[Wayde]

Hey Ayreonaut, thank you for the compliment. I love movies!

Richard, you sure know a lot about the technical aspects of film. Perhaps we should collaborate on film reviews sometime. You cover the notes on how the film was put together - I didn't know almost any of that stuff. Even though I might have seen some of the fact flow by in one of the supplemental disk's man documentaries it never really stuck.

I like Bronson. Apparently Leone purposely didn't want Eastwood in this one because it was to be a complete departure.

Do you remember if it was actually shot in North America or was it shot in Italy or Spain? I know there are sweeping views of Monument Valley but a lot of that can be taken from stock. Although given how good it all looks and that Paramount provided Leone with a budget I wouldn't be surprised if he shot it himself even if a majority of the film was shot in Europe.

Also... his trademark 'dirty' looking roughians in his westerns is particularly interesting to me. If you put yourself back into the mindset of someone in the 1960s watching a western it must have been pretty shocking. This was a classic Neorealist technique, because Italian cinema had been shooting sequences outdoors and shooting real people, poverty stricken peasants. It was natural to Leone to try and capture the desperation of a 'civil war' era USA.

Although ... and I'm no historian ... I believe at least some of Leone's scenes involving cavalry movement through continental US during the Civil War was inaccurate. Probably not much of a surprise there and I don't mean to nitpick. I don't know if it was Once Upon a Time or Good the Bad and the Ugly but in one movie I saw a scene where a battle weary cavalry division of bluecoats rides into town. The trouble is this town looked to be in Arizona or some other southwestern desert area. Was this ever possible? I though most of the battles of the Civil War took place in the east. I don't see much of the southwest being of any strategic advantage to either North or South during the war.