I picked up the Blu-Ray of Once Upon A Time In The West, one of my all-time favorite movies. I’ve owned the DVD for a couple of years, but the Blu-Ray makes me love Sergio Leone’s masterpiece all over again (as did the DVD before that).
If Leone was known for anything in his movies, it was his love of faces, and not the faces you see in most movies. Tight shot after tight shot.
Above is Jack Elam, from the film’s opening scene. Elam, who appeared mostly in Westerns, once famously described the arc of a character actor’s career.
Stage 1: “Who is Jack Elam?”
Stage 2: “Get me Jack Elam.”
Stage 3: “I want a Jack Elam type.”
Stage 4: “I want a younger Jack Elam.”
Stage 5: “Who is Jack Elam?”
This is the great Woody Strode.
Leone grew up in Italy, a kid in love with movies and the American West as portrayed in them. With Once Upon A Time, he set out very deliberately, I think, to pretty much make the Western to end all Westerns. And with this, his “opera of violence”, he succeeded. An apotheosis, a beautiful, elegiac, epic.
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