Michael here. I'm 17 years old, live in Brighton and am a part of Kino Collective. My favourite film (at the moment) is Stoppard's 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead', 1990.
In my articles here, I will be analysing individual scenes in as much excessive detail as possible - wringing them out for every last morsel of meaning.
Enjoy.
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The opening scene of Sergio Leone's 1968 spagetti-Western, 'Once Upon A Time In The West', goes for a strong seven-and-a-half minutes without dialogue. In fact, until Charles Bronson materialises from behind the black steam engine, the scene contains no plot-relevant action or information. For seven-and-a-half minutes, Leone and cinematographer Delli Colli present to us a few vignettes of apathy between the three hired gunmen, as they silently await the arrival of their target. These gunmen eventually prove to be little more than cannon fodder for Bronson's starring role - or so it would seem, had you experienced the film solely through a Wikipedia synopsis. Yet their mundane activities at the run-down train station prove a vividly memorable and even endearing moment - so much so, that the scene has seemingly become synonymous with the film itself. How is that so?
The first thing which is immediately apparent in the station's setting is that it has clearly seen better days. The architecture is that of corrugated iron; halved logs laid into floorboards, and hastily-arranged wooden doorways abundant in gaps and holes. It rather seems the function-focused infrastructure of an expansionist West, victim to the neglect of perpetual advancement. Yet all the same, it remains a place of comfort - of human design - from the surrounding barren hills which often background the frame. Leone's presentation of infrastructure here seems to suggest both the romantic Wild West, and the rugged Capitalistic West, and binds these dichotomous ideas together to create an atmosphere that feels greatly sentimental and, importantly, distinctly Western.
Indeed, the station itself is as much a character as the gunmen who loiter about it. The perpetual squeak of the mill above - not an added effect, but an incidental feature of the set - remains a constant ambient sound throughout the scene, and it is rumoured that Leone specifically declined offers to have it oiled. Its noise frequently emphasises the otherwise silence of the scene, for indeed, loneliness is crucial to this scene. As we observe in frequent establishing shots, the three gunmen spread themselves around the station, far outside of conversation range. Though potentially strategic, I prefer the idea that the three men simply do not talk to each other; even in the lonely wastelands of the West, they remain insular characters. One might draw parallels between the fodder gunmen and the station; whilst seemingly functional, mundane pieces - both in the setting and in the narrative - Leone's detailed characterisation builds an impression of their existences that expand far beyond what's shown during their brief time in the spotlight.
The men's insular moments of boredom are divided into three vignettes which Leone cuts between, after they have spread themselves about the station. Famously, Leone cast his extras and minor characters with special consideration to both their distinct aesthetics and acting styles, believing every part should be memorable. This heavily applies here. One man sits by a drinking trough for horses, and idly cracks his knuckles, as he gazes about the desert. Receiving about the least screentime of the three, 'Knuckles's moment is nevertheless emblematic of Leone's approach to this scene. Despite a general mise-en-scene of stillness in the plain hills and unmoving train-tracks, we are given something to look at during each and every moment. The man washes his hand about in the trough, the sound pronounced within the vacuumous diegesis. Across the right of the frame, a seemingly stray dog walks by, to which he briefly turns - perhaps another image of loneliness. Finally, he cracks his knuckles, with the seeming ease of a man who has does so far too often. These all occur over the course of a twenty-second, static-camera shot.
The second vignette is dedicated to a shaven-headed individual who has taken post beneath a leaky water barrel. The occasional yet sudden impact of the droplets upon his head comes in humorous contrast with the slow-paced scene, and especially with the steely, offended expression with which he regards the leak. Even so, 'Stony's archetypal persona of a cold-blooded bandit is even furthermore subverted by his triumphant smirks and grins, after he covers his head with his stetson hat and - later - refreshes himself the accumulated water by sipping off the hat's rim. Truly, a small yet substantial victory.
Lastly - and perhaps, most memorably - the lazy-eyed seeming leader of the trio ('Snaky') takes the moment of stillness to try to rest, only to find himself inconvenienced by an errant fly upon his neckbeard. Leone makes sure to allow this visual gag to play out in its agonizing slowness; one close-up shot plays out for about a hundred total seconds (interspersed briefly with shots of the other two), as the man awkwardly tries to relieve himself of the pest with as little effort as possible (attempting to blow it away). When it finally lands besides him, he uses the barrel of his revolver to trap it, as though with a glass, in a burst of sudden effort. His apparent pride at capturing the insect alive seems almost infantilising - as though the sort of endeavour a fidgeting child might make - which arguably makes for a surprisingly humanising characterisation of what is otherwise an unremarkable, one-off goon of the main villain.
To get to the heart of our question, we must directly ask ourselves: 'Why is this scene in the film?' Perhaps the most clear reason would be as a tension-building device. The silent, ambiguous meeting of three gunmen in pursuit of an unnamed target clearly parallels 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly', and the audience is likely in anticipation of a gunfight given Leone's directorship. Yet unlike its predecessor, 'Once Upon A Time In The West' utilises a far longer buildup, and the inevitable shootout is not made an urgent focal point like in that other film. Instead, Leone seems to relish in characterising the mundane, human aspects of these characters that otherwise represent a larger-than-life, largely unrelatable archetype: that of the unsympathetic black-hat bandit. Because of this, and because of the detail put into the environment they inhabit in this scene, the film establishes a naturalistic atmosphere for itself to maintain throughout its runtime. This is a West inhabited by believable people, with their own internal rules and priorities; a Western world very much used and influenced by the people who live in it. Such is no small feat to accomplish; the film's diegesis and overall engaging effect benefit from such layers greatly. From here on out, the audience is much more inclined to pay attention to the detail of the world; the 'little things' in how characters behave, or how the environment is arranged.
In short, the scene is focused, we might say, on the emotion of boredom - yet it is that greater attention to detail that we develop to fill the empty space, which Leone uses this scene to make us, as an audience, appreciate. Allegedly, Leone enjoyed telling an anecdote about how, in a Parisian cinema where the film ran uninterrupted for two whole years, he was met with frustration by the projectionist, who said "The same movie over and over again for two years! And it's so SLOW!"
Perhaps this kind of storytelling isn't for everyone.
But it definitely works for me.
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Signing off, Michael Peirce.
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