Leone needed all of this extra time to cram every frame with signifiers and meticulously placed allusions to other westerns; the entire enterprise is an attempt to essay the archetypal western movie, a statement of self-awareness from the father of the spaghetti western. Making films about films is an approach that sometimes makes for fascinating movies — and often it doesn’t — but the results are almost always clinical or sloppy or both. This isn’t the case with “Once Upon a Time;” the movie succeeds both as treatise and as fairy tale. It is remarkably alluring and warm even though it’s essentially a methodical rather than an emotional narrative. And it even manages to seem pretty well buttoned-up even as it manages to somehow completely lose its own plot towards the end of its second act; one manages to forgive the transgression fairly easily, which is a testament to Leone’s amazingly confident directorial hand.
+