Agree. I’ll go further. It becomes a pretentious borefest. This 4th Leone spaghetti is when the Italian western becomes intellectualised and reframed as an art form it was never really meant to be by the man who created it.
For me, the magic&mystique of the Dollar Trilogy is lost in the dust with this movie. I don’t understand what all the fuss is about,and I’ve watched it many times looking for greatness that others seem to drool over.
Like Morton’s railroad it goes on&on&on. Not to say there aren’t good moments. The opening credit sequence and the ranch massacre are as good as it gets. It then degenerates into Leone self indulging himself in corny spaghetti mannerisms and long drawn out John Ford homages. David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia goes west. It was almost as long.
The problem for me is that everyone is just plain dull. The only interesting character is Morton; even he is a ruthless land grabber who’s ordered the murder of a family. The scene where his dreams of reaching the Pacific evaporate in a puddle is perhaps the best in the entire movie. As always Morricone’s music provides genuine emotion. The film’s music is beautiful.
When I think of Once Upon a Time in the West I think of wood, and I’m not talking about the architecture. Its everything. Had Charles Bronson been shot at the end instead of Henry Fonda, the townsfolk would have saved money on a coffin. Bronson’s performance suggested he was already made of wood.
In attempting to bring substance to a genre that never really had much in the first place, Once Upon a Time in the West disappears across the Atlantic on its own wind.
You can paint wood any colour you want. Its still wood.
OUATITW is not strictly a SW, but more Leone’s homage to the older Hollywood westerns. It was even partly shot in Monument Valley. Frayling and Hughes don’t count the film to the real SWs.
Stanton is a big fan of both US westerns and SWs, to him OUATITW is the best SW, and many others like it too.
GBU is the quintessential SW though, and it is the number 1 SW on the SWDb official Top 20 list.
Not sure if these are controversial enough but I think Boot Hill and Return of Sabata are just about the worst spaghetti westerns.
Both are what I would call ‘anti’ westerns going out of their way to annoy audiences deliberately and have this continual smirky self-knowingness about them in that they think audiences will watch the material regardless of quality so they cannot be bothered to try.
I still don’t understand why Return of Sabata is so often considered so much lower than Sabata itself. For me both are pretty close, Sabata has its share of flaws too, both are easy entertaining stuff. There was even a time where I preferred Return, but I liked it a bit less the last time, but it is still a solid 6/10.
Hmmm, it’s nice to have 3 of my top 20 films mentioned in the last posts of this thread …
Stanton - I’ll deliberately be quite abusive about Return of Sabata and why I don’t like it, A lot. I’d prefer a Fidani movie because at least he had no money to work with rather than a big budget and a lot of talent.
Lazy, rubbish ‘can’t be arsed’ score. ‘Sabata..bum bum bum etc’ This is just taking the piss (or rather passing round the collection box). The worst spaghetti western score ever.
Hopeless German ‘sidekick’ guy who is no threat to Sabata - again a piss take.
Underwhelming bad guy who has no gimmicky weapon, no ‘philiosophy’ and no threat to Sabata
Sabata is now a Casanova-type lothario with a pregnant mistress in every town. He is horrible to the lovely Annabella Incontrera, who asks to have sex with him every time he steps foot in her room.
Sabata spends a lot of time walking round the saloon, smirking and making snide comments at people. I just felt this made him a bore.
Lee Van Cleef wears a wig whereas the original Sabata was an own-up baldie.
No-one gets killed on screen for at least the first hour. Sabata just beats the same people up again and again. In fact virtually nothing of substance happens for the first half of the movie at all.
Ending is the same as Sabata - attack on the hacienda - but not as convincing or as witty. After over an hour of no killing they just gave up on that and repeated the original ending as the contractual running time was approaching.
I felt the whole thing was up its own arse and had contempt for the audience.
I think the original Sabata film is utter trash too. It feels like a 1970s SW, when the genre devolved into cheap slapstick, fart jokes, etc.
The whole acrobatics BS and the stupid guitar guy are just annoying, the soundtrack is bottom tier trash, and even LVC can’t save a film that refuses to take itself at least somewhat seriously. It misses all the elements that made the genre so unique and brilliant. If it was at least funny, I could tolerate it as a decent comedy, but even the attempts at humour fall entirely flat.
Definitely one of the worst SWs I’ve seen. I’d rather endure a Trinity film or watch the awful “My Name is Nobody” again than suffer through that atrocity ever again.
I haven’t seen Return of Sabata yet, but I didn’t like the first Sabata when I watched it. Felt too much like a Sartana copy (I guess that’t the point, but still XD)
I would say give them a go. With the exception of the first one (for me) they are better than Sabata. The first is also a Parolini film, and I think they get much better once Carnimeo takes over.
Well, yeah that’s fair enough, probably wouldn’t be to his taste then. I still think Carnimeo’s style and frame composition is much better suited though, and outweighs the ‘silliness’ - or at least balances it out more than the Sabatas do.
