Every character in the film has his or her own music that is closely related to his or her characteristic and destiny. To me, the most touching piece among all the vocals is that of Jill's.
The moment Jill first stepped down the train the music is very lively and happy, as she looked around all sorts of people swarming into the Wild West. But when she found herself all alone on the platform, and looked at the clock in the station and then her own pocket watch, her warmth cooled down and and she was no longer eager. At this time the music swells up. The flowingly gentle female vocal expresses Jill so richly that I can't help listening to it again and again. Her life is in that piece of music. Her worst time, her most helpless time and her prime. I listen again and again the soundtrack of that episode, thinking how helpless yet composed she looked when she left the station, how determined when she told the cabbie that Sweetwater was now her home.
This beautiful piece accompanied almost Jill's every presence. It swells up when she was alone on the platform; when she saw the laid-out bodies of McBain families; when she lay in her wedding bed falling into sleep; when she saw Harmonica enter into Jill's house after he killed Frank; and in the last scene when she is distributing water to the railway workers. And the effect of the music always culminated in Leone's classic close-ups of Jill. Her eyes, her lips and her cheeks all seem to me whispering a kind of female tenderness that no heroes but Harmonica could resist.
Jill is extraordinary. While the women in her situation usually exist as adjuncts of male power and as victims of it, such as Gelsomina in La Strada and the girls in Seven Beauties, this prostitute from New Orleans, with her sexuality and fertility, brought to Sweetwater and the fledging west a future that was prospering in which neither Morton nor Frank nor Cheyenne nor even Harmonica could play a part. The first three were dead; Harmonica was leaving.
“Someday” is the reply he gave Jill when she told him “I hope you'll come back someday”. Clearly both Jill and Harmonica know that he is never coming back. In nature, Harmonica might be no less cruel than the profit- seeking Morton, the sinister Frank, or the naïve Cheyenne. But his revenging motif made him larger and deeper. The sometimes melancholy, sometimes hostile harmonica Harmonica played furthered his image as someone deeper. His stares like those of a lion's, his face was rubbed by the bleak desert wind, and his heart was hardened by the cruelty of his brother's death. Every time the camera falls on Harmonica, the audience could see how strong he was. His orange shirt and beige suits, his muscles and shooting skills were all aimed at one goal: to revenge himself upon his brother's murderer, Frank.So when his goal was finally achieved in the end of the film, he at the same time lost the characteristics and the music which have given him so special an identity. He too turned into a man of nature and of past. The film could have ended with another piece of harmonica with Harmonica contemplatively playing the tune (a familiar scene we usually see nowadays), but that would make the film affected. With a desolate and detached harmonica tune as his symbol, our hero's seemingly supernatural control of everything was broken down since he already lost his meaning in life. He was a primitive and instinctive person, who could work perfectly well under the law of club and fang, but not under this crueler rule, that of money. The lingering Harmonica couldn't and wouldn't 't linger in a world to which he did not belong anymore.he at the same time lost the characteristics and the music which have given him so special an identity. He too turned into a man of nature and of past. The film could have ended with another piece of harmonica with Harmonica contemplatively playing the tune (a familiar scene we usually see nowadays), but that would make the film affected. With a desolate and detached harmonica tune as his symbol, our hero's seemingly supernatural control of everything was broken down since he already lost his meaning in life. He was a primitive and instinctive person, who could work perfectly well under the law of club and fang, but not under this crueler rule, that of money. The lingering Harmonica couldn't and wouldn't linger in a world to which he did not belong anymore.he at the same time lost the characteristics and the music which have given him so special an identity. He too turned into a man of nature and of past. The film could have ended with another piece of harmonica with Harmonica contemplatively playing the tune (a familiar scene we usually see nowadays), but that would make the film affected. With a desolate and detached harmonica tune as his symbol, our hero's seemingly supernatural control of everything was broken down since he already lost his meaning in life. He was a primitive and instinctive person, who could work perfectly well under the law of club and fang, but not under this crueler rule, that of money. The lingering Harmonica couldn't and wouldn't linger in a world to which he did not belong anymore.
Harmonica is just a man, an ancient race too, just like Frank. Through Leone's lengthy shots, these two ancient fighters' confrontations almost resembled a kind of age-old ritual. In their rendezvous, directly or indirectly, the stretched silence and the amplified natural sounds are usually employed to build up the tension. One of the most celebrated examples is that used in the film's go-down-in-film-history opening in which the dullness of three gunmen, who were sent by Frank to kill Harmonica was expressed through close-ups and the artificial vocals.
No less significant is the duel scene. With a crescendo of Morricone's music and a variety of camera angels (Bondanella, 352) Frank menacingly circled around Harmonica while Harmonica alertly followed Frank's every step, like a wild animal waiting for the best time to attack. Poetically and symbolically, they together commenced the old west ritual for the last time, accompanied by this epic orchestra. This time Frank did not look sinister any more. He was just a member of the old west's doomed race, and he knew it.
Equally doomed are people like Morton. The death scene of Morton is I think the ugliest one in the film. When Frank rode a horse towards Morton's train, he noticed that there was something wrong with the train. When he dismounted from his horse to look further, Leone provided the audience with a beautiful shot here. Leone perfectly employed his camera to follow Frank's horse strolling along the train with dead gangsters in miserable postures on the ground. The scene was shot from the angle of the horse's legs. The horse strolled outside the train at the same pace with which Frank cautiously examined the train inside. When the horse finally went to the other side of the compartment, Frank also got out from the other side of the train. His scruples turned out to be unnecessary, everyone was dead, and the gunmen were gone. Only Morton,whom Frank found near a muddy puddle, was dragging out his feeble and painful existence. At the sight of the dogged Morton, Frank slowly moved to get his gun in the holster. One would think he would shoot Morton in just a second. Instead, he turned around, mounted up the horse and went away, leaving Morton to his own fate.
A pathetic and uninteresting death. Here the music even became a little bit melodious and peaceful. While Frank was hesitating whether or not to kill Morton, the audiences could not really get the tension they experienced in the scene, for example, in which Frank killed the youngest McBain. With soft music playing, I could almost sense pity in the eyes of the monstrous Frank! And those eyes, like most of Leone's close-ups, were used for expressing emotions rather than providing information.
If I had cared not at all that Morton's dead, I felt completely heart-broken at the last death in the film, that of Cheyenne's. To see the naïve Cheyenne would, as he said, stay in the west forever is a very bad thing . What had made things here worse is Morricone's super music! Like other characters, Cheyenne also had his own music theme, which was a kind of very light-hearted whistle together with a series of merry pizzicato and soft percussion, imitating (sounds to me like) the tit tat sounds made by the trotting horse-hooves on the ground. This piece of music exposed Cheyenne's child-like nature and his simple-mindedness. He might be a “bad” guy, but he was definitely a true guy.
In McBain house, Jill told Cheyenne how she and McBain met. “And then you happen to meet a man like this, clear eyes, strong hands, and he wants to marry you, which doesn't happen very often, and he said he is rich too, which doesn't hurt." She must have aroused Cheyenne's long buried softness. Look at his eyes I believe that he had fallen in love and that he wanted to settle down with this worthy woman, to build a future! Sadly this romantic bandit was also scheduled to quit the history, give away to something stronger, though not necessarily better.
When Cheyenne was whining on the ground while dying, Leone let the audience see Cheyenne's profile. A stream of tear poured out from his eyes. Out of pain or out of regret, I do not know, perhaps both. Yet with such a piece of lively music the audience would think that he was just having a stomachache, hadn't they seen the wound. My initial feeling after finding out Cheyenne was dying was that Leone was really cruel to use this tit-tat vocal as Cheyenne's elegy. But when I ask myself: “What would you choose for Cheyenne?” I thought about it a while, and decided that I would probably just do what Leone had done.
Maybe Leone was being merciful to be not so sentimental. Once Upon A Time In The West is not a film about emotions. It is an epic; there is nothing to be nostalgic about. The wheels of history might have succeeded in driving the heroes out of the west, but as long as the figures of the dusters and cowboys are constantly being cherished on the screen, the extraordinary west, with its lingering melodies, both in time present and time future, will never be extinguished from our minds.
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