MoMA Presents: Once Upon a Time in the West April 30, 2008

Sergio Leone reimagined the American Western genre with Once Upon a Time in the West, in which two mysterious strangers join forces to defend a widow after a sinister hired gun murders her family in a bid to grab their land for the railroad. Unlike the well-groomed characters depicted in traditional studio Westerns, the inhabitants of Leone's frontier are dusty, sweaty, and grimy. Leone also cast good-guy icon Henry Fonda radically against type as the darkest of villains, and brought the European stylistic reinterpretations perfected in his low-budget spaghetti Westerns to the quintessential cowboy movie location—John Ford's iconic Monument Valley.

Official Website: http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=8387