C’era una volta il West – Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

a mysterious man (played by Charles Bronson), who was on horseback riding on the sand in the desert with the west wind, had an appointment with Frank (played by Henry Fonda), who has been famous for years. He waited for him at the train station, but what he found was three killers ……

Three killers who wearing the same cowboy custom and bowler hats, stood facing at the mysterious man, and as all of them quickly pulling out their guns, the three killers fall to the ground after hearing three gunshots- “bang – bang – bang”.

And then, the scene of the movie shifted, and the story began: The mysterious man rode on a horse brought by three killers and embarked on his journey of revenge.

In the meanwhile, killer Frank is on another “mission” to murder the MacBain family from Irish under the orders of the railway tycoon, and in this “mission”, Frank revealed his killer side so well that he killed everyone in that family, even the 10-year-old child. 

Meanwhile, MacBain’s wife， Claudia Cardinale was returning home from New Orleans, passing through the inn, when she runs into the mysterious man and Cheyenne (played by Jason Robards). Therefore, the fates of those people were intertwined.

More than ten years ago, An Irish man named MacBain spotted a piece of land in the desert, then bought it and decided to build it as a train station. Ten years later, the railway track was actually built to that land, so the land became precious. So the railway tycoon hired Frank to kill MacBain and launched a fierce fight for this land.

It seems that in a frontier town where commercial competition is almost non-existent, but there was a mob manipulation. Most of the women and children are subservient to men.

When completing the “mission”, Frank pretends as a member of the Cheyenne gang, which made Cheyenne involved. Cheyenne killed the railway tycoon on his way to track down Frank, while MacBain’s wife becomes the new owner of the land and connected the men in the movie. Together, the mysterious man was merely trying to get revenge, Shane was merely trying to investigate the truth, and Frank planned to marry MacBain’s wife to take possession of the land (that’s a killer who knows how to do business), but the intrigue is finally broken again by the mysterious man ……

The mysterious man always played the harmonica, except when he drew his gun like lightning.

After all, he’s after Frank, just to bring closure for an incident many years ago, when Frank killed his family and allies and stuffed the harmonica in his mouth.

Frank eventually comes to the town himself to end the drama he himself created all those years ago. With a gunshot, he fell under the gun of the mysterious man. However, he has no idea who this mysterious man was…

The film had a profound influence on the Western, as Sergio Leone broke with the traditional film’s completed storyline and began to develop in the direction of the plot, interweave, fragmentation of the scene. It was a pioneering work at that time that he blurred the boundary between good and evil, a reshaped symbol of hero, and it can be seen in the movie Giù la testa and Once Upon a Time in America.