Between the extended close-ups of Henry Fonda's piercing stare and Charles Bronson's almost insufferably long harmonica solos, Sergio Leone's masterpiece of western cinema has its own ideas when it comes to pacing. And here, they absolutely work. This might not have the fun, punchy action of the director's earlier films but it captures the beauty of the vistas of places as diverse as Utah and Spain (here doubling for the American West as it so often did during this period) while presenting the viewer with a floating, almost lyrical sense of folk mythology. The characters are little more than types, flattened against the massive and insurmountable mountains and deserts. All that can survive of them by comparison are their most extreme attributes. So the good are unflinchingly noble and the bad are inhumanly evil and very little can stand for long between them.
Eric Day co-hosts the Murderville Podcast at www.welcometomurderville.com
Give it a listen. Five minutes. Maybe you'll dig it. Maybe you'll hate it. But at least you'll have tried something new.
