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Jack Elam and the Fly in 'Once Upon a Time in the West'

... a stakeout at a deserted station, Jack Elam and a fly - the most audacious credit sequence in film history.

The extraordinary set-piece with the fly begins about six minutes into the opening credit sequence after the three gunmen, played by Elam, Woody Strode and Al Mulock, have taken over an isolated railroad station and are waiting for a train to arrive. In contrast to the plot-related and largely sound-based approaches mentioned above, I would like to suggest that having a fly buzz around Elam's face and inside the barrel of his gun, provided a perfect opportunity to have the actor perform a series of facial gestures, some of which emphasized his bad eye, and for the filmmaker to lavish cinematic attention on that notorious physiognomy in action. Providing a pretext for Elam to enact that measured succession of largely underplayed grimaces and grins without speaking a word and for Leone to film them in prolonged close-ups, is the most important function of the fly in this scene.

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