DVDs have a hard time with faces. It's usually not something you notice unless you're looking for it, but if you watch the cheeks of an actor or actress you can, a bothersome amount of the time, see the picture instabilities created by data compression compromises. Thus it is with some apprehension that one settles down with the new Paramount Widescreen Collection Special Collector's Edition of one of the greatest face movies ever made, Sergio Leone's Once upon a Time in the West (068307, $20), but Paramount has done the film proud. The craggily landscaped countenances of Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson and Jason Robards are steady and sharp down to the smallest pore, no matter how long the camera lingers on them in close up. The faces of the many henchmen-be they recognizable character actors or unknown Italian stuntmen-are also crisply delivered. It is only when the image shifts to the softer complexion of the movie's top billed star, Claudia Cardinale, that you start to see slight inconsistencies in that softness, that is if you can ever take your eyes off the tender silkiness of her lips long enough to go looking for them.
The picture looks wonderful. It is difficult to recall ever being so aware of how beautifully crafted the film's interior sets (done in Rome's Cinecittà studios) are-they aren't just made of wood, they're made of wood scarred by crude axes and dull sawblades. You can see and absorb every minute detail on the DVD and become all the more transported into the movie's world. The letterboxing has an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback.
The sound has been remastered in 5.1-channel Dolby Digital! First and foremost, the remastering of the soundtrack has sharpened tones and deepened the range of the film's noises. The movie's sound editing is exceptional, often using silences to dramatic effect (there's a tendency to hold your breath when one happens), and the precision of the audio delivery enhances every effect. Some of the effects have been made directional, though for the most part, the sounds stay in front. Ennio Morricone's magnificent musical score, however, is delivered with a flourishing dimensionality, and the effect is rapturous, all the more so because the music is so tightly entwined with the actions and emotions of the characters. There is also a French track in mono and optional English subtitles.
Many films these days are accompanied by supplementary features that tell the story of their creation, but in most instances, fans are already aware of those stories to some degree or another. The creation of both new and classic science-fiction and horror films have long been heavily documented, while the publicity machines have always kept potential audiences aware of major studio productions. Since the late Fifties, scholarly journals have also documented the production of crime thrillers, American westerns and other genre classics. But you would really have to search far and wide to read much on the making of Once upon a Time in the West, despite its now jaw-dropping credit line, "From a story by Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci and Sergio Leone." The film was not just dismissed by critics when it first appeared, it was savaged by an establishment that was being threatened with an upheaval of aesthetic criteria at home and felt affronted by the success of Leone's earlier Italian-produced westerns. There was no machine to tell the movie's story as it was being made or when it was released, and no real fan publications to pick up the slack, beyond those few that arose in the subsequent decades to cover all cult films regardless of genre. Hence, the supplemental features on the DVD are not just run-of-the-mill welcome, they are a revelation, a chance to understand the previously ignored history behind what is now recognized as a true masterpiece.
The film itself is accompanied by a commentary track featuring film historian Christopher Frayling, with inserted reflections by Cardinale, Bertolucci, fans John Carpenter, John Millius and Alex Cox, and others. Frayling concentrates primarily on an artistic analysis of the film, but he does make note of which sequences were shot in Rome, which were shot in Spain and which were shot in Monument Valley in America. He also answers a few questions we certainly have always pondered. "They put jam or marmalade all over Jack Elam's beard, and had a jar of flies just off camera, and just let the flies out one by one and hoped that one of them would land on his chin."
For a more focused history of the film and its quirks, however, there is a 67-minute retrospective documentary on the second platter. It is broken into three separate programs, but none of them overlap and it plays best as a single entity, even though it starts and stops three times. The piece goes over Leone's biography and career, explains how he got together with Bertolucci and Argento to write it, looks at the casting, and goes over all aspects of its creation. There is also a survey of the best-known missing scenes (including stills) and why they were dropped (the style Leone adapted for the film was at odds with the length of the screenplay), and a look at the diverse reactions to the film after it was completed (it flopped in America and played for years without interruption in Paris). Also featured on the second platter is a less satisfying 6-minute essay about the expansion of the American railroad, referring to it at one point as a 'fin de ciecle' event, which it was not. There is a neat 4-minute montage of then-and-now location photographs, a nice 5-minute montage of black-and-white production stills (including more from a deleted scene), a cast profile section and the movie's original American trailer.
After the film's astoundingly still, 10-minute opening credit sequence, in which three gunfighters await the arrival of a train, only to lose their lives as soon as it pulls away, the film weaves the principal characters through a highly satisfying, tightly knit narrative of greed and revenge, with a backdrop that illustrates the economic and political forces that contributed to the growth of the American West. Running 165 minutes, the film continues to take its time after that languorous beginning, but deceptively. There has long been an irrelevant argument about whether a film should emphasize style or story-the best movies always do both-and it may seem, initially, that style has the upper hand here, but not even those glorious close-ups of each star's eyes can slow down the delightfulness of the performances. This is what movie stars do, they present their familiarity as a framework upon which they can drape their characters, and Leone uses that beautifully. The moralities and passions of each character are elaborate, and yet these attributes can be expressed with a spareness that evokes and reinforces the Old West setting, because Leone can let the faces tell so much with so few words.
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The Best of 2003
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