Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Once Upon a Time on TCM
Walnut sez: Balls never goes halfway with things. Why buy 100% Kona coffee from Hawaii when you can buy it green and roast it yourself? And why grab pastries at the supermarket when you can make your own puff pastry?
Well. She doesn’t do that too often, but you get the idea. Lately, she’s been watching movies. The same movie. Over and over again.
Thank God it’s not Titanic.
Below the fold: Thirteen Things about Once Upon a Time in the West, by my beloved Balls.
When I’m feeling overwhelmed by the idiocy of our government, I like to watch old Westerns on Turner Classic Movies. I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the famous ones since I can’t stand certain actors, but I’ve seen more than a few. Out of all of them, Once Upon A Time In The West (C’era una volta il West) is my favorite. Neither too gory nor too maudlin, it still manages to evoke the innocence and moral simplicity of the genre without subjecting me to sugar overload. So . . . thirteen trivia items about Sergio Leone’s masterpiece.
1. Have you ever watched it without letterboxing? During the climatic gunfight, instead of the close-up of Bronson’s eyes, you get to watch the bridge of his nose. This is sacrilege.
2. During its initial American release in 1968, U.S. critics bashed it mercilessly. Only after film schools used the movie as an example of skillful direction did it receive the recognition it was due. Why does anyone pay attention to critics?
3. Al Mulock, who played one of the three gunfighters in the opening sequence, committed suicide shortly after filming. He was wearing his costume when he jumped out his hotel window.
Here’s one really, really good reason to watch this movie again and again. -D.
4. The movie bombed in the U.S., perhaps due to vicious cutting by Paramount Studios, but was a big hit in Europe.
5. Charles Bronson became a big star due to the movie, but only in Europe. It took Death Wish (1974) to make him big in the United States.
6. In what may be a record, the opening credits take 10 minutes to roll. No, the credits do not roll continuously, just intermittently during a long introductory sequence.
7. In the very beginning, the station master posts that the train is delayed two hours from Flagstone and four hours to Flagstone. This (second) clue hints this is not a realistic movie about the Wild West; it’s about western movies. The first clue is the film’s title.
8. The actress playing the Native American woman near the beginning was Woody Strode’s wife, Luukialuana (Luana) Kalaeloa (aka Luana Strode). She wasn’t Indian, however; she was a Polynesian princess, a member of the Hawaiian royal family. Woody Strode was half Native American (Blackfoot) and half African American.
9. Most people admire the film score by Ennio Morricone and cite how each character has his/her own leitmotif (signature melody). Do they have their ears full of sawdust? Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson share the same music, a duet with an electric guitar and a harmonica.
10. Although Charles Bronson’s acting has been strongly criticized, Sergio Leone said that Bronson was the finest actor he ever saw. Maybe he wasn’t completely serious, but I can’t imagine any other actor pulling off the role. No one does tough like Bronson.
In the film, we never see Bronson’s character (Harmonica) coming or going, except at the end. He simply appears — a figure more supernatural than human.
11. Leone wanted Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Lee Van Cleef (the leads from Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) for the roles of the three gunfighters in the opening sequence. Their deaths would have symbolized the ending of the freedom of the Old West.
12. In the final gunfight, the dead trees and broken limbs make the scene look like a graveyard for ancient extinct animals. This echoes Bronson’s comment that he and Henry Fonda are “an ancient race” whose time is ending.
13. The writers, Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, spent a year watching as many Westerns as they could. The opening sequence is taken from High Noon, in which three gunfighters wait for a train. The final gunfight is (allegedly) taken from The Last Sunset with Kirk Douglas and Rock Hudson. I saw this movie recently and I must say that it sucks giant donkey balls. (Why did that phrase spring to mind when I mentioned Rock Hudson . . .) Remember what I said earlier about Bronson’s toughness? Somehow, Rock Hudson doesn’t quite match up.
Walnut here. You know the drill — leave a comment, and Balls and I will give you a whole lotta sloppy linky lurve.
.
D.
It’s Thursday already? I thought you were jumping the gun…
Dan, somewhere in the world, it is indeed Thursday.
Right here, in fact. It’s nearly 5:30pm a.k.a “beer o’clock”
I’ve never seen this movie, Karen. I promise I will.
I’ve never seen this movie the whole way through, although I’ve seen parts of it here and there. I shall have to look for it on cheap DVD. And letterbox is the only way to watch most movies. Some, it doesn’t matter… like Star Wars. I like strong visual directors (I don’t know if that makes sense) and Leone is one.
I’ve never seen it either. Off to go add it to my Netflix queue.
My TT is silly. Took forever, though, what with figuring out the timer on the camera…
Doug profiles a very well-known film that none of his readers have seen!
My TT? Oh, something about a sale….
about time you spilled, CL.
And I’m showing this to my son, the western fanatic. He’ll love it.
MY TT is about Sandy Blair, a writer who’s infinitely more successful than me. Okay, infinitely is an exaggeration but not by much.
and for once I did reciprocate on this TT deal. I usually forget to.
Have you ever seen The Professionals? Crackin’ good western. “The Wild Bunch” is another favorite.
oops. i promised to do one. oh well. maybe tonight…
I’ve never seen The Professionals (that I remember) but The Wild Bunch is a great movie. I know that Peckinpah was criticized (stupidly) for the amount of violence but that doesn’t detract from his films IMO.
whoops. i lied. next week…
It’s funny; I’ve heard so many people mention this movie lately — it must be because TCM is running it so often. As for me, I think I have a love/hate thing for it. I love the colors, and I also love how so many of the interior sets are so spacious, and complicated — exactly what I imagine when I think of big ranch buildings, auction-houses, etc. I love Jason Robards. I love the long, segmented lead-up to the brother-hanging harmonica scene. But what’s the deal with the weird dubbing? Especially in the beginning, when the kid’s family eats it. I don’t understand — the people are clearly speaking English, and the dubbing’s in English, so…? Wtf? Also, it seems that whatever version TCM’s using very often has some strange lag between lips moving and words coming out of characters’ mouths. Has anybody else noticed this? However, something I used to hate is now something I sort of love — the way I used to be really uncomfortable about how much of the characters’ behaviors and parts of the score, in different, specific scenes, were so stylized as to be stilted, I know think of as more operatic. Stylized to the degree of being profoundly symbolic. Like Mamet!! (mmm. Mamet.)
In other news: When I was a kid, I heard the term “spaghetti western,” and do you know what I thought that meant? When you saw an old western on TV and it wasn’t letterboxed, during the opening/closing credits they’d usually squish the whole frame in, making everybody behind the credits look…all skinny. Just like…spaghetti.* This is a true story.
Thank you,
Sugarbat
*Incidentally, some of you might remember — I think it was a Ragu commercial, years ago, where you see a bunch of Italians pulling spaghetti off of trees on their…spaghetti orchard. When I asked him about it, my father told me this was where spaghetti came from, really, and I love myself, now, for having believed this for much longer that I’m going to confess to you here.
Thanks for delurking! And that’s an interesting site you have. What on earth are those things (the sugar bats)?
Funny, though. I don’t notice much in the way of stylized dialog in the movie.
Great spaghetti story 🙂
I really should warn people who haven’t ever seen the movie. The first ten minutes may seem boring to some but Leone does a very good job establishing the lonely, dry, harsh environment and the cold-hearted killers that live there.
The Italians were notorious for bad lip synching. Frequently, dialogue is dubbed in later to create a “cleaner” audio so the listener can more easily make out the words; Italian filmmakers just didn’t give a damn about making the lips match the words. Claudia Cardinale had a very thick accent so another actress was hired to provide the character’s voice. It wasn’t a very big job; allegedly, the entire script had only 12 pages of dialogue in what turned out to be a 165 minute movie. There is a 171 minute version somewhere but I’ve only seen the DVD version.