I know some consider this a classic, but I call it a pretentious piece of crap. Worse yet, despite elaborate sets & a cast of seemingly thousands, it's tedious. The music's inane, the choral bits downright mawkish, the dialog consistently bizarre & the acting stilted, with far too many long - way too long - significant looks exchanged by all concerned. (If they'd cut the eyeball intercourse by half, this boring film might have been half an hour shorter.)
And how can we gloss over the gaping crater in the storyline? In a brief flashback near the end, we're finally shown why Bronson's enigmatic harmonica player wants revenge - indeed, this is central to the whole dreary plot - but the flashback shows him completely surrounded by Fonda & his bad guys while being strung up by the neck. Guess we aren't supposed to ask how the hell he survived, eh?
Leone did his best work, his classic spaghetti westerns, when he was operating on a shoestring budget. It's like what happens to some musical bands who've produced one or two successful albums & can suddenly afford orchestral background. They get carried away with that kind of froth & frippery & lose track of their original sound. With this film, Leone's committed the cinematic equivalent.
And how can we gloss over the gaping crater in the storyline? In a brief flashback near the end, we're finally shown why Bronson's enigmatic harmonica player wants revenge - indeed, this is central to the whole dreary plot - but the flashback shows him completely surrounded by Fonda & his bad guys while being strung up by the neck. Guess we aren't supposed to ask how the hell he survived, eh?
Leone did his best work, his classic spaghetti westerns, when he was operating on a shoestring budget. It's like what happens to some musical bands who've produced one or two successful albums & can suddenly afford orchestral background. They get carried away with that kind of froth & frippery & lose track of their original sound. With this film, Leone's committed the cinematic equivalent.