C’era una volta il cinema 3
No cinema visits this week. After all, the films of Sergio Leone have something to do with death.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
The second Dollars film was a much bigger hit than the first, and allowed Leone access to an even larger budget for the third one. Even though the films are clearly related, it is a mistake to view them as sequels in the conventional sense. The first item to increase in size is the running time, now clocking in at a hefty three hours, and the second is its overall scope. The reality of the American Civil War, especially a little known failed campaign fought in Texas by one Confederate Colonel Sibley, here intrudes upon the mythic treasure hunt which preoccupies the three protagonists of the title. And it is this clash between the actuality of the West and Leone’s own memories of the Westerns he saw as a boy that will form the subject matter of the films he directs in the rest of his career, including the gangster film of 1983. There is a marvellous kitchen sink quality to this film, which switches modes of expression in practically every scene from sadism to low comedy, single gunfights to the clash of armies, all of it scored brilliantly by Ennio Morricone. By the time the journey ends in yet another circular arena surrounded by gravestones and the ecstasy of gold, there is a sense that a profound (if not profane) journey has taken place, the meaning of which remains to be teased out for decades to come.
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
This is one of my favourite films. Has there ever been another film with a cooler “Story By” credit: Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci & Sergio Leone? Would you not pay good money to get these guys together every year for the rest of their lives to come up with more projects like this one? Something that never happened. The running time issue became even more acute here since the project was bankrolled by Paramount Pictures, at the time run by the charismatic, eccentric Charlie Bludhorn, who regarded Leone as a genius (but Bludhorn still ended up fatally shortening the film for its initial American release). The extremely oblique quality of the narrative that I so admire (it’s never obvious at first who has committed what piece of onscreen action or why they have done so – although all of these narrative pieces are eventually revealed) came about as a result of Leone realising that the script was too long and the scenes were all going to play too slowly and the film would run about five hours, so scenes had to be cut on the run and patched together later. Large chunks of Morricone’s score were pre-recorded for use during filming, one wonderful example being the early crane shot that reveals the town of Flagstone – it looks like it’s been perfectly timed to Morricone’s music, and it has, because the piece was played on the set while the shot was being filmed. The film has a whole bunch of cliched characters and situations, quotes from other Westerns and its entire plot filched from Johnny Guitar (1954). On the face of it there is nothing original about it, but the emotional weight and gravitas that Leone brings to the end of the West as signalled by the arrival of the railroad and thus civilisation, has a gorgeous melancholy rapture to it that is really beyond my ability to describe in words. Once Upon a Time in the West is film as a dream of the West, of what was lost when the West was won, and all that Sam Peckinpah was reaching for and would achieve the very next year with The Wild Bunch (1969).