Product Description

Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti), the power-hungry owner of a railroad company, hires Frank (Henry Fonda, playing against type), a gunfighter without a conscience, to kill anyone who stands in the way of the completion of the railroad. After Frank murders land owner Brett McBain (Frank Wolff), McBain's widow (Claudia Cardinale) hires two killers of her own to protect her and gain revenge: a mysterious, harmonica-playing desperado (Charles Bronson) and his rogue sidekick (Jason Robards). Using techniques previously unseen in the genre, Sergio Leone utilizes close-ups, color, and Ennio Morricone's trademark score to create a tense and somber meditation on death which is widely considered to be one of the best westerns in cinematic history. Soon-to-be legendary Italian directors Dario Argento (SUSPIRIA) and Bernardo Bertolucci (THE LAST EMPEROR) collaborated with Leone on the screenplay.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1355 in DVD
• Brand: PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2003-11-18
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Dubbed in: English, French
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 175 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
The so-called spaghetti Western achieved its apotheosis in Sergio Leone's magnificently mythic (and utterly outlandish) Once upon a Time in the West. After a series of international hits starring Clint Eastwood (from A Fistful of Dollars to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), Leone outdid himself with this spectacular, larger-than-life, horse-operatic epic about how the West was won. (And make no mistake: this is the wide, wide West, folks--so the widescreen/letterboxed version is strongly recommended.) The unholy trinity of Italian cinema--Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Dario Argento--concocted the story about a woman (Claudia Cardinale) hanging onto her land in hopes that the transcontinental railroad would reach her before a steely-eyed, black-hearted killer (Fonda) does. (The film's advertising slogan was: "There were three men in her life. One to take her ... one to love her ... and one to kill her.") Meanwhile, Leone shoots his stars' faces as if they were expansive Western landscapes, and their towering bodies as if they were looming rock formations in John Ford's Monument Valley. --Jim Emerson

DVD features
The powers behind the DVD of this Western masterpiece pay due respect to filmmaker Sergio Leone's style right down to the DVD menus: calm, slow building, and pierced by a gun blast. The location gallery is a wonderful and unique extra consisting of images of filming locations then and 30 some years later, scored by Ennio Morricone's haunting music. The new hour-long documentary (uselessly cut into three parts) is packed with new interviews from surviving members of the cast and crew (including star Claudia Cardinale and co-writer Bernardo Bertolucci) along with insight from a trio of modern film directors and Leone fans: John Carpenter, Alex Cox, and John Milius. Leone biographer Sir Christopher Frayling has the lion's share of the commentary track, and although he knows Leone cold, he often just narrates the action. Other voices are more engaging. The widescreen print (2.35:1) is immaculate with true colors we haven't seen in prints on TV or second-run theaters. Of course you'll miss the big screen of a movie theater, so we recommend you watch the film while sitting real close to your television. --Doug Thomas