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Text/Autumn Farewell Love
In 1968, "Once Upon a Time in the West", directed by director Sergio Leone, was released in Italy and set off a boom in the film industry at that time, which can be called "the number one Western film in film history" and is undoubtedly a classic among classics.
Starring Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson, the film completes the unsurpassable stage in the history of western cowboy films in a rich character modeling.
Leone has always been a director who has been constantly surpassing himself, and after making the "Dart Trilogy", he has become suspicious of westerns, and he was planning to make a gangster movie next, but given his previous good answer to spending less money at the box office, producer Paramount strongly demanded that Leone make another Western, so he gave him $5 million, which is more than his budget for the previous three films combined.
Two years later, Leone produced another "Once Upon a Time in the West", which drew a brilliant ending to the Westerns of the sixties.
In this film, the director first drew a rest on the west with the railway in terms of theme and content, and also greatly subverted the tradition of Westerns in terms of technique, blurred the good and evil people, unexpected plot twists, refined and full of charm lines, which can be said to have set a new benchmark for Westerns with creative destruction.
"Once Upon a Time in the West" has three major points to watch, and then follow the perspective of the editor, slowly unfold the narrative, and open the door to this classic western singing film.
As the director of Leone's Western films, the charm of the film is far more than just the peculiar plot.
(1) The different characters of the three men and one woman reflect the strength of the director in the context of the grandeur
The deep meaning of "Once Upon a Time in the West" is first of all the grand historical background that runs through the whole film.
In the middle of the 19th century, the railway replaced the stagecoach and caravan, step by step to the west, the conflict of interest caused by this process is the cause of the film's story, and with the advance of the railway, the value principles and behaviors established by the western cowboys were gradually replaced by capitalist industrial and commercial civilization and order, becoming the biggest meaning outside the story of this film.
Morton, the eastern capitalist who came by train, was physically weak, but the most powerful, and that was the power of capital, and he had both capitalist civilization and dreams, ambition and greed.
The keen farmer Mark Bain, aware of the business opportunities brought by the railway, he occupies the only source of water in an attempt to change his fate, and the contradiction between him and Morton is that of two dreamers competing for resources for new opportunities, but Frank, who is employed by Morton, chooses the criminal violence of the Old West and brutally kills MarkBain's family.
Frank is a typical Western pirate, cruel and bloody, but he also shrewdly discovers the secrets of Sweetwater Town, and has the ambition to dominate, bent on changing from being made a gun to sitting behind a table, and he and Morton have a classic dialogue on the train, which is the title of the whole film.
"I was driving off on the shore of the Atlantic, and before my eyes fell, I wanted to see the blue Atlantic Ocean outside the window."
"I know where you got in the car and I was there too, remember?" To clear the way, you said, there are still some obstacles, but we have to go this far, and very quickly. "
"Nodules on the bones also go fast."
A few condensed lines are a metaphor for the century-old history of the United States' western invasion, the capitalist civilization that landed on the atlantic shore and marched westward, bringing not only industry and dreams, but also evil and disease.
Morton also noticed Frank's change at this time: driven by ambition, he tried to cater to new opportunities, he gave up violence, and instead used auctions, bribery, etc. to seek sweetwater town, seeking the identity of a businessman, but in the end he failed, because he was always a cowboy in the old west, and he wanted to return to the west to make a settlement for himself.
As he said himself at the end, compared to a big cowboy like a harmonica player, land, money, and women are no longer attractive to him, and he just wants to make a conclusion in the way of cowboys.
Cheyenne was a typical Western rogue, with abilities, gangs, fame, and more principles, but so was he, and after he heard the blueprint for Sweetwater, the old cowboy's first instinct was to say to his subordinates, "Build a station."
From this sentence onwards, the Old West was utterly defeated and the new civilization triumphed.
Only the harmonica player, who knew the secrets of Sweetwater from the beginning, but was never moved, he was a true defender of Western values, a real cowboy, a real chivalrous, he did not remember the new era, and finally went away in the wild sand.
However, in the only female character in the whole film, Jill, what we see is a strong female charm and strong personality, as well as exuberant vitality, she is tenacious, unscrupulous to seek survival and enterprising, this exuberant flame from the core of life, in fact, is the core of the western spirit, she is like the embodiment of the western wilderness, symbolizing the cowboys' desire and motivation to conquer the west.
So in the end, only Jill is integrated into a new historical tide, with the ideas of the East and the spirit of the West, and continues to survive tenaciously, so the film superficially tells a gripping Western cowboy story, but in fact focuses not on personal love and hate, but on the fate of the Western era.
The old era is gone, the new era is coming, and only the real western cowboys are still adhering to the values and ways of the west.
The second highlight of the film is the extreme aesthetic style.
Desert, wild sand, pathetic music, long shots, and slender backs, the suffocating foreshadowing of each character before they appear, director Leone pushed the aesthetic style of the "macaroni Western" pioneered in this film to the peak of the times.
(1) The biggest clue lurks in the film
Leone's ambitions are not just so-called "unique styles", and with his own nostalgia for the western background, he grasps one of the most deadly key points - the railway.
Railroads have always been an indispensable factor in Westerns, and just as police films can't be without sirens, Hollywood classic Westerns don't lack the whistles of trains.
However, in most Westerns, the railway is just a tool to carry the gunner, which obviously does not conform to Leone's aesthetic, so in "Once Upon a Time in the West", the railway era is a grand historical background, and all the actions that focus on the characters cannot be removed from the historical stage.
Whether it is the design of the characters or the surrounding of the plot contradictions, it is inseparable from the factor of the railway, and it can even be said that the railway has become the biggest clue from beginning to end in the film.
(2) The director's unique approach highlights the unique charm of the film
Some people commented that "Once Upon a Time in the West" was too slow, but this is precisely the most powerful place in Leone, he never forgot to gather the emotions of the audience, the fifteen-minute long opening, the real shooting time is only two seconds, all the other details are static and moving, plus the amazing background music, perfect to impeccable.
Leone was clearly very obsessed with something destined to die in Westworld, and cleverly, he did not show it in a hurry, but lurked in it, divided into two levels of story.
First, the layer above is the most common theme in Westerns: revenge.
Leone adopts the most basic Western opening mode, the hero comes to the town: a mysterious gunman dressed in white arrives in the town by train to find a villain named Frank to avenge his revenge many years ago, he encounters the widow Jill who has just died, and cheyenne, a strange thief who is also a friend and enemy, stands in the dueling arena that the audience is most familiar with, and decides life and death between electric light and flint.
Secondly, it is a memorial to the western era
Every shot in Once Upon a Time in the West has a strong sense of history, which is rare in Leone's previous works.
Leone's setting of the story at a time when the railroad age was about to come to the West is an obvious symbol—the end of one era and the beginning of another. The wheel of time always has to move forward, but there are always people who can't adapt to a new life, like Cheyenne, like Frank, like the lone ranger. Those who have seen the movie will not forget the dialogue between Frank and the Lone Ranger:
Harmonica: You finally realized that you weren't a businessman anymore?
FRANK: Just a man.
Harmonica: An ancient people.
Music is the last highlight of the film, and René's royal soundtrack master, Enio Morricone, makes the music of the film perfectly match the epic temperament of the film, complementing each other perfectly.
As a western epic film with a heavy texture, "Once Upon a Time in the West" has a much slower pace than Leone's previous Westerns, and Morricone's choice of soundtrack is grand, sad, and a good film rhythm.
The appearances of harmonicaists, Cheyenne, and Frank all have music corresponding to their personality characteristics, and there are different soundtrack treatments to promote narrative and set off the atmosphere, especially the melodious theme music of this film, which has become a classic borrowed and imitated by many filmmakers today.
Finally, the perfection of "Once Upon a Time in the West" is that it is an anti-Western Western, and he celebrates the passing of the Western era, not the clichéd return to the Western era.
But at the same time, Leone calls for the return of the Western spirit in a melodious way, and the film has become a stage of the Western:the Western era is gone, but the Western spirit will remain forever.
(Editor/Uncle Fan)
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