Inside the Briefcase: Film Talk: Once Upon a Time In Nazi-Occupied France

By John Carney

If you have never seen Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, his epic tribute to the Western, you are doing a disservice to yourself. Made in 1968 and set in the American Old West, the film is as thought-provoking, stylistically-dazzling, and thoroughly entertaining as anything produced today.

The film succeeds in many ways; intriguing characters (VERY intriguing in the outrageously sexy Claudia Cardinale's character's case), a haunting musical score by Enio Morricone, methodical narrative pacing, stylized editing, etc. The opening sequence is foreboding and sort of epitomizes the slow, plodding, patient tone of the whole film. Throughout the film, Leone's signature use of an excessive amount of close shots crafts a ton of claustrophobic scenes and an overall steady environment of tension. Yet at the same time, he uses deep focus long shots, (mimicking John Ford's filming of Monument Valley in such classic Westerns as Stagecoach, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and The Searchers) to showcase the vast, open space of the western landscape. Most importantly, however, the film forces us to think. Forced to think in the sense that we are never quite sure about the true motivations of the characters, and in the sense that the plot is filled with questions that are mostly resolved near or at the conclusion. But more importantly, Leone's techniques are supremely effective in also making us think about things off of the screen; the bygone traditions of American film and culture.

Not too many years earlier, a large portion of America was still "the West" governed by the "way of the gun." This was basically what most Western films idealized. This established order, along with the western ideals of individualism, were eroded and eventually dissolved by the influx of industry and civilization. In Once Upon a Time in the West, this conflict is capsulated in a conversation on the train with Frank (played by Henry Fonda, father of Jane and Peter Fonda), who derives power from his gun, and Morton, who advocates the more dominant, new form of power, money. The entire film is based around this process of the "new" phasing out the "old." This was a theme in most Western films. Once Upon a Time in the West is a Western film that is certainly about the Old West, but it is more specifically about the Western film genre itself.

Leone refers to many western classics while at the same time introducing his new style to the genre as one of the leaders of the innovative film movement of the late 1960s. Having seen John Ford's classic western masterpiece, The Searchers, several times, it is fairly easy to recognize that Leone had done the same before making Once Upon a Time in the West. Numerous scenes mirror memorable scenes from The Searchers; the McBain family murder scene mirrors the Edwards family murder scene (an ominous silence fills the air, birds flutter away, an unseen enemy, etc.), and Bronson's Harmonica is a mirror image of Wayne's Ethan Edwards as each of them are the anti-hero archetype character of the west, fueled by vengeance, and roaming freely with the wind. Each of these characters cannot exist in the new world that is closing in around them. In The Searchers' infamous ending scene, we witness the tragic end of the "Western Hero," the "John Wayne Man's Man." Ethan wanders back into the wild, blending in along with the dry shrubs and tumbleweeds, unable to live in the civilized world. At the end of Once Upon a Time in the West, Harmonica also wanders back into the wild in a similar shot. The evident difference here is that this threatening new world has already arrived; Harmonica passes through what is essentially a construction site for a city. Only 12 years after Ford's iconic western, the West is dead. Leone thus pays tribute to this landmark genre of films, which influenced him, but the movie itself signals the end of that era. The film makes this point in that it does not feel like or follow the same formula of those films of the past, instead steadfast in ushering in the new era of film-making.

Looking to the present, Quentin Tarantino's films seem to be made in the same vain, glorifying his predecessors while creating a final vision of something new and original. A large portion of Kill Bill is essentially one big homage to Once Upon a Time in the West (another reason to see it - you'll probably appreciate Kill Bill a bit more). The nameless Bride is the nameless Harmonica, and the frankly named all-black Bill is the frankly named all-black Frank, and the murders of the Bride's wedding are constructed referentially to the murders of the McBain family (Bill's squad of assassins approach in the same way as Frank and his goons). And then there's the title at the opening of Inglourious Basterds...(see above title of entry)