Sergio Leone: “For me the music is fundamental, especially in a Western where the dialogue is purely aphoristic. The films could just as well be silent; one would understand all the same. The music serves to emphasize states of mind, facts and situations more than the dialogue itself does. In short, for me the music functions as dialogue.”

Ennio Morricone: “There is a special satisfaction in working with someone like Leone. Not only does he make excellent films, but he respects the work of the composer and the orchestra. Other directors do a bad job of mixing the music, they keep it too soft or cover it with noises. But Sergio always gave full value to what I wrote for him.”

Leone and Morricone created a new kind of western and Once Upon a Time in the West is the cinematic and musical apotheosis of their legendary collaboration. In an unusual but inspired move Leone had Morricone write the score before filming began, and then had the music played on the set, which not only allowed Leone to synchronize camera movements and modulate editing rhythms with the tempo of the music, but also inspired the actors to shape their performances around the rhythms of the score. The result is an unrivalled marriage of music and image.

Consider the 90-second track and crane shot that accompanies Jill’s arrival in Flagstone. As the first few notes of Jill’s Theme begin, the camera tracks with Jill as she walks to the Flagstone train station, and then, as the music continues to build, the camera slowly cranes skyward, higher and higher until it passes over the station’s rooftop, finally revealing Jill on the other side walking in the bustling, half-built Western town just as Morricone’s soaring music reaches its rhapsodic crescendo. To call the shot awe-inspiring would be an understatement, but it is just one of countless such breathtaking moments in this masterpiece. 

(Watch it here at the three minute mark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cakBkd2wAVw)

But nothing can quite compare to the operatic power of the final moment of reckoning between Harmonica and Frank, when their mysterious connection to each other is finally revealed through a hypnotic flashback, cued by Harmonica’s haunting “death rattle” and climaxing with another of Morricone’s overpowering crescendos.

(Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ4bNTU965E

Ironically, one of the film’s best sequences doesn’t feature a note of Morricone’s score. I am referring, of course, to the incredible ten-minute opening credit sequence in which a creaking windmill, a nattering telegraph machine, a buzzing fly, a crowing rooster, a cocked gun, flapping dusters, cracking knuckles, crunching footsteps, whistling wind, dripping water and a chugging train combine to create a veritable symphony of sound effects. No music is heard but the sequence is gloriously “musical” nonetheless.

Leone’s inspiration for this scene came from none other than Morricone who once told Leone about an avant-garde concert he’d attended in which a man made “music” with a squeaky stepladder. As Morricone remembers it, “I recounted this experience to Sergio and he made those extraordinary first ten minutes of Once Upon a Time in the West from that idea. In my opinion, that was one of the best things Sergio did in that film.”

(You can watch about two minutes of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHZpO6aNLwE)

I could go on all day talking about incredible scenes from this classic film. If you haven’t seen it, by all means do so, preferably on the biggest screen possible.

Posted on February 15th, 2009 by Mat Viola
Filed under: Miscellaneous