Spaghetti aesthetics come to Monument Valley, as Leone casts Henry
Fonda, Jason Robards and Charles Bronson as a hit man, outlaw and
mysterious stranger ('Harmonica', recalling Sterling Hayden in
Ray's Johnny Guitar). Each has a claim on embattled widow Claudia
Cardinale – Leone's first significant woman, and emblem of the west's
new matriarchy. Part extended homage to west and western, part Leone's
grandest desert opera yet, part Marxist parable of the land and
railroad, it elevates the jesting violence of the Dollars trilogy to a
study of an 'ancient race' impelled towards death.
