Once Upon a Time in the West
Once Upon a Time in the West is a 1968 film from Italy and the USA, directed by Sergio Leone, running 165 minutes. reelscum files it under spaghetti western.
- Year
- 1968 · 1960s films
- Runtime
- 165 min
- Director
- Sergio Leone
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- canon (0/100)
- Also known as
- Once Upon a Time in the West
Defined in the glossary: Spaghetti western
Fonda cast against type as a child killer. Leone's masterpiece.
Leone slows everything down until the western becomes ritual. A harmonica-playing stranger, a railroad baron, a widow and a bandit converge on a patch of desert with water under it, and the film takes its enormous time getting them there.
Henry Fonda, cast against a lifetime of decency, plays a child-killer in the opening scene and never recovers your sympathy. Morricone wrote the themes before shooting and Leone cut to them, which is why the film feels scored into its bones.
His masterpiece, and the elegy for the whole genre.
Trailer
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Filed alongside
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My Name Is Nobody
The spaghetti western attends its own funeral, cracking jokes. Fonda, Terence Hill, and Leone's fingerprints everywhere.
El Topo
Jodorowsky's mystical, violent acid western. It essentially invented the midnight movie.
Death Rides a Horse
Revenge, Van Cleef, and a score Tarantino lifted wholesale.
A Bullet for the General
The most openly political of the Zapata cycle, and the sharpest.
The Great Silence
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