Once Upon a Time in the West · reception & legacy

How Once Upon a Time in the West has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Cut by Paramount and shrugged off in America in 1969, it was a phenomenon in France — running for years in Paris — and has since been fully canonised as Leone's masterpiece and one of the greatest westerns ever made.

What's debated

The eternal Leone-head debate: is this or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly his peak — with a side quarrel over whether its glacial pacing is hypnotic or a test of endurance.

Its footprint

Morricone's wailing harmonica theme and the near-wordless opening — three gunmen, a fly, dripping water — are among the most imitated stretches of film ever shot; Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood tips its hat right in the title.

Where it stands

A 'you must have seen this' pillar of the western canon and a perennial Letterboxd favourite, routinely ranked at or near the top of the genre.

Named by the director

Influences Sergio Leone has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

• John Ford — Leone shot in Monument Valley as an explicit homage to Ford, the director whose westerns the whole film is in dialogue with.
• High Noon (1952) — The opening — gunmen killing time waiting for a train — was conceived as a riff on High Noon's clock-watching setup.
• Johnny Guitar (1954) — Leone and his co-writers drew on Nicholas Ray's film for the idea of a strong woman at the story's centre.
• The Searchers (1956) — Ford's film was among the classic westerns Leone, Bertolucci and Argento deliberately quoted when building the story.
• The Iron Horse (1924) — Ford's railroad epic was a declared touchstone for the film's coming-of-the-railroad theme.