CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/10/2019

Once Upon a Time in the West was Sergio Leone's 'gift to America of its lost fairy stories'

This great Angelo Novi photograph of director Sergio Leone on set with Jason Robards during the 1968 shooting of Once Upon a Time in the West is reproduced from Christopher Frayling’s glorious new 336-page study, Once Upon a Time in the West: Shooting a Masterpiece. Frayling quotes filmmaker John Boorman: “The Western went into decline when writers and directors became self-conscious and introduced psychological elements… Leone’s ‘Spaghetti’ Westerns revitalized the form because he consciously reverted to mythic stories, making the texture and detail real, but ruthlessly shearing away the recent accretions of the ‘real’ West and its psychological motivations. Unfortunately this was not understood in Hollywood: In Once Upon a Time in the West, the Western reaches its apotheosis. Leone’s title is a declaration of intent and also his gift to America of its lost fairy stories. This is the kind of masterpiece that can only occur outside trends and fashion. It is both the greatest and the last western.”