Christopher Bray

Last of the Gunslingers

Once Upon a Time in the West: Shooting a Masterpiece

By

Reel Art Press 335pp £50 order from our bookshop

This is a whopping big book for a whopping big movie. Christopher Frayling’s fiftieth anniversary account of the making of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West is about the same size as a mag of film and about the same weight as a Colt army revolver. Leone, who made a star of Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, once said that while Michelangelo had looked at a block of marble and seen Moses within, he had looked at Clint and seen a block of marble. Frayling, similarly, has looked long and hard at Leone’s spaghetti western and seen a marmoreal slab.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • RT : Founded in 1979, is a trusted independent source for reviews of new books across a variety of genres. A… ,
    • RT : Here we are - "Shelf Indulgence" by Ed Potten, a wonderful read, well worth your time: @Lit_Review,
    • 'Like going to a party hoping to get away as quickly as politeness allowed and at 4am finding myself still engrosse… ,
    • 'Neville never shed his sense of being the junior, and perhaps least-deserving Chamberlain.' From the archive, Mic… ,
    • 'The erecting and immediate destruction of a series of straw men rather detracts from what is for the most part an… ,
    • RT : A magnificent demolition job on this "acid laced tirade...unpleasantly self-obsessed...self pitying polemic...book… ,
    • 'Seventy years on, the time we have left to gather such first-hand testimony is running out.' John Keay on the sig… ,
    Follow Us