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Once Upon a Time in the West. Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
Once Upon a Time in the West was released in 1968 in a full version in Europe and a version which was twenty minutes shorter in the United States. Audiences everywhere were at first confused by the film. It had a very different atmosphere to the “Dollars” films slower, more serious, a reflection on cinema - and took time to make its mark. As Sergio Leone recalled, “eventually, though, Once Upon a Time had the same kind of succès d¹estime as Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction film 2001 - A Space Odyssey. When they came out, both films had a rough ride in the first instance - and it was only later that the word of mouth spread, among students and cinéastes . . .” Young filmmakers began to study Leone’s film closely in the late 1960s - and watch it on television - to the point where it began to have a major impact on world cinema.
The Western in general has been called “a global text” and here was the proof. In Hollywood, the new generation - among them Martin Scorsese, John Carpenter, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and John Milius - all rated the film very highly; twenty years later, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have continued the tradition. Director John Boorman summarized a widely held view in the film community when he wrote, “This is the kind of masterpiece that can occur outside trends and fashion. It is both the greatest and the last Western.”
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