| Synopsis
In the desert Southwest of America
during the waning days of the Old West, three gunmen wearing
long duster overcoats (Jack Elam, Woody Strode, Al Mulock)
take over an isolated train depot and settle in to wait for
the train. When the train finally comes, a nameless harmonica-playing
stranger (Charles Bronson) gets off and asks for someone named
Frank. They tell him Frank sent them in his place. In the
ensuing showdown, all four men go down. Only the man with
the harmonica gets up again.
On a remote farm called Sweetwater, Brett
McBain (Frank Wolff) and his family are preparing an outdoor
wedding feast. McBain tells his son Patrick to drive into
town to meet his new mother, who will be arriving by train
from New Orleans. Suddenly shots ring out from the surrounding
desert, and daughter Maureen, son Patrick, and McBain himself
are slain. The youngest McBain, Timmy, runs out of the house
to find that his entire family has been destroyed. He watches
in terrified silence as a group of five gunmen in duster
overcoats emerge from the scrub brush. When one of the men
calls their leader Frank by name, asking what to do with
the child, Frank (Henry Fonda) draws his pistol and slowly
takes aim at the last remaining witness. With a self-satisfied
grin, he pulls the trigger.
In the town of Flagstone, McBain's bride
Jill (Claudia Cardinale) steps down from the train to find
that no one is there to meet her. Giving up hope, she steps
through the train station into the bustling new town still
being built. She hires a carriage to drive her to Sweetwater.
The farm's name draws laughter from the driver, Sam (Paolo
Stoppa), who informs her that "Sweetwater" is
a worthless piece of ground, and McBain is crazy for trying
to farm it.
Along the way, Sam speeds through a group
of railroad workers busily laying their "damn rails."
Then he stops at a wayside inn/tavern/trading post, and
Jill follows him inside. Her beauty draws the unwelcome
attentions of the barman (Lionel Stander). After a noisy
off-screen gun battle, the outlaw Cheyenne (Jason Robards)
enters wearing shackles on his wrists. The sounds of a harmonica
again reveal the presence of the nameless stranger, who
has been watching from a dark corner of the tavern. Cheyenne
dubs him "Harmonica," and he uses Harmonica's
gun to force another patron to shoot apart the chain between
his wrists. Cheyenne's men soon arrive, too late to help
him escape the prison guards who now lie dead outside. Harmonica
notes that the three men he killed earlier were wearing
the same duster overcoats as Cheyenne's men, and Cheyenne
is annoyed that rivals may be copying his trademark dusters.
Jill and Sam arrive at Sweetwater to find
a crowd of somber wedding guests standing around the outdoor
tables, now put to use as funeral biers. Jill is horrified
at the carnage. When one of the women bemoans that this
should happen to the "poor little miss" on her
wedding day, Jill informs the guests that she and Brett
McBain were already married a month earlier in New Orleans.
As the burial comes to an end, the crowd discovers that
the torn-off collar of a duster overcoat was found on a
nail by the door. This marks the massacre as Cheyenne's
work. The men form a posse and ride off to track down the
outlaw and hang him. Sam offers to drive Jill back to Flagstone,
but she says she will stay at Sweetwater. That evening,
she ransacks the McBain household, looking for anything
of value that might have been hidden away.
At the town laundry in Flagstone that night,
Harmonica puts the laundry man Wobbles through a violent
interrogation, wanting to know why Frank didn't show up
at the train. Wobbles doesn't know; he only arranged the
meeting. Harmonica suspects Frank was occupied at McBain's
farm just then, but Wobbles insists otherwise: "Cheyenne
did that job--everyone knows that. We got proof." Harmonica
doesn't believe it: "That was always one of Frank's
tricks--fakin' evidence."
Jill finds a group of miniature buildings
stored away in a trunk, including a model train station
with a fancy swinging sign that says "STATION."
She hears the sound of a harmonica outside and fires a shotgun
into the darkness. The sound of the harmonica moves farther
away. In the morning as she is about to leave for good,
she finds Cheyenne on her doorstep. While his men wait outside,
he barges in and asks for coffee. He tells of being chased
by the posse all night and helps make the fire for the coffee.
He says he would never kill a kid: "I ain't the mean
bastard people make out." He decided to come take a
look at the scene of his supposed crime. Not only is he
annoyed that someone is trying to blame him, but neither
he nor Jill can understand why the killings happened at
all. The place looks so worthless, he imagines that McBain
must have hidden a treasure away somewhere. Jill tells him
that if so, she couldn't find it. Aware that she is vulnerable
to any sort of mistreatment Cheyenne and his men might deal
out, she serves the coffee.
In a private railroad car, Morton (Gabriele
Ferzetti), a crippled and dying railroad tycoon, berates
Frank for killing the McBains. He only wanted Frank to scare
McBain, not kill him. And now a Mrs. McBain has shown up,
making the killings pointless. Morton began building his
railroad in sight of the Atlantic Ocean, and he means to
build his way to the Pacific before he dies. He hired Frank
to "remove small obstacles from the tracks," but
Frank intends to become a wealthy businessman himself. Morton
tells Frank he will never be like Morton, because Frank
doesn't understand that money is more powerful than guns.
After sharing a congenial interlude with
Jill, Cheyenne finishes up his coffee and rides away with
his men. Now Jill once again takes up her traveling bags
and goes out to the wagon. But Harmonica is there and demands
that she stay. As he throws her down roughly and begins
ripping at her clothes, Jill becomes alarmed. Instead of
harming her, he simply removes the white trimmings from
her black dress, leaving her in full mourning. They go to
the well for a drink of water, only to be attacked by yet
two more of Frank's men. Harmonica kills them, and from
a nearby vantage point Cheyenne sees how handy Harmonica
is with a gun.
Jill goes to the laundry and asks Wobbles
to tell Frank she knows everything and wants to negotiate
with Frank personally. Wobbles denies knowing anyone named
Frank, but Jill repeats her demand and leaves. Wobbles heads
out to Morton's private train, unaware that Harmonica is
following him. Morton scolds him for coming there, but Wobbles
says he wasn't followed, and he thought Morton and Frank
would want to know about Mrs. McBain. When Frank sees Harmonica's
shadow on the ground, he knows someone is on the roof, and
he signals the train to start moving.
Stopping in open country, Frank captures
Harmonica (at which time a blurry flashback appears of an
indistinct man walking through a desert landscape, but no
explanation is given just yet). Frank has Harmonica brought
on board and bound. He kicks Wobbles off the train (literally)
and shoots him down just as Wobbles is about to reveal the
presence of Cheyenne hiding in the train's undercarriage.
Harmonica lets Frank know that the two men he sent to kill
Jill are themselves dead. Realizing this is the man who
wanted to meet with him, Frank asks Harmonica who he is.
Harmonica answers with the names of two men Frank has killed.
Morton interrupts the interrogation to remind Frank he has
more urgent business: the woman. Taking to horseback, Frank
rides away with three of his men to do away with Mrs. McBain
himself. He leaves three men behind on the train to guard
Harmonica and keep an eye on Morton, whom he doesn't trust.
Frank tells the men to meet him at the Navajo cliff, and
the train gets under way again. Over the next few minutes,
Cheyenne craftily disposes of the three gunmen one by one
and sets Harmonica free. They now have Morton in their power,
but they will deal with him later, choosing to stop the
train and ride to Jill's aid.
At Sweetwater, Jill is puzzled by the arrival
of a large amount of lumber and building supplies that McBain
ordered. Since he paid cash, it all belongs to her. Neither
the lumberman nor Sam can say what it's for, but there are
enough materials to build at least eight buildings. When
the lumberman shows her a blank sign and asks if she knows
what should go on it, she recognizes its outline from the
miniature train station and tells him it should say "STATION."
Inside the house, she looks through the trunk again for
the model train station. Just then, Frank captures her.
At the Navajo cliff, Morton offers to buy
Sweetwater to avoid more killing--he's had enough of Frank's
butcher tactics. He doesn't have time to compete with Frank.
But away from his train, Morton looks weak and pathetic,
no competition at all as far as Frank is concerned. Frank
kicks one of his crutches out from under him, sending Morton
sprawling face first: "I could squash you like a wormy
apple." Frank tells some of his men to take Morton
back to his train and watch him.
At Sweetwater, Cheyenne and his men are
just as puzzled by the building supplies as Jill was. Harmonica
begins pacing off the dimensions of a train station, all
the while explaining to Cheyenne what he has seen in a document.
McBain was planning to build a town at Sweetwater. He had
learned that it has the only water supply for fifty miles
west of Flagstone. Since trains need lots of water to make
steam, the railroad must inevitably come through Sweetwater.
McBain contracted for the rights to operate the depot himself,
provided it was built by the time the tracks reached it.
Knowing that the rail gangs are just over the hill, Cheyenne
puts his men to work building the station.
Inside a ruin at the Navajo cliff, Frank
enjoys an intimate interlude with his captive Jill. He remarks
that she will do anything to stay alive and that it seems
she can't resist a man's touch, even the touch of the man
who killed her husband. Frank knows from inquiries sent
over the telegraph that Jill was one of the most popular
prostitutes in New Orleans until she married McBain. As
he undresses her, he thinks of marrying her himself to take
over the land. Realizing he would make a bad husband, he
comes up with a quicker, simpler solution.
Jill sits in quiet resignation in the saloon
at Flagstone, where people have gathered for a land auction.
One of Frank's men hovers over her, and several more are
scattered through the crowd, ready to intimidate anyone
who even starts to make a bid. It's Frank's way of getting
the property for himself cheaply. The sheriff (Keenan Wynn)
reluctantly gets the auction under way.
Meanwhile on Morton's train, Morton can
sense that his dream of seeing the Pacific is growing more
and more remote. He joins a game of poker with four of Frank's
men who are now his captors. Instead of dealing out cards,
he deals out five hundred dollars to each of the men to
buy their allegiance to him.
Back at the land auction, one of Frank's
still-loyal men bids five hundred dollars for the farm.
Just as the sheriff is about to close the sale, Harmonica
calls out a bid of five thousand dollars. In what is most
likely a scheme devised by both men, Harmonica brings in
an indignant Cheyenne at gunpoint and turns him in for the
reward money to cover his bid. The sheriff puts Cheyenne
under guard on the train bound to Yuma, where there is a
new, strong, modern prison that is much more secure than
the local jail. But two of Cheyenne's men follow him onto
the train after buying one-way tickets to the next station.
Meanwhile, one of the men on Morton's train rides into town
to tell the others what transpired in the poker game.
Jill is grateful that Harmonica has saved
the farm for her, and she begins to look at him more warmly.
Frank enters the saloon and offers Harmonica five thousand
dollars for the farm, plus one silver dollar profit. Again
he asks Harmonica's name, and Harmonica answers with the
names of two more dead men: "They were all alive until
they met you, Frank." (Again, the blurred flashback
appears, but the image of Frank walking through the desert
becomes clearer than before.) Harmonica rejects the offer
but uses Frank's silver dollar to pay for his drink. Having
noticed suspicious activity outside, Harmonica goes to watch
from the upstairs windows and balcony, breaking into the
room where Jill is taking a steamy bath. Frank steps out
of the saloon onto the street--and into a deadly cat-and-mouse
game. His former men, now Morton's men, try to gun him down.
But with some "timely" assistance from Harmonica,
Frank manages to kill them instead and rides out. Jill is
furious at Harmonica for saving Frank's life. He tells her,
"I didn't let them kill him and that's not the same
thing."
Frank discovers the aftermath of a gun battle
at Morton's train. Bodies of Frank's men and Cheyenne's
men lie strewn alongside the tracks and in Morton's private
car. He finds Morton crawling desperately to a nearby mud
puddle. Frank draws and cocks his gun to finish him off
but then decides to let him suffer. With the sound of ocean
waves crashing in his mind, Morton dies.
The tracks are reaching Sweetwater at last,
and builders are busily turning the farmyard into the beginnings
of a town. Harmonica sits at the farmyard gate as Cheyenne
comes riding awkwardly in and goes inside. Not quite his
usual self, he again asks for coffee, which Jill has ready
this time. They both sense that outside something important
is about to happen with Harmonica, but they're not sure
just what. Cheyenne: "He's whittlin' on a piece of
wood. I got a feelin' when he stops whittlin', somethin's
gonna happen."
Frank rides up to the gate, and Harmonica
stops whittling. They have a verbal exchange that serves
as a prelude to their coming duel. Frank admits he'll never
be a businessman: "Just a man." They acknowledge
they're of an ancient race being killed off by the coming
of the modern age--arriving right next to them as they speak.
Then Frank gets to the business between them: "The
future don't matter to us. Nothin' matters now--not the
land, not the money, not the woman. I came here to see you.
'Cause I know that now you'll tell me what you're after."
"Only at the point of dyin'," Harmonica tells
him. Frank says, "I know," and they stride out
into the farmyard to face off for the final showdown.
Inside, Cheyenne begins to clean up and
shave while he watches the railroad move up. He tells Jill
she should take water out to the workers at the tracks,
letting them enjoy the sight of a beautiful woman. And if
one of them should pat her behind, she should just make
believe it's nothing. They earned it.
As Frank and Harmonica square up to draw,
Harmonica ponders his history with Frank, and the full flashback
is revealed.
A younger Frank strides out of the desert
to the isolated ruin of a Spanish mission--a lone arch with
a bell hanging at the top. He places a brand new harmonica
into a young man's mouth, telling him to keep his lovin'
brother happy. The youth's hands are bound behind him, and
his older brother, also bound, is standing on his shoulders
with a noose around his neck. Frank and his men wait for
the inevitable moment when the boy's legs will give way
and complete the hanging. The doomed man curses Frank and
kicks his younger brother away. The harmonica drops out
of the young man's mouth as he falls into the dust.
Frank and Harmonica draw and fire. Frank
staggers away a few steps and falls to the ground, again
asking Harmonica, "Who ... who are you?" In answer,
Harmonica places the old, beaten-up harmonica into Frank's
mouth. It jogs Frank's memory--he sees the end of the flashback
for himself, the image of the youth falling into the dust
and the harmonica dropping out of his mouth. With a few
wheezed chords, Frank falls lifelessly into the dust, and
the harmonica drops out of his mouth.
Cheyenne tells Jill he's not the right man
for her, but neither is Harmonica. There's something inside
a man like that, he tells her, something to do with death.
Once Harmonica has dealt with Frank, he will come inside,
pick up his things and move on.
Harmonica comes in and, true to Cheyenne's
prediction, picks up his belongings and tells Jill he has
to go. They share a lingering look, and then he opens the
front door and surveys the developing street scene outside.
"It's going to be a beautiful town, Sweetwater,"
he says. Jill hopes he will come back someday. With a doubtful
"Someday," Harmonica takes his leave. Cheyenne
too says goodbye and pats Jill on the behind, telling her
to make believe it's nothing.
As the two men begin to ride away, Cheyenne
gets off his horse and plops to the ground. Harmonica discovers
that Cheyenne has been gut-shot, the work of Morton himself
during the gun battle at the train. Cheyenne asks Harmonica
to go away--he doesn't want Harmonica to see him die. Harmonica
turns away and soon hears Cheyenne fall over dead. Just
then, the work train rolls into Sweetwater and stops at
the station, which has its "STATION" sign in place.
Harmonica takes away Cheyenne's body as Jill carries water
out to the newly arrived railroad workers.
END OF FILM (See
here)
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