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Ford's The Iron Horse is the bedrock formation, Curtiz's Dodge City is simultaneous. The horizontality of the structure is a mere switch to East and West from the war's North and South, "a great artery" is needed and the transcontinental railroad fits the bill, plenty of blood between Omaha and California. "Because our town's on wheels, we've got no civil law out here," enter the troubleshooter (Joel McCrea) to oversee the quest into the wilderness. Aboard the train is the rascally gambler (Robert Preston) hired to sabotage the venture, he and the hero once fought side by side, between them is the Irish postmistress (Barbara Stanwyck). "I'm beginning to see a golden harvest in these iron rails." The monumentality of the undertaking is at one point compared to Moses crossing the Red Sea, Cecil B. DeMille wouldn't want it any other way. Vast arrangements, intricate textures, a virile sweep pushing it all onward. (A little joke has McCrea and Stanwyck only getting a chance to chat on a stalled handcar, a herd of buffalo gradually surround them.) The saloon rotter (Brian Donlevy) orchestrates a payroll robbery, then struggles to keep his cigar from trembling while a cheerful Mexican bodyguard (Akim Tamiroff) demonstrates his bullwhip on a taxidermy mount. "No one's ever put any sense into a man's brain through a bullet hole in his head." The proto-Bolshie who smashes shovels gets dunked into a water trough, the crooked investor is forced to trudge mile after mile of track with hammer in hand. Spectacle of construction, spectacle of destruction: A collapsing tower flattens the locomotive, the Sioux enjoy a surrealistic carouse in the wreckage, the Cavalry charge across a flaming bridge. "If we're gonna burn after we're dead, let's get some practice." Leone evinces quite the vivid memory in Once Upon a Time in the West. With Lynne Overman, Robert Barrat, Anthony Quinn, Stanley Ridges, Henry Kolker, Francis McDonald, Willard Robertson, Harold Goodwin, and Evelyn Keyes. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |