The opening standoff in Once Upon A Time in the West
After writing my earlier post about the most memorable scenes in films I decided to watch Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in the West and nearly punched myself afterwards for not including the above scene. At the start of the film you’re not greeted with grandiose credits or title cards but rather 3 seedy looking cowboys that proceed to stake out a railway station. There’s no dialogue, only the sound of a fly, a rusty windmill and the odd gust of wind. After 8 minutes of this (its seen as the longest opening sequence in film) a train approaches and the 3 cowboys jump into action and start watching the train intently. As the train starts to pull away without anybody disembarking from it they begin to turn around and leave only to stop in their tracks as they hear the sounds of a harmonica. As they turn around they find themselves facing Charles Bronson’s character who then asks if any of them are a character named Frank he is after. They shake their heads and smile ruefully at him while preparing to gun him down. After an opening with hardly any sounds or dialogue there are a several loud shots as they all draw their guns with Bronson gunning them all down but not before one gunmen manages to wound him with a sawn off shotgun, causing him to fall to the ground as well. This juxta positioning of silence and violence is beautifully constructed by Leone and manages to set the tone of what is the greatest Western film ever made.
Recent Comments