Once Upon a Time in the West

This movie wasn’t the transfixing surprise it was to me on first viewing, but this time I really appreciated the craft of it. The story is more dependent on dozens of other movies than it is on any semblance of reality, but it is executed with masterful style. Everyone refers to the film as operatic, and Sergio Leone is il maestro to be sure, but what’s surprising is how little music there actually is. There are some exceptionally loud silences, along with the creaking of a windmill or the drone of insects, and a brief theme attached to each character, but in fact the music is as much in the visual as the aural. Though I was showing this film in a series of “Cinematic Landscapes,” its extreme close-ups are the most imposing feature -- Henry Fonda’s blue, blue eyes haloed by the blackest of black hats, the narrowed slits in the weatherbeaten face of Charles Bronson, the grizzled basilisk stare of Jason Robards, the wide dark eyes and pillowy lips of Claudia Cardinale. This is filmmaking at its most pictorial and its most mythic, of intense portraits and sweeping tableaus with swooping camera moves, but leavened by a sardonic wit that yields as many chuckles as oh-wows. It’s no wonder that most of the Westerns that followed this apotheosis had to take a counter-mythic tack (think McCabe & Mrs. Miller or Little Big Man.) (1968, dvd@cai, r.) *8+*