Once Upon a Time in the West(C'era una volta il West)

Leone’s sweeping elegiac melodrama chronicles the death of the Old West and the birth of a new America, galvanised by the arrival of a brand new railroad network. Cardinale takes centre stage here as young widow Jill McBain, who is left to defend the homestead of Sweetwater after her husband is brutally murdered by Fonda’s merciless blue-eyed outlaw. She must also fend off the advances of bandit Cheyenne, and contend with a mysterious harmonica-playing gunslinger on his own quest for vengeance. From its breathless dialogue-free opening to its final nerve-jangling showdown, Leone bests even his own Dollars trilogy with this spectacular combination of ravishing cinematography, operatic music from Ennio Morricone and reimagined iconography that stands as his definitive final word on the genre he helped revitalise.

17/1(Sat): Film talk with Sam Ho