Once Upon a Time in the West
Possibly the best opening scene of any movie Once Upon a Time in the West stands out for its directing and acting. This is a movie about a changing West and about greed. The story is very complex and layered but it fits together and ties together with fantastic performances by Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, Henry Fonda, and Claudia Cardinale.
Here is a brief idea of the plot. The rail lines are moving west, but along the way there are problems to be solved. Often they involve landowners who want their share of the wealth the railway is bringing. Frank, played by Henry Fonda, has the job of taking care of those problems. But Frank has been at a rough business his entire life, long before he met up with the railwayman who's paying him now, and out of that evil past comes Harmonica, played by Charles Bronson. We know right from the beginning he has come for Frank, though we aren't sure until the end exactly why it is that he wants Frank so badly. Harmonica hears about the murder of the McBain family that he understands to be Frank's handy work and he cooks up a plot along with Jill McBain the surviving widow, played by Claudia Cardinale, and Cheyenne the man framed for the murders, played by Jason Robards, to take Frank down.
Like High Noon and Shane this movie makes you think about life and its complexities. Like those movies it is also very paced with the story building slowly in front of us. As I've said the acting in this movie is superb and Henry Fonda is especially brilliant as a bad guy. Director Sergio Leone purposefully picked Fonda for the reaction he would get from the audiences playing a bad guy. One thing I've always found interesting about Fonda in this movie is how he looks. Usually Fonda is the everyday man with average looks. In this movie he is beautiful with amazingly powerful eyes. It certainly makes him much more sinister.
I have to say something in this review about Cheyene the character played billiantly by Jason Robards. He is one of my favorite characters in all of movies with some fantastic moments on screen and definitely some of the best lines of any character in the movies. One of my favorite lines is when he says, "You know, Jill, you remind me of my mother. She was the biggest whore in Alameda and the finest woman that ever lived. Whoever my father was, for an hour or for a month - he must have been a happy man."
