After completing his “Dollars Trilogy”, Sergio Leone was done with the Western, until Paramount offered him a huge budget and the opportunity to work with his favourite actor, Henry Fonda. The result is a more sombre, elegiac affair than his previous films, but one which in which Leone attempted to have the final word in the genre. Claudia Cardinale is the former prostitute who arrives in town, only to discover that her new husband and his family have been brutally murdered by Fonda’s hired gun. While he tries to pin the crimes on Jason Robards’ bandit, Cheyenne, a mysterious gunman known only as Harmonica (Charles Bronson) arrives in town, with a score to settle. Slow, ponderous, though equally epic and operatic, Once Upon a Time in the West is an incredibly different beast to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, but no less a masterpiece of the spaghetti western genre, if only for Morricone’s hauntingly eerie central harmonica tune.