Once Upon a Time in the West

Turner Classic Movies will honor the passing of Hollywood action star Charles Bronson on Saturday, Sept. 13, with a four-film tribute. After years of playing supporting roles in numerous Western, action and war films, including THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960, 8 p.m.) and THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967, 1:15 a.m.), Bronson finally achieved worldwide stardom as a leading man during the late 1960s and early 1970s. TCM's tribute will also include THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963, 10:15 p.m.), Bronson's second teaming with Steve McQueen and James Coburn, and will conclude with FROM NOON TILL THREE (1976, 4 a.m.), co-starring Jill Ireland. TCM will alter it's prime-time schedule this Saturday, Sept. 13th. The following changes will take place: 8:00 PM - The Magnificent Seven (1960) 10:15 PM - The Great Escape (1963) 1:15 AM - The Dirty Dozen (1967) 4:00 AM - From Noon Till Three (1976) Charles Bronson, 1921-2003 Charles Bronson, the tough, stony-faced actor who was one of the most recognizable action heroes in cinema, died on August 30 in Los Angeles from complications from pneumonia. He was 81. He was born Charles Buchinsky on November 3, 1921 in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, one of fifteen children born to Lithuanian immigrant parents. Although he was the only child to have graduated high school, he worked in the coalmines to support his family until he joined the army to serve as a tail gunner during World War II. He used his money from the G.I. Bill to study art in Philadelphia, but while working as a set designer for a Philadelphia theater troupe, he landed a few small roles in some productions and immediately found acting to be the craft for him. Bronson took his new career turn seriously, moved to California, and enrolled for acting classes at The Pasadena Playhouse. An instructor there recommended him to director Henry Hathaway for a movie role and the result was his debut in Hathaway's You're in the Navy Now (1951). He secured more bit parts in films like John Sturges' drama The People Against O'Hara (1951), and Joseph Newman's Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952). More substantial roles came in George Cukor's Pat and Mike (1952, where he is beaten up by Katharine Hepburn!); Andre de Toth's classic 3-D thriller House of Wax (1953, as Vincent Price's mute assistant, Igor); and De Toth's fine low-budget noir Crime Wave (1954). Despite his formidable presence, his leads were confined to a string of B pictures like Gene Fowler's Gang War; and Roger Corman's tight Machine Gun Kelly (both 1958). Following his own television series, Man With a Camera (1958-60), Bronson had his first taste of film stardom when director Sturges casted him as Bernardo, one of the The Magnificent Seven (1960). Bronson displayed a powerful charisma, comfortably holding his own in a high-powered cast that included Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen. A few more solid roles followed in Sturges' The Great Escape (1963), and Robert Aldrich's classic war picture The Dirty Dozen (1967), before Bronson made the decision to follow the European trail of other American actors like Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef. It was there that his hard, taciturn screen personae exploded in full force. In 1968 alone, he had four hit films: Henri Verneuil's Guns for San Sebastian, Buzz Kulik's Villa Rides, Jean Herman's Adieu l'ami which was a smash in France; and the classic Sergio Leone spaghetti Western Once Upon a Time in the West. These films established Bronson as a huge box-office draw in Europe, and with some more stylish hits like Rene Clement's Rider on the Rain (1969), and Terence Young's Cold Sweat (1971) he soon became one of the most popular film stars in the world. It wasn't easy for Bronson to translate that success back in his homeland. In fact, his first few films on his return stateside: Michael Winners' Chato's Land, and The Mechanic (both 1972), and Richard Fleischer's Mr. Majestyk (1973), were surprisingly routine pictures. It wasn't until he collaborated with Winner again for the controversial Death Wish (1974), an urban revenge thriller about an architect who turns vigilante when his wife and daughter are raped, did he notch his first stateside hit. The next few years would be a fruitful period for Bronson as he rode on a wave of fine films and commercial success: a depression era streetfighter in Walter Hill's terrific, if underrated Hard Times (1975); Frank Gilroy's charming offbeat black comedy From Noon Till Three (1976, the best of many teamings with his second wife, Jill Ireland); Tom Gries tense Breakheart Pass; and Don Siegel's cold-war thriller Telefon (1977). Sadly, Bronson could not keep up the momentum of good movies, and by the '80s he was starring in a string of forgettable films like Ten to Midnight (1983), The Evil That Men Do (1984), and Murphy's Law (1986, all directed by J. Lee Thompson). A notable exception to all that tripe was John Mackenzie's fine telefilm Act of Vengeance (1986), where he earned critical acclaim in the role of United Mine Workers official Jack Yablonski. Although he more or less fell into semi-retirement in the '90s, his performances in Sean Penn's The Indian Runner (1991); and the title role of Michael Anderson's The Sea Wolf (1993) proved to many that Bronson had the makings of a fine character actor. He was married to actress Jill Ireland from 1968 until her death from breast cancer in 1990. He is survived by his third wife Kim Weeks, six children, and two grandchildren. by Michael T. Toole

When the Western went out, it went out with a bang in the summer of 1969. Sure there have been Westerns since that time, even some genuinely great ones, but the release a month apart of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West conveniently mark a sharp gasp after the long dismantling of the genre begun in the mid-1950s. Both are shot through with romantic fatalism, progressive politics, a deep melancholy and are obsessed with the effects of technology. It would be nice to think that critics and reviewers caught this at the time but the controversy over the violence of The Wild Bunch apparently fogged anything else. Once Upon a Time in the West (or OUATITW as buffs sometimes call it) had premiered in Italy right before Christmas 1968 but didn't hit American shores for several months. In the few decades since then it seems if not necessarily a greater film than The Wild Bunch then perhaps a more mature one. From the fairy-tale title, you know Once Upon a Time won't be wallowing in gritty realism, though in many ways it is one of the most historically honest Westerns ever made. Paradoxically, it's also nearly a Western abstraction: the characters have specific names but could easily be The Woman, The Bad Guy, The Banker, The Drifter, while they're set loose in a stark plot about railroad versus ranchers. Leone isn't ignoring his characters or neglecting to tell a story but is just not focused primarily on getting to the next scene. Just look at the audacious opening sequence featuring three gunmen waiting for a train to arrive. It runs about eight minutes, has just a few sentences of dialogue and in a way nothing happens. One man is annoyed by a buzzing fly, another has water dripping on his head. A windmill creaks. The station attendant sputters a bit then disappears. A Western Waiting for Godot perhaps but it doesn't play that way. There is a pay-off, though like the rest of the film there's a sense of loss, almost as if Leone has recreated something that no longer exists and then can't bear to look away. In the rest of the film watch the long shots of meals being prepared, of a wagon making its way slowly to an outlying farm, of the railroad being built. Once Upon a Time isn't dull by any stretch, filled as it is with shoot-outs, massacres, attacks on trains, prisoner escapes, schemes, betrayals and such but these aren't the entire point as they might be in, say, a B-movie or TV Western. The film's story was developed by the odd trio of Leone, arthouse director Bernardo Bertolucci and critic/future horror maestro Dario Argento, then scripted by Leone's regular collaborator Sergio Donati. All were fans of Westerns and consciously tried to shape the film into both a tribute and a critique. Thus not only the iconography and story draws from classic Westerns but their focus is reflected even in the casting of Henry Fonda and the filming in John Ford's stomping ground Monument Valley (which earlier had a major influence on American art by crucially shaping the look of George Herriman's Krazy Kat). But there was no way they could create a pure Western--whatever that might be--even if that had been their goal. American optimism and manifest destiny wasn't native to them while growing up in post-war Italy and then developing a left-leaning political consciousness didn't incline them to take the genre at face value. They were hardly alone in this since dozens of directors across the globe were rethinking everything from crime films to comedy to sex romps. Leone and company, though, weren't shouting at the audience. Whatever else you might find in it, Once Upon a Time really is just a Western. You don't need to share their politics any more than you do the conservatism of Howard Hawks and John Wayne to appreciate Rio Bravo. There are a lot of stories about the casting of Once Upon a Time, about how the stars of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly were approached for cameos in the opening, about alternates for this role or that. But it's difficult if not impossible to imagine topping who eventually appeared in it. Henry Fonda cast against type as a ruthless killer, Italian beauty queen Claudia Cardinale as the bride who finds herself an unexpected widow, B-movie tough guy Charles Bronson as a mysterious avenger, grand actor of Italian cinema Gabriele Ferzetti as a scheming millionaire and theatre crossover Jason Robards as maybe the hero. (Oddly enough both Fonda and Robards had previously played Abraham Lincoln.) An additional key element was the music by Ennio Morricone, somewhere around his 70th score in seven years but hardly exhausting his creativity. Morricone continued the use of a theme for each character as he did in Leone's previous Westerns but expanded and underlined that until when, say, Jason Robards appears on screen it's almost as if to give an aria. In fact numerous commentors have noted that the music, unhurried pace, and even violence of the film make it resemble an opera (though that wouldn't be a first: Puccini's The Girl of the Golden West premiered in 1910). The DVD release of Once Upon a Time is pretty much everything you could hope for. Of course the film is letterboxed and though it naturally loses something on a TV set (never ever pass up a chance to see this one in a theatre), Leone's use of close-ups come across well on the smaller screen. Though the Techniscope widescreen format had some problems it allowed for sharpness that Cinemascope frequently couldn't accomodate. The film's transfer to DVD captures the look very well. There's a fascinating commentary track which is mostly Leone biographer Christopher Frayling but has contributions from film historian Sheldon Hall, actress Claudia Cardinale and directors Alex Cox and John Carpenter. There's a second disc with three documentaries about the making of the film (really it's basically just one documentary broken into three parts), a look at railroads in the West, photos of locations then and now, along with the standard assortment of a trailer and mostly useless actor profiles. But then you don't need the disc for information on Charles Bronson's career. Having a real treasure like Once Upon a Time in the West should be enough. To order Once Upon a Time in the West, go to TCM Shopping. by Lang Thompson