Once Upon a Time in the West

Paramount Home Video, $19.99

For our money the best Western ever made, Sergio Leone’s sprawling 1968 film reimagines the Old West as a minimalistic hellhole overseen by Henry Fonda’s evil, conniving, black-clad villain and Charles Bronson’s silent Man With a Harmonica, the antihero’s antihero. Unlike all the previous versions we’ve seen, this newly restored two-disc set is pristine; Leone’s widescreen compositions and trademark extreme close-ups of sweaty, dusty, doomed faces demand viewing on the biggest television you can muster, but even on our lowly 30-inch, the film’s sacrilegious beauty punches through like a bullet to the chest. Above it all soars Ennio Morricone’s gorgeous score in a remixed 5.1 Dolby Digital audio mix that made our windows rattle and loosened at least one filling that we know of. Extras include a fine commentary by Leone biographer Christopher Frayling (Italian horror maestro Dario Argento helped pen the script, by the way), as well as audio appearances from the likes of John Carpenter, Claudia Cardinale, and John Milius. A trio of documentary featurettes, the film’s trailer, and a production-still gallery round out the package, but it’s the 165 minutes of Leone’s masterpiece that will leave your head spinning for days afterward. — Marc Savlov

This article appears in December 5 • 2003.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.