This western can be enjoyed on many levels. The most immediate one is obviously the story, or the stories. A story of revenge between Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson's characters. A story about a romantic bandit. A story about a handicapped rich business man. A story about an Irish immigrant who dies just before achieving his dream. All these stories revolve around a woman, Claudia Cardinale's character Jill. As you can imagine, this movie is very long (about 2 1/5 hours). That would be enough for any other movie, but there's more to it. It's a metaphore of the death of the old west, and the start of the new industrial era, the new technology. It also simbolizes the death of the old Western genre, the start of en era where the old western heroes do not have a place. This movie contains many references to old western movies, which were completely lost on me, since I haven't watched any of those old classics (I will someday, someday...). However the commentary track on the DVD really helped me discover many of these inside references, these quotations. The music by Ennio Morricone is perfect, he found 4 distinct themes for each of the main characters, so distinct that we don't need to see the characters' faces to recognize them, as soon as we hear the music we know who's coming. I am amazed at the number of different western themes that are instantly recognizable, not only in this film but in all his other works. This movie takes its time to tell the story. There are not many long dialogs, the long sequences are punctuated by either the music, or the environment sounds (wind blowing, sound of a rusted windmill etc..) Not only the pace is slow, but sometimes even the characters' movements are slow. This is to prepare the audience for the sudden burst of violence that sometimes occurs. Overall an excellent work by Leone, although I am not sure it is my favorite of his. Movie Score: 8/10

This entry was posted on Friday, December 09, 2005 at 12/09/2005 11:28:00 AM.