While watching my newly acquired Special Edition DVD version of Once Upon A Time In The West last night I realized something. How many movies chronicle the last days and even last moments of the characters' lives? Is this observation the result of a morbid thought-process? Maybe so, but it's true. I mean, how many movies incorporate a character dying into the storyline? Probably a majority of them. So what we see in these films is a record of the last deeds and last words of these characters. In a film like Once Upon a Time In The West you witness the last days/hours/moments of a multitude of people.
For instance, in the McBain daughter's final moment she was enraptured by the sight of a covey of birds roused into the air while she is doing a chore. McBane himself is drawing water from a well when he sees his daughter fall to a bullet in the chest, and his last moment is spent rushing to his dying daughter, blown away like a moving target by the marksmanship of Frank and/or his men. Within the span of 5 minutes the entire McBane family is massacred, their final moments recorded for posterity.
Frank will join the ranks of those whose demise is captured on film before it's all over with, and so will numerous other characters. Almost too many to mention (can you imagine tallying up the body count in Kill Bill?)...
What does this mean?
Oh, nothing, probably. Like I said, prolly just another dimension of my macabre thoughts.
If you haven't seen Once Upon a Time In the West, I encourage you to rent it or buy it soon. It is indeed one of the greatest movies ever made, Sergio Leone's masterpiece, and worth the price of admission for Ennio Morricone's lush and powerful score, which is pervasive throughout the film, almost turning into an oater-opera with no singing...(is that allowed?).