Once Upon A Time In The West (1968) Movie Reaction! Two Filmmakers React! 

Best Western there will ever be. legendary director, legendary actors, legendary music composer. just everything you'd want in a western movie, almost every shot could be wall framed it's so beautifully done.

This maybe the best movie ever made - just saying...

Unlike most film composers, Morricone wrote most of his music based on the script, before even a single scene was shot - and he managed to capture the essence of those scenes so well that Leone sometimes adjusted the pacing of a scene to match the music.

Morricone knocked this one out of park. I still tear up with Jill's Theme.

They don't make it like this anymore. Sergio Leone is a master. Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson incredible...Claudia Cardinale omg...what a beauty of a woman! And Enio Morricone's score...what a masterpiece!

"...someday..." never a more romantic line that I've ever seen

One of the greatest Western films ever made!

The best western. The score - oh my gosh.

I'm 58, love movies and can't even count how many I've watched over the years. At 13 I saw this movie in a theater for the first time. I didn't really get the deeper layers back then, but I clearly remember the impact the sounds, visuals and acting made. If I have to make a guess, I'd say I've rewatched it about once every two years since that day, a few times in a cinema as part of some retrospective series. It never ever fails to amaze me. To me, after all those years and after so many other great movies, this one still tops my personal list of best movies ever made.

Henry Fonda's best performance. My favorite Western.

Not a single word in this script is wasted ... stunning movie. The artistry and craft is top notch.

One of the best westerns ever made.

An artistic masterpiece in my opinion, had a boyhood crush on Claudia Cardinale between this and Circus World with John Wayne, the opening scene is probably the best in western film history, thanks looking forward to it !

RIP Jack Elam. An unsung hero.

I am pleased the rest of the world is coming around to what I have asserted since I first saw this film in the mid-seventies: Once Upon A Time In The West is the greatest Western ever made. It is so intricately made. For a movie with such sweeping classic action it is made of a multitude of subtle treatments from the music, the script ( "You brought two too many.") and the inflexions of close up expressions. It is a work of art from the opening scene through to the end as Harmonica ride off into the sunset.

THERE IS NO MOVIE BETTER THAN THIS ONE THIS IS THE GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME ANY USA MADE WESTERN SEEM STERILE AND WEAK TO ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST..

Such a masterpiece… so many scenes that still (after countless views) gives me chills. Only my favourite Hitchcock movies manages to equal this gem 💎❤️‍🔥

This and the good the bad and the ugly are the top notch of my favorite films of all time, pure gold masterpieces. Excellent review.

The screenwriter of this movie is none other than the Italian Horror director Dario Argento. He made Susperia, Deep Red, Bird With the Crystal Plumage among other great horror movies! Argento experimented with light and camera work during his whole career. This is a great epic movie!

One of my favorite films. Worth seeing in a theatre if you get the opportunity. One small thing I love is how Fondas’s wardrobe gets finer as the film progresses showing how he’s moving up in class.

6:42-6:51 When Sergio Leone shot this scene, he imagined the audience being shocked and saying, “OMG, THAT’S HENRY FONDA!” I think this IS the greatest surprise in the history of films! Even Mojo made Henry Fonda’s role as Frank #1 on their countdown of Top Ten Wholesome Actors Who Took Evil Roles.

Great reaction, guys. Now, you need to see the finale of Sergio Leone's masterpiece: Once Upon A Time In America.

"How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders, a man who can't even trust his pants?"

The shot of the shadow swinging back and forth from the top to the bottom of Bronson's eyes while he is playing harmonica in the saloon may be my favorite close up in all of movie history.

The best Western ever. It's the Gone With the Wind of westerns. The music score is a character of itself. Each of our characters has their own theme. I appreciate you guys doing this and you're damn glad you did. Nice reaction guys.

This was shot in Spain with a detour through Monument valley as an homage to the Ford Westerns.

Woody Strode’s sawed off Winchester repeater (or a variation thereof) appeared earlier (dubbed the Mare’s Leg) in the hands of Steve McQueen’s bounty hunter, Josh Randall in the TV series, Wanted: Dead or Alive. Another version of the same gun was used by Gina Torres as Zoe Washburne in the short lived space western series, Firefly (and the film Serenity).

You saying 'poster' is spot on. You can just about stop this film at any random point and print it off and stick it on your wall. Possibly the most superbly shot film, in that sense, ever made. At least that I've seen. This is the best Western.

This is simply the best movie in Space Time to me... The more I see it the more I cry, for the story, but also for the art and craftmanship, it's so well done that I get emotional on multiple layers.

First time i watched this movie i think my lower jaw never left the floor. I already knew who was Ennio Morricone before this movie because i had seen The Untouchables before but with this film i understood what a genious he was.

This masterpiece by Sergio Leone is actually a film about the end of the western epic, the transition to the modern world without heroes, legends and honor, where wild capitalism, symbolized by the railway under construction, advances. Everything is underlined by the wonderful melancholy music of Ennio Morricone. Some curiosities about this work. The first, tragic, was that during filming the actor Al Mulock, one of the three waiting for Harmonica at the station at the beginning of the film, committed suicide by jumping from a balcony wearing his stage clothes because his wife had died the year before of cancer and it seems that he became a drug addict. The role of Harmonica was supposed to be entrusted to Clint Eastwood, but he refused perhaps because he had other commitments and Sergio Leone never spoke to him again for twenty years, then they made peace shortly before Leone died. The actor who played Harmonica's brother was the Italian production manager Caludio Mancini and since Sergio Leone often argued with the producers over budget issues, he had him hanged as a joke. There are several Italian actors in the film. The most famous are the beautiful Claudia Cardinale, Paolo Stoppa who plays the part of the man who drives the carriage that takes Jill McBain/Cardinale from the station to the house where all the members of Brett McBain's family were killed and Gabriele Ferzetti who plays Morton. Greetings from Milan, Italy

Everyone talks about the harmonica. For me the best piece of music in this film is that fuzz guitar, you can really hear it at 9:14 It's so loud and menacing and cool. Totally unexpected in a western movie. Also later on in that song, you'll hear this weird sound, sounds like a few strips of thin metal clanging together. It's actually the springs in the reverb tank of the guitar amp hitting each other, which was caused by someone lightly hitting the reverb tank.

There is a fifth Sergio Leone western called either "Duck, You Sucker" or "A Fistful Of Dynamite". It stars Rod Steiger and James Coburn and is completely different from the other four. It is set in Mexico at the time of the Revolution and Pancho Villa. James Coburn is an ex-IRA member on the run, and Rod Steiger is a father of six and with his father, altogether they are a gang. It gets complicated from there, and is a ton of fun to watch. Hey it's Sergio Leone.

This movie never matched in the history of cinema simply a classic.

I was 12 or 13 years old when I watched this movie in 69/70? for the first time and instantly fell in love with Claudia (of course). I was to young but my older brother helped me to get into the theater. The writing, acting, music, soundeffects, locations, camerawork, just epic. Watched it 100 times and today it still gives me goosebumps.

It's always amazing to watch filmmakers enjoy and geek out over good camera shots, good filming technique and appreciating sound design. :) With movies like these it adds just that much extra (since quite often your regular movie reactor is used to a different pacing in films. And they often zone out for it being so long). I always try to argue that these movies are iconic BECAUSE they have a slow pacing and they take their time. ;) But I can never convince everyone

I saw this movie when it was first featured in Europe and within the first twenty minutes I knew this was going to be a classic masterpiece.

never ever forget..................Claudia Cardinale.

The movie was 3 hours long but there was only 15 pages of dialog written by the producer and director. The entire sound score was recorded and in the can before the first scene was shot. Sergio Leone played the soundtrack on set while filming. There were 4 themes: One for Jill, one for Harmonica, one for Cheyenne, and one for Frank.

there just one and you look at it .big work in it ooooo yes .

This movie needs to be re-scanned and released on 4k disc!!

a Masterpiece of the Movie History The most beautifull Women ever i saw my hole Life , she is one of a kind ... for sure .

Man... Claudia Cardinale was absolutely beautiful.

That's my favorite movie of all time!

There's so much Trivia regarding this film it's near impossible to list it all. So, I'm just going to list seven (7). (1) The train Harmonica alights from is the same train on which Jill is riding (she alights later at the town). (2) Three men waiting for a train pays homage to "High Noon". (3) The sawed-off Winchester used by Stony pays homage to the tv series "Wanted: Dead or Alive" starring Steve McQueen. (4) Originally, the three waiting gunmen were slated to be Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach (a good friend of Henry Fonda). (5) Henry Fonda wanted to wear brown contact lenses. However, Sergio Leone decided Fonda's blue eyes world seem even more menacing. (6) Jill's house is the same house used in Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight". (7) Claudia Cardinale's character (Jill McBain) pays homage to Joan Crawford's character (Vienna) in the film "Johnny Guitar"

congrats guys. Don’t change. top reactions with no fluff from people who know what they are talking about. 👏👍

In a word... supreme.

Once Upon a Time in America next? you guys are awesome af

Seeing Claudia's face, for me, is like watching Ursula Andress emerge from the ocean.

Sorry I forgott , Your Reaction was the best so far cause You both know what it's all about and You don't cut out the red Line of the Story ... thanks for that . I watched this Movie about 40 years now and always enjoyed it .

some more Sergio Leone films i would highly recommend: Duck, You Sucker aka A Fistul of Dynamite aka Once Upon a Time...the Revolution (his most overlooked film, and the last western he directed) My Name is Nobody (a Western comedy/Parody with Terence Hill and Henry Fonda, Leone directed parts of it, was a writer and producer on it) Once Upon a Time in America (4 hour gangster Epos, Leone's last film and his masterpiece)

Best film of all time…

The flashbacks in this movie are something special. The out of focus shot in slow motion makes the character look almost like an alien. One of my all time favorite movies. I bought a projector long ago just because of this movie.

Hey guys. New sub here. Love what you're doing. How cool to hang out with some people who love this movie like I do. The 2001 A Space Odyssey of westerns by the the Stanley Kubrick of westerns. The music is what gets me. TGTBATU soundtrack stirs me but this soundtrack gets me misty-eyed every time, especially the showdown. And Jill's theme. As a musician myself, I think it's the greatest soundtrack ever. Sergio even played the theme music when filming scenes to inspire the actors. That's how moving it is. He had the soundtrack recorded ahead of time so he could play it as he filmed. Genius. Did you notice that Zemeckis payed homage to OUATITW in BTTFIII? The scene where Jill enters the train station and the camera cranes up over the roof to show the town. Zemeckis does the same shot when Marty first goes into the 1800's Hill Valley. Great react, guys. It was fun. Regards from Illinois. 🤘😎🤘

Sorry guys, had to get right to the ending, one of the greatest gun fights in all of cinema, is rivals The Good, The Bad...in that, there is a very personal vendetta to be answered, not just a box full of gold coins, we can all dig that idea, this final shootout, only one shot fired, is another level of determination, to reach the one ultimate goal; it's expert storytelling and cinema, it's a brilliant piece of film... it is a masterpiece.

I know this was uploaded a while ago but these westerns are when I started watching you guys and your insightful commentary just adds to your videos as opposed to normal reactions. I will say this movie and unforgiven are real standouts for me in westerns in that every time I watch them they get better and better. What I like about this one is that in my personal opinion this is Leone’s best written movie and definitely has the best score possibly in movie history. And writing is pretty important for me as an aspiring writer who would someday like to write a movie like this. But you know one step at a time. But hey I wish you gents the best of luck and are you guys going to do any more westerns in the future? And will be looking at things like the original Star Wars trilogy or the Dark Knight trilogy? Just curious but hey have a good one.

one of the few in Leone's career that they didn't really re-edit or fool around with (except of course for TV or other releases they messed and cut up all of them for different reasons). He got it released with no initial cutting up. Then they started re-cutting it later. But it lives and breathes as this sprawling historical adventure. We studied it in film school, because of the strong female character at the center. There is really so much more here tho.

One he'll of a movie🎬

@07:30 Leone played the music on loudspeakers on set so it triggers the actors emotions. He did that on many scenes in this movie.

Over 3 hours and barely a 70 page script. The four theme tunes used to cut dialogue. Robert zemekis replicated the town crane shot in back to future 3. The film is the masterclass of film making.

Okay, on the carriage ride at the first of the movie, it's known as the longest ride in movie history. It starts in Spain and ends in Monument Valley. Another thing Leoni wanted Clint Eastwood to play harmonica and be the 4th movie, but Clint said no and had gone back to the US to do another movie.

I have a copy of this soundtrack on vinyl. Outstanding!!!

ok ok

Harmonica cannot stay, he has no purpose but vengeance, a bit like Hamlet or Beowulf or Titus Andronicus, he's consumed by it to a point that doesn't allow any life after it, even his name has been replaced by the sound of his misery and hate.

Tom Hanks played a villain in Elvis. And a ruthless gunman in Road to Perdition.

Great review. How about reviewing Once Upon a Time in America, Sergio Leones last movie.

Henry Fonda playing against type: one of his greatest ever roles in my very humble opinion. And what an epically cool movie! Great choice. Greetings from a proud member of the mob 😁

During the final showdown, if you look at the two men's shadows, the scene must have taken all day.

Seriously? If youse two were bathed in shadow that would be fine. Make a film. No edits, no cuts. Available light. It's 2022, not 1962. Call me unique but my life is a thousand times more interesting, terrifying, joyful and depressing than most films I have seen in nearly seven decades. If I get a Go-Pro Black Hero 7 Imma ignore all the rules. One light, oh the horror.

There is an almost certainly apocryphal story that Leone wanted Eastwood, Wallach, and Van Cleef to be the three men waiting for Harmonica at the train station. Script by two masterful Italian directors - Bertolucci and Argento.

I couldn't give you an answer if you asked me about my favorite movie, but this is without a doubt the best western. Leone didn't want to do more westerns, but thank the movie gods that Paramount gave him enough money and Henry Fonda, so he couldn't say no. He wanted to do a gangster movie, and it became the third one of the Once Upon a Time-trilogy; Once Upon a Time in America. A contender for best mob movie, but I've heard that some kid called Coppola made a couple of pretty good ones too. ;)

Great comment at the end! Comment that I don't hear or read very often and with which I totally agree. Indeed, the film interweaves two streams of events: the disappearance of the Old West with its violence and lawlessness, a world of men from "an ancient race"; and the powerful undercurrent of modernization, lawfulness, and diversity materialized by the railroad's unstoppable progression and the rise of women. It's a very social perspective on the building of America and modern societies. The ending's long, uncut panning sequence summarizes all this... and systematically makes me shed some tears 🥹

The greatest film of all time is 'La Strada' by Fellini.

Fonda said he showed up with brown contacts for this and Leone said no, I want to see those blue eyes. That introduction where deliberately kills the kid while slightly smiling is one hell of a character reveal.

I tried to find how Harmonica recovered from his serious shoulder wound. No luck. I don’t think he was flesh and blood. More likely an avenging angel. He knew who Frank killed. Too sure he could not fail. Nobody could guarantee success against Frank. Nobody mortal.

Where's Frank? Frank sent us. Did you bring a horse for me? Well... looks like we're shy one horse. No, you brought two too many.

This and Blade Runner are my favorite films of all time. No matter how many times I watch this movie, I get goosebumps with all the fantastic lines, the incredible Morricone music, everything. I hope you also watch Once Upon A Time In America, another Leone masterpiece!

The music, using the melody of Don Giovanni, and using non traditional instruments is fantastic!! You can hear similar music in many Hans Zimmer films.

Since Leone knew - see "Fistful of Dollars" - the films of Kurosawa which have natural effects (wind, dust, rain & sound) in almost every shot, I presume that Leone learned from that. Lots of wind & dust & sounds here, too.

if you notice , each character has his or her own theme music

This one is the first movie of Leone's unofficial second trilogy,the "Once Upon a Time" trilogy.This was followed by A Fistful of Dynamite AKA Duck,You Sucker,and his final movie,1984's gangster drama Once Upon a Time in America,with Robert DeNiro and James Woods (and Leone's only movie with direct sound recording).

Please do Once Upon A Time In America

I liked the darker set. It has a theatre feel and doesn’t distract. The commentary doesn’t need harsh lighting. Do what is most comfortable to your eyes to watch the film.

Will you react to Duck, You Sucker/A Fistful of Dynamite?

I can't say that I loved this entire film, but the whole opening sequence is a masterpiece in my opinion. I often wonder if this sequence is covered in film school. It seems like it should be.

Something you may consider adding to your repertoire. I have watched a lot of guys react to music videos.. Not one of them has ever addressed the video aspect. There are some that are really four minute movies and deserve to be looked at as such. For example, look at The Hu, "Wolf Totem" and consider why are there guys riding Harleys on the steppes. What is the message? Or maybe Golden Earring's :Twilight Zone. The makers did a '60s Cold War spy thriller perfectly" This is a completely overlooked niche, filmmakers looking at music vids.

4:25 "It's like ten minutes of..." "...of nothing". No, it was ten minutes of true cinematography

The Eiger Sanction was filmed in Monument Valley as well and incorporated the last legal climb up the totem pole feature. Plus it stars Clint Eastwood. A top 10 favorite you should add to the list.

"What are we going to do with this one, Frank?" "Now that you called me by name..." Henry Fonda, transformed from an Everyman Hero to the Coldest Killer in Westerns.;)

you got everything. youre great. thanks guys. peace from italy. EC.

Thanks for the content, guys! If you ever want to return to Sergio Leone, might I suggest one of his lesser known films, another western with the rather silly title "Duck, you suckers!", also known as "Once Upon a Time - The Revolution" or Giu La Testa. It's another amazing movie, but hasn't gotten the recognition it deserves imho.

"Sawed off Winchester..." You mean a Mare's leg.

Man you shouldn’t have told him henry fonda was the villain, it would have been great to see his reaction

CINEMATIC HEAVEN!! Grand Opera in scope.

In Germany the film was PG 16 and because it was such an unbeliebable success in Germany (and France) it did came back to local cinemas every time. And just a few days after my 16th birthday (1981) it was shown for 4 day in one of our local theaters and I went 3 times to see it. I think after that I saw it 4 to 5 times more over the years in diferent cinemas thorugh out in Germany. It's too bad, that I haven't seen it in cinemas for the last 25 or so years. The last time I saw it in a theater was around 1991 in a big premiere cinema in Hamburg on a very big screen, fantastic. I listnend uncounted times to the soundtrack and watched the VHS, DVD and BluRay many times. This is by far my most beloved film of all times. Your reaction was great.

Beautiful reaction and Beautiful movie Need a reaction Once upon a time in America

Tom Hanks had a couple of bad guy roles in Cloud Atlas

Tom Hanks couldn't have played Frank.

Thank you, your 30+ minute review went as fast as Leone's films (a famous reply of him to an Italian film producer: "My films last 3 hours and people feel like they last one and a half. Yours last one and a half hours and people feel like they last three!"). About the train and the man thing at the end, think of all Leone's films as fairytales for adults with a strong mythological element. His last three films are a kind of history of America. So, in his western mythology, these "superheroes" (Eastwood's, Van Cleef's, characters, Harmonica, Cheyenne, Frank, etc.), whether good or bad, were fundamental and necessary to the building of the (American) civilization (Morton, Jill, the new towns, railroad) - though there would be no more place for them in that same civilization, that's why they had to die or to move further West. With this film Leone wanted to show both a definitive era, the end of the Far West; and at the same time the end of the Western genre. It's no coincidence that there are TENS of citations of classical Hollywood Westerns in this film - not for the sake of citing, but to build the atmosphere and make this a kind of testament of the genre.

After great modern westerns, would great neo-noir be a possibility? 'Chinatown', 'L. A. Confidential' maybe?