What filmmaking techniques does Once Upon a Time in the West use?

CineCode breaks down 5 techniques in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968): Silent Observation Pacing, Face-Landscape Intercutting, Withheld Backstory Revelation, Ennio Morricone Structural Score and Revisionist Genre Argument.

Who directed Once Upon a Time in the West?

Sergio Leone directed Once Upon a Time in the West, released in 1968. CineCode also covers A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Duck, You Sucker (1971), Once Upon a Time in America (1984).

What films are similar to Once Upon a Time in the West?

Films that share techniques with Once Upon a Time in the West include For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Spirited Away (2001), Django Unchained (2012).

Western

Once Upon a Time in the West

Sergio Leone, 1968

A mysterious gunman who plays the harmonica, a ruthless assassin, a newly widowed woman and a bandit caught between them all converge on 1 piece of land. The arriving railroad has suddenly made it valuable. Leone's Western is as grand as an opera, and it questions the myths of the American frontier.

1 Editing 1 Cinematography 2 Narrative 1 Sound

At a glance

Once Upon a Time in the West is a 1968 western film directed by Sergio Leone. This breakdown covers 5 techniques (1 editing, 1 cinematography, 2 narrative and 1 sound), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, For a Few Dollars More uses several of the same techniques.

Editing

Silent Observation Pacing

Holding on quiet shots of characters watching and taking in the world around them, without cutting away. Glances, gestures and shared silence carry as much as any action.

How this film uses it

The 12-minute opening shows 3 gunmen waiting at a station. Water dripping onto a bald head, a fly on a face and a creaking windmill are all that happens. Leone proves that patience is a tool a filmmaker can use. You can build anticipation until it's almost unbearable before anything happens.

Where to see it

The opening train station sequence. It runs 12 minutes with 3 men and almost no dialogue, just small sounds and gestures piling up.

Cinematography

Face-Landscape Intercutting

Cutting between extreme close-ups of eyes, hands and mouths and vast wide shots of landscape. Faces and land are treated as equally monumental, and the jumps in scale create tension.

How this film uses it

Leone and cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli cut between eyes and horizons. A man's eye in extreme close-up is as large on screen as a mountain range. The cutting suggests that in a Leone Western, what goes on inside a man and the land outside him are the same kind of thing. Both are terrain to be studied and crossed.

Where to see it

The opening standoff intercutting. Eyes, gun barrels and the desert alternate, all at the same size on screen.

Narrative

Withheld Backstory Revelation

Holding back the main character's origin and motive until the final scene. The gap creates dread and fascination through the whole film, and the answer is the last thing you learn.

How this film uses it

The film holds back Harmonica's reason for hunting Frank until the very end. Every scene between them is charged by something you can't name. Then the flashback finally arrives, with the boy, his brother and the harmonica Frank forced into the boy's own mouth while his brother stood on the boy's shoulders with a noose around his neck. You realize the whole film was built around keeping that 1 thing from you.

Where to see it

The final flashback. You see the boy, his brother and the harmonica. The moment that has shaped the whole film is only revealed in its last minutes.

Sound

Ennio Morricone Structural Score

Treating the score as part of the film's structure, sometimes writing it before the shoot and playing it on set. The acting, camera and editing are then shaped around the music.

How this film uses it

Morricone finished the score before filming began, and Leone played it on set during takes. The harmonica motif was written as music and also as the actual object Harmonica carries. That is, the film's emotional rhythms were musical before they were ever filmed.

Where to see it

Harmonica's theme. The sound of the instrument is the character's identity, the mystery of the plot and the emotional center of the film all at once.

Narrative

Revisionist Genre Argument

Using a genre's familiar rules, like its heroes and its violence, to take those rules apart. The film turns your expectations into a political point the genre usually avoids.

How this film uses it

The railroad is part of the plot, and it's also the film's argument. The world of the gunfighter can't survive the arrival of commerce, law and steam. Leone sets his Western at the exact moment the Western's world is about to disappear. That turns the genre's familiar conventions into relics of history.

Where to see it

The final shot. Jill brings water to the railroad workers. The gunfighter walks away from the future he helped make possible.

Questions

Once Upon a Time in the West: quick answers

What filmmaking techniques does Once Upon a Time in the West use?: CineCode breaks down 5 techniques in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968): Silent Observation Pacing, Face-Landscape Intercutting, Withheld Backstory Revelation, Ennio Morricone Structural Score and Revisionist Genre Argument.
Who directed Once Upon a Time in the West?: Sergio Leone directed Once Upon a Time in the West, released in 1968. CineCode also covers A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Duck, You Sucker (1971), Once Upon a Time in America (1984).
What films are similar to Once Upon a Time in the West?: Films that share techniques with Once Upon a Time in the West include For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Spirited Away (2001), Django Unchained (2012).

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