Prior to the release of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, whenever a bunch of people in a movie embarked on a project to obtain a great deal of money, something always went wrong. In some cases, the project was illegal, and given the Production Code in force at the time, the criminals had to die or be arrested, as in The Asphalt Jungle (1950). In It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), the treasure hunters are not criminals, but the buried treasure was stolen loot, so they all had to be arrested in the end. But even when the enterprise was entirely legal, there was an unwritten rule that it must fail, that pursuing money per se was wrong in some way and must not be rewarded. For example, in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), there was nothing illegal about the three men prospecting for gold, but it had to fail nevertheless. When the two surviving members of the team realize that all their gold has been lost, they laugh about it. Presumably, even when the search for money was legal, it had to fail, the movie’s way of telling us we should be content with our lot. One slight exception is King Solomon’s Mines (1950 et al.). The people in the movie do manage to keep a handful of gems, but the vast treasure is lost for good.

And then came The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Three men set out to find buried treasure, and something incredible happens: the treasure does not turn out to be worthless Confederate bonds; it does not blow away in the wind; the men pursuing the treasure are not arrested; and only one of them dies, leaving the other two alive to split the loot. Nothing like that had ever been seen in a movie before, and the violation of the taboo against that sort of thing was exhilarating.

This amoral ending was perfectly in line, however, with all that had come before in that movie. Were it not for the advance notice provided by the tagline, “For three men the Civil War wasn’t Hell. It was practice,” we would not even realize that the movie was set in the Civil War when it begins. And it is only gradually that we become aware of the war, because it really does not seem to concern the three principle characters. The Ugly, Tuco (Eli Wallach), is a bandit, the Good, Blondie (Clint Eastwood), is a bounty hunter, and the Bad, Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef), is a hired killer, each pursuing his own business with no interest in the war. Only when they find out about the buried Confederate gold does the war take on significance for them. And as they pursue that gold, they walk through the war as if they were walking through a room. In one case, when the war gets in their way, they blow up a bridge so that the soldiers will leave the area, which has as an incidental byproduct the result that the pointless daily slaughter is brought to an end.

Actually, the amoral nature of this movie was no surprise, for it was also characteristic of the two previous Westerns by Sergio Leone featuring the Man with No Name, A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965). This was a new kind of Western protagonist. He was not a law enforcement officer; he was not seeking to avenge someone’s death; and he was not trying to reform and hang up his guns. Instead, he was either a hired gun or bounty hunter who profited by his expertise with a pistol, and had no intention of changing his ways.

The Noble Lie in Plato’s Republic

The idea of a noble lie was first enunciated in Plato’s Republic.  It is a lie that is told for the good of society, for the benefit of those that believe it.  Through the mouth of Socrates, Plato argued that people should be raised to believe in a myth that would justify the stratification of society as something innate.  Those in the lowest class, the Workers, consisting of artisans and farmers, would know their place and stay in it, doing as they were told by the highest class, the Guardians, resulting in social harmony, for the benefit of all.

Such lies may be found in the writings of historians, in the speeches of politicians, and in the sermons of priests.  As for the movies, there is no doubt that the Motion Picture Production Code promoted such lies in requiring, among other things, that the movies show that crime does not pay. That way, those that watched these movies would hopefully be deterred from committing crimes themselves, having been indoctrinated with idea that they would be punished if they did break the law.

One of the problems with a noble lie is that it is condescending.  Those that tell such lies regard themselves as superior to the rest of mankind.  Not needing such lies themselves, they tell them to others for their own good.  Once people realize they have been lied to, however, they are not grateful for the supposed good the lies did them. Instead, they resent it.

A Few Good Men (1992)

In A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson may have been responsible for the death of a marine, but he seals his fate when he yells at Tom Cruise, “You can’t handle the truth!” That’s when we really detest him.  And that is why this is the most memorable part of the movie.  We in the audience identify with Cruise and others in the movie that have been lied to.  Because we do not identify with Nicholson, we do not approve of his noble lie, which is based on his puffed-up idea of how important he is on that “wall.”

But what about a movie that allows us to identify with those that tell such lies?  In that case, the movie flatters us that we are among the superior few that can handle the truth, while allowing us to look down on those being lied to.

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

One such movie is Angels with Dirty Faces.  In that movie, James Cagney plays Rocky, a gangster. When he realizes the jig is up, he wants to go out in a blaze of glory, dying in a hail of bullets by the police as he takes a few coppers with him.  But he runs out of bullets and is captured. Having been sentenced to die in the electric chair, he opts for the next best thing, remaining fearless right to the end, saying he is going to spit in the eye of his executioners.

Pat O’Brien plays Jerry, Rocky’s childhood friend.  They committed crimes together when they were just kids, but during one attempted theft, the police showed up.  Jerry got away, but Rocky was sent to reform school.  Jerry ended up becoming a priest, while Rocky continued to pursue a life of crime.

But now Jerry is worried.  He knows that Rocky is admired by teenagers in the neighborhood, the Dead End kids.  If Rocky fearlessly goes to his death, these kids will want to emulate him and enter a life of crime themselves.  Nowadays, Jerry wouldn’t have had to worry.  By the time all the appeals had been exhausted, another fifteen years would have passed before Rocky finally sat in the hot seat, and by that time, the kids in the neighborhood would all be married and holding down jobs. But things moved quicker back then.

Jerry asks Rocky for a favor.  He wants him to turn yellow, screaming for mercy, while the guards drag him to the chair:

This is a different kind of courage, Rocky. The kind that’s, well, that’s born in Heaven. Well, not the courage of heroics or bravado. The kind that you and I and God know about.  I want you to let them down. You see, you’ve been a hero to these kids, and hundreds of others, all through your life, and now you’re gonna be a glorified hero in death, and I want to prevent that, Rocky. They’ve got to despise your memory. They’ve got to be ashamed of you.

Rocky hates the idea:

You asking me to pull an act, turn yellow, so those kids will think I’m no good.  You ask me to throw away the only thing I’ve got left.  You ask me to crawl on my belly, the last thing I do in life.  Nothing doing. You’re asking too much.  You want to help those kids, you got to think about some other way.

But then, at the last minute, just as he enters the room where he is to be electrocuted, Rocky starts screaming and begging for mercy.  The newspapers report this final act of cowardice on Rocky’s part, and Jerry assures the kids that every word of it is true.  Then they all go into the church to pray for Rocky’s soul.

Admittedly, Rocky’s act of cowardice is ambiguous.  There are four possible interpretations:

1. Rocky really turned yellow.
2. Rocky pretended to turn yellow as a favor to Jerry.
3. God filled Rocky’s heart with fear.
4. God inspired Rocky to do the right thing.

Assume there has been no divine intervention, leaving us with only the first two possibilities.  But then, we can clearly eliminate the first.  This is James Cagney we’re talking about.  We know his screen persona. He never turned yellow in a movie in his life.  Furthermore, the last time we see Rocky’s face, he looks tough and fearless.  In the scene immediately following, where Rocky supposedly turns yellow, we see only Rocky’s shadow, not Rocky himself.  (We do see his hands, trying to hold on to a radiator, but not his face.) This use of shadows indicates that what we are seeing is not real, but an illusion, much like the shadows on the wall in Plato’s allegory of the cave. Therefore, while the kids in the movie may have bought the noble lie that Jerry told them, we in the audience know that Rocky not only had the courage to face death, but also that he feigned cowardice to help out a pal.

And therein lies the paradox.  As numerous critics have pointed out, there were teenagers sitting in the audience when this movie was shown in theaters.  They saw how the kids in the movie were being fooled. So, while the Dead End kids may be inspired to lead good lives, the teenagers watching this movie were being taught not to fall for such malarkey.  In fact, they were likely to admire Rocky even more for his noble gesture in death.  In this way, the audience is allowed to identify with those like Jerry, who tell noble lies, while feeling superior to those like the Dead End kids, who buy into such deception.

However, the movie clearly wants us to believe there has been divine intervention, leaving us with the last two possibilities:  either God filled Rocky’s heart with fear, or God inspired Rocky to do the right thing.  But here too, Cagney’s screen persona allows us to eliminate the first of these possibilities.  If there really were an all-powerful God, he could presumably turn any man into a coward.  But no one watching this movie ever thought that’s what God did to Rocky.  They might, however, believe that through the grace of God, Rocky overcame his pride, feigning cowardice so that others would not follow in his footsteps, but instead would walk the path of righteousness.

In that case, it might be thought that at least the teenagers watching this movie were nevertheless being taught something about the ways of God; for the implication that there was divine intervention is unavoidable.  Just before we see the shadow of Rocky, when he pleads for his life, we see Jerry open up a prayer book and start reading it. When we see the shadow of Rocky as he starts screaming and crying, Jerry’s eyes begin tearing up as he looks at Rocky in his last pitiful moments, and then those same eyes look upward to Heaven, for he knows a miracle has occurred. And so, it might be thought that what was lost in the moral lesson, in that the teenagers watching this movie would know that Rocky was really a brave man after all, was gained back as a religious lesson, in that those same teenagers would know that it was all due to glory of God.

Nah!  They knew that was a lie too.

In this movie, the purpose of the noble lie was to keep others in the movie from admiring a criminal who was as brave as he was tough, to keep them from thinking of him as a hero.  There are a couple of other movies, however, in which the purpose of the lie is just the opposite, to encourage others to admire someone as a hero, even though it means concealing the fact that he was unworthy of such esteem.

Plato would have approved.  He argued that stories about gods and heroes should be censored, eliminating their immoral and shameful acts, even if the stories are true. In that case, a select few may know these stories, the Guardians of the Republic, but the rest must be educated, not according to what is true, but what is best for them to believe.

Fort Apache (1948)

One of those movies that encourage belief in heroes is Fort Apache.  As the movie opens, we see that Colonel Thursday (Henry Fonda) is an insufferable snob. He is contemptuous of the fact that he is being sent to the title fort to be its commanding officer by a war department that not only is ungrateful for all that he had done during the Civil War, but also fails to appreciate that he was clearly meant for better things. He even prefers Europe to this new assignment.

He is irked to discover that Second Lieutenant Michael O’Rourke (John Agar) is the son of Sergeant Major O’Rourke (Ward Bond) at Fort Apache, and rudely interrogates the sergeant, trying to understand how such a thing could happen.  He believes in a sharp class distinction between officers and enlisted men, and the idea that the son of a sergeant could be admitted to West Point just seems wrong.  The sergeant informs him that it happened by presidential appointment, which Thursday notes is usually reserved for sons of officers.  The sergeant further informs him that he was given a battlefield commission of major during the war.  Thursday persists, saying, “Still, it’s been my impression that presidential appointments were restricted to sons of holders of the Medal of Honor,” to which the sergeant snidely replies, “That is my impression too, sir.”

Thursday seethes with frustration knowing that Sergeant O’Rourke has received the glory that Thursday so desperately wants and thinks he deserves.  And when he discovers that his daughter Philadelphia (Shirley Temple) has been socializing with Lieutenant O’Rourke and his family, he is aghast.  When she accepts the lieutenant’s proposal of marriage, Thursday refuses to give his consent, saying that she will be sent back East.

Thursday is utterly mirthless, barely concealing his displeasure at having to perform certain social functions at the noncommissioned officers’ dance, especially when he is informed that it is the custom at Fort Apache that in the opening dance, the Grand March, the commanding officer lead out the wife of the sergeant major, Mrs. O’Rourke. Adding to that indignity, Sergeant O’Rourke will lead out the colonel’s lady, in this case, Philadelphia.  When that ordeal is finally over, Thursday looks about for his escape, but finds that Mrs. O’Rourke expects him to dance with her in the polka that follows.

Earlier in the movie, we see that he refuses to shake hands with Captain Collingwood (George O’Brien), with whom he is already acquainted, because Thursday believes that Collingwood disgraced his uniform in some way during the war; though we gather that whatever happened was really not Collingwood’s fault, but just the result of some unfortunate circumstance over which he had no control.

Thursday likes to flaunt his knowledge of military history, dropping names like Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon Bonaparte, while refusing to appreciate the tactical cunning of Cochise, because he is just an illiterate savage. He repeatedly rejects the advice of Captain York (John Wayne), a seasoned veteran with extensive knowledge of the Apaches, because Thursday is a colonel and York is just a captain.

It is at this point that his snobbery makes him not just an extremely unpleasant human being, but an incompetent commanding officer as well. After Captain York gives his word to Cochise that a meeting will take place to discuss peace, Thursday announces that he will not honor York’s promise, but will attack the Apaches while they are not expecting it, now that they have been lured back from Mexico onto American soil.  He justifies this treachery on the grounds that Cochise is just a “breechclouted savage,” so there is no question of honor between him and an American officer.  As further proof that Thursday is not a man of honor, when York says that an order just given by Thursday would be suicide, Thursday relieves York of his command and calls him a coward.  York throws down his gauntlet, demanding satisfaction, but Thursday hedges, saying he is not a duelist.  The result is that the order York objected to is carried out, and Thursday ends up getting half the regiment slaughtered during a battle with the Apaches, including himself.

In the final scene, which takes place years later, the now Colonel York talks to reporters, who gush about what a great man Thursday was, a hero to every schoolboy, memorialized in the magnificent painting, “Thursday’s Charge,” and York encourages them in their delusion. The movie seems to imply that this is for the best, that schoolboys need their heroes, that people need to believe that Thursday was a great man.

The reason people need to believe in heroes that were brave in battle, even to the point of losing their lives, is so that those that believe in such heroes will be willing to fight fearlessly to the death themselves. In the words of Bernard de Mandeville, “We honor the dead to dupe the living.”

Also to that end, Plato argued that the tales told by Homer and other poets that depicted a dreadful afterlife in Hades must be expunged, lest the Auxiliaries, the police and the soldiers, would fear death and run from battle.  Instead, they must be led to believe that a pleasant afterlife awaits them.  So, when one of the reporters laments the fact that only Colonel Thursday will be remembered, while the rest are dead and forgotten, York corrects him:

You’re wrong there.  They aren’t forgotten because they haven’t died.  They’re living.  Right out there.  Collingwood and the rest. And they’ll keep on living as long as the regiment lives.

Since Thursday is loosely reminiscent of General George Armstrong Custer, it is interesting to note that a movie explicitly about Custer, They Died with Their Boots On (1941), also suggested a similar kind of immortality for him and the 7th Cavalry Regiment.

And yet, this movie is subversive, undermining the whole notion of heroes and great men, by showing us how unworthy Thursday was of all the adulation he now receives posthumously, and essentially besmirching the legend surrounding Custer as well.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife Hallie (Vera Miles) return to the small western town of Shinbone for the funeral of Tom Doniphon (John Wayne).  A young reporter and the editor of the local newspaper want to know why an important politician like Senator Stoddard would come to the funeral of someone they had never even heard of.  Stoddard decides to tell them who Doniphon was.

Some of the story the reporters already know.  Stoddard came out West with nothing but his law books, and he was immediately made aware that the law counts for nothing in the territory when his stage is held up, and he is beaten with a silver-handled whip by a bandit named Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin).  He would have beaten Stoddard to death had Reese (Lee Van Cleef) not stopped him.  Later in the movie, Valance does the same thing to a newspaper man, Dutton Peabody (Edmond O’Brian), and again Reese has to stop him before he kills him.  Now, when a bandit played by Lee Van Cleef is the one who has to restrain the leader of a gang from being excessively brutal, you know that gang leader must really be vicious.

After Stoddard is brought to town in a wagon, he is nursed back to health by Hallie and her parents, who run a restaurant.  As he recovers, he helps out by washing dishes. One night he even starts to serve Doniphon his steak when Valance and his gang are there.  Valance laughs at Stoddard, who is wearing an apron, making him look weak and effeminate.  He trips Stoddard as he walks by, which angers Doniphon, but only because that was his steak.  There is a confrontation, but Valance backs down and leaves.

The town marshal, Link Appleyard (Andy Devine), is afraid Valance, so he is worthless. Doniphon is a match for Valance, but he basically just minds his own business.  All he cares about is Hallie, whom he hopes to marry.  The tension between Valance and Stoddard finally reaches the breaking point. Valance comes to Shinbone to kill Stoddard.  Doniphon arranges for his servant Pompey (Woody Strode) to have the buckboard waiting behind the restaurant so that Stoddard can get out of town safely. Hallie and her parents plead with him to leave.

Instead, Stoddard picks up a gun he barely knows how to use and decides to meet Valance out on the street.  But he doesn’t even bother to take off that apron!  As long as you are going to die like a man, you should at least look like one.  Things appear pretty one-sided, but amazingly enough, Stoddard shoots Valance and kills him.

Stoddard was shot in his arm in the gunfight, and Hallie starts dressing his wound.  As she does so, she begins to look at him with admiration.  She always liked Stoddard, but now that he has killed Valance, she has fallen in love with him.  She confesses that she did not want him to run away from Valance, even though she was afraid he would be killed.  But now that she knows he’s a real man, she gives him her heart.  They end up getting married.

Stoddard becomes known as the man who shot Liberty Valance, propelling him into his political career. Doniphon, who came into the kitchen just as Hallie was holding Stoddard’s head to her breast and kissing him on his forehead, angrily goes home and burns up the house he was building for him and Hallie.

But then Stoddard tells the reporters something they did not know.  It turns out that it was Doniphon who killed Valance with a rifle from the other side of the street.  In fact, we see that when Stoddard fired his pistol, he shot way too high.  The thing that made Stoddard famous, then, is basically a fraud.  The editor of the newspaper wads up his notes and throws them in the furnace. “When the legend becomes fact,” he says, “print the legend.”

We even have to wonder if Stoddard’s marriage to Hallie was based on this fraud as well.  She is not in the room when he tells his story about what really happened.  And later, on the train, when the conductor refers to him as the man who shot Liberty Valance, Stoddard’s face falls at being reminded of the lie his prominence is based on, unable even to finish lighting his pipe; while Hallie’s face remains expressionless, looking straight ahead, as if the remark is unproblematic for her.

This ending is similar to that of Fort Apache, although less explicit.  In this earlier film, we definitely get the sense that people, especially children, need heroes, and so that is why the legend is made to prevail over the truth.  In this movie, however, it might be argued that the legend simply makes better copy, and that is why the editor decides to sit on this story.  But if that were true, we would not care for the movie as much. That is, if Stoddard had been the one who killed Liberty Valance, the movie would have been just one more Western in which the hero kills the bad guy and gets the girl. But just as this movie is far more interesting for having a twist ending, so too would the readers of the newspaper have found the truth to be more fascinating than the story they had previously been led to believe. The local paper would have become nationally known as the one that broke the story about what really happened.

But by the same token, Plato never denied that the stories told by the poets about gods and heroes, with all their flaws and misdeeds, were more interesting than the bowdlerized versions that he would have deemed fit for public consumption.  The editor is like one of the Guardians, who knows that such stories are suitable only for a select few, while the masses must continue to believe in the heroic senator of legend.

Conclusion

Angels with Dirty Faces says that it is important that villains not be thought of as heroes; Fort Apache and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance say that it is important that certain men be thought of as heroes even though they are unworthy.  These movies are stroking our vanity.  Other people, these movies are saying, need their illusions, but we know better. Let the masses have their heroes, because they would just fall apart if they did not have something to believe in, but as members of the select few, we are too sophisticated to fall for such nonsense.

Of course, those same masses, who supposedly need to be told noble lies, are the ones who are sitting in the audience along with us, so this may seem like a contradiction. But it is a contradiction with a purpose. The point is to flatter each of us into thinking we are superior to others, who in turn have been flattered into thinking they are superior to us. So, we all get to feel superior to one another, and that makes us like these movies.

I was in college when Once Upon a Time in the West came out. I had already seen the previous Westerns by Sergio Leone, and was especially awed by The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), so I looked forward to this new Leone Western with great anticipation. I was disappointed. On the one hand, I could see that it had a lot of good stuff in it, but there was something lacking. As I found out later, what was lacking was all the footage that had been cut out of the movie for its release in America. It was not until the movie came to television, and I saw much of the additional material (with some stuff edited out for the usual reasons), that I realized what a great movie it was. Even then it was not until somewhat later that I saw the restoration, which included even more material. Unfortunately, those who restored this movie messed up on the music at the end, which is hard to understand, because it was done right in the edited-for-television version, and I know it was done right in the German version as well. I guess we Americans were just not destined to see this movie in its perfect form, and certainly not in a movie theater (at least not where I live).

On the whole, the critics did not seem to like the movie when it first came out either. Some of them may have also reacted negatively to the chopped-up presentation, but others were offended by other things, such as the slow pace or the amoral characters. Some of the critics objected to the way it copied stuff from other Westerns. What they (and I) did not realize at the time was that these were quotations, not necessarily in the sense of quoting what had been said in other Westerns, but in the extended sense of creating images and plot points similar to those in previous Westerns. Presumably, Leone had intended that people would watch his movie and smile appreciatively at these quotations, and I suppose some people did precisely that. What he probably did not realize was that these quotations were more likely to be appreciated in reverse, as was the case with me. I had seen many of the Westerns that were quoted, but only once, and thus did not catch the references. Once Upon a Time in the West, however, I watched every chance I got, and I quit counting after I had seen it twenty-five times.

Little by little, I watched the classic Westerns again, or for the first time in many cases, and I would experience déjà vu. For example, one night I was watching The Plainsman (1936), somewhat listlessly, when suddenly, toward the end of the movie, I had the feeling that what I was watching I had seen before. At first, I did not know why, but I quickly realized that when Gary Cooper entered the saloon, dressed in a black shirt, a black hat with a flat brim, and long, black, tight-fitting boots, the scene was similar to the one in which Frank (Henry Fonda) enters the saloon to buy the land back from Harmonica (Charles Bronson).  Even the peculiar tables and chairs, with their short legs, are the same.

From then on I never knew when I would catch another quotation and get another feeling of déjà vu.  For example, when I watched High Noon (1952) and saw three men waiting on a train, it brought to mind the opening scene of Once Upon a Time in the West.  Both The Searchers (1956) and Shane (1953) had elements that suggest the scene at McBain’s ranch.  Brett McBain (Frank Wolff), the owner of the ranch, had named it “Sweetwater.”  In The Comancheros (1961), there is a character named Ed McBain who is said to have killed man in Sweetwater.  The street in 3:10 to Yuma (1957) is just like the street that Frank walks down when his own men are trying to kill him, and Cheyenne (Jason Robards) is put on a train that will take him to that prison in Yuma.  Henry Fonda’s character in Warlock (1959) kicks away a man’s crutches just as Frank does to Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti).  Frank and his men wear dusters when massacring the family at the McBain ranch in order to make it look as though Cheyenne and his men were responsible.  The dusters worn by the outlaws in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962) are like those worn by Cheyenne and his men, though dusters are also worn in My Darling Clementine (1946), so this may be a two-for-one quotation.    In The Iron Horse (1924), a movie about building the transcontinental railroad, a white man dresses up like a Cheyenne Indian in order to make it looks as though the murder of George O’Brien’s father was done by the Indians.  O’Brien’s character later gets revenge against that man, much in the way that Harmonica gets revenge against Frank.  The arch supporting a bell from which Harmonica’s brother is hanged derives from a much smaller arch with a bell in Duel in the Sun (1946).  Those are fairly obvious, but others can easily escape notice, as in the case of the little piece of material missing from the brim of the hat worn by Harmonica, just like the hat Bronson wore in The Magnificent Seven (1960).  There is also the deliberately slow way that Frank dismounts, just as Wilson (Jack Palance) does in Shane. And I don’t suppose I need to mention that the scene of Jill riding through Monument Valley is a quotation of almost every Western directed by John Ford.

Johnny Guitar (1954) gives us the framework for Once Upon a Time in the West.  A prostitute played by Joan Crawford owns land where the railroad is coming through, which corresponds to Jill (Claudia Cardinale) and her situation.  The gang of outlaws headed by the Dancing Kid corresponds to Cheyenne’s gang.  After a funeral, a vigilante posse dressed in black is formed to chase the Dancing Kid and his gang, just as a similar posse is formed after the funeral at the McBain’s ranch to chase Cheyenne and his gang.  Sterling Hayden plays the title character.  Because he is mentally ill, gun crazy, he no longer carries a gun, but only a guitar.  Harmonica, as his name suggests, also has a musical instrument, and when we first see him, as the train pulls away and he is facing three of Frank’s gunmen, it appears as though he has no gun either.  He too is mentally disturbed, carrying “something around inside of him, something to do with death.”  He is obsessed with the murder of his brother to the point of wearing the same type of clothes he wore that day and still playing the harmonica that was shoved into his mouth.  He wore no gun that day either, which is why it is typically concealed throughout the movie.  When he escorts Jill out to the well, after tearing off enough of her clothes so that she will be sex bait, he makes it appear that he has no gun in that case too, in order to lure two of Frank’s killers to ride in close, thinking they can kill him and rape her.  Only at the end, for the final showdown, does he put the gun in a holster and strap it on.

Many of these quotations I noticed myself, but others were brought to my attention by Christopher Frayling in his two books, Spaghetti Westerns:  Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone and Sergio Leone:  Something To Do With Death.  In the latter, he not only discusses allusions to other Westerns, too numerous to list here, but he also notes that Bernardo Bertolucci, who helped write the script, pointed out that there are references to the history of cinema beyond the Western genre.  For example, Frank’s contemptuous remark about a man who would wear both a belt and suspenders is a quotation from Ace in the Hole (1951).

Of course, one’s ability to appreciate these quotations in reverse presupposes having seen Once Upon a Time in the West many, many times. No problem.

The basic story of this movie is structured around the building of the transcontinental railroad.  Morton is a railroad tycoon who began his railroad in the East and hopes to extend it all the way to the Pacific Ocean before he dies.  Historically, the transcontinental railroad was built from two starting points, one in the East and one in the West, eventually meeting in the middle; but in this movie, we get the idea that the laying of track is all in one direction, from east to west.

Morton hired Frank when he started, “to remove small obstacles from the path,” as he put it.  In other words, if some farmer owned the land that was in the way, and he didn’t want to sell, Frank and his gang of killers would eliminate him.  In fact, Harmonica is seeking revenge against Frank because Frank killed Harmonica’s brother a long time ago, presumably for just that reason.

And that would make perfectly good sense were it not for a little thing called “eminent domain.”  The railroad companies never had to worry about recalcitrant farmers because the government simply bought the land from the farmers whether they liked it or not and then awarded it to the railroad companies.  The United States marshals would have taken care of any farmers who refused to sell, so Frank’s services would never have been needed.  So, for the sake of this movie, we have to pretend that the government did not use eminent domain to provide the railroad companies with huge grants of land.

But even if we go along with this notion that the railroad companies sometimes had to use force to secure the land they needed, the plot still does not make sense.  Early in the movie, Brett McBain and his family are killed by Frank because McBain owned the land that Morton wanted.  But it turns out that Jill is McBain’s widow, who now owns the land and with whom Morton must contend.  In addition, there is a further complication.  It seems that McBain signed a contract giving him or his heirs the right to own a station and enough land for a town, provided that the station is built by the time the railroad tracks reach McBain’s property.

Fine.  But whose signature would also be on that contract besides McBain’s?  Why, Morton’s, of course.  He owns the railroad, and he would have been the one who signed the contract with McBain for a very simple reason.  He would have wanted the station built by the time the tracks reached McBain’s property so that he would not be delayed in his goal to reach the Pacific Ocean before he died of tuberculosis of the bones.  McBain was not impeding the railroad by refusing to sell.  He was facilitating the railroad by preparing to build a station.  Had Morton not wanted McBain to build that station, he would never have signed a contract with him in the first place.  So, none of this business about Morton wanting Frank to scare McBain in order to get him out of the way makes any sense.

Fortunately, these historical and logical flaws are not likely to occur to one while watching the movie, nor are they likely to interfere with one’s enjoyment of the movie even if they do.