Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood

Sony Pictures
by
ABR Arts 15 August 2019

Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood

Sony Pictures
by
ABR Arts 15 August 2019

Quentin Tarantino is one of the most innovative living auteurs in English-speaking cinema. The films that made him – Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds, and Kill Bill: Volume. 1 and 2 – are triumphs of hyper-stylised violence. Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood, Tarantino’s ninth film, though, is an outlier. Throughout a blissful and gleaming 1969 Los Angeles, the film tracks three characters: Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). Much of Once Upon a Time’s tension relies on an assumption that viewers will recall that Tate was murdered in her home by the Charles Manson Family.

Nonetheless, the film’s central focus is on Dalton, an ageing screen cowboy. Dalton is a fictionalised amalgam of leading television men of the 1960s, especially Ty Hardin, star of Bronco (1958–62). Facing a downturn in his career, Dalton has become insecure, erratic, and intoxicated; public interest is waning in the western genre as well as in its strong-jawed, emotionless stars. Early on, Dalton is approached by heavyweight Hollywood producer Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino). Schwarz heaps praise on him, suggesting that the only way he’ll work again is by leaving Hollywood for Italy to pursue roles in spaghetti Westerns. These early scenes are, like much of Once Upon a Time, intercut with footage from films and episodes in which Dalton has starred. Tarantino switches film stock here, flitting between contemporary widescreen and a square, dutifully reflecting the aesthetic of cinema in that era. These films within a film, meticulous nods to stalwarts of the western genre, syncopate the rhythm of Once Upon a Time, but ultimately overwhelm Dalton’s own narrative.

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.