trademark stylised gunshot immediately followed by a squeaky fan blade or a neighing horse for effect. The plot that unfolds as Harmonica teams up with the renegade to force a confrontation with Frank, is memorable enough, with all the familiar Western beats you might expect, but undercut with an outsiders disparaging view of the politics and the American Western’s mythologizing of every man for himself mentality. What I took away though, is the way the story is told – the images, the music, the style, the rhythm. It’s an art piece, not just storytelling.

It lacks the humour and light touch of the Dollars Trilogy, and those expecting something as accessible as those might be disappointed. That’s not a fault in my view - Leone was clear he wanted to do something new. If you are coming new to the movie – watch it in the biggest loudest format you can. And I pray you come away with the same jaw dropping memory of it that I have. An operatic fairy tale of what happens when old meets new.