Provenance Of

The influences behind Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

39 works across 28 centuries, back to Odyssey.

  1. Poster for The Searchers

    1956

    The Searchers

    Film by John Ford

    Classical Hollywood. United States. In English.

    John Wayne's Ethan Edwards spends years hunting the Comanche who massacred his brother's family and took his niece.

    What it handed down

    To Inglourious Basterds (2009)

    Stylistic influence, probable.

    The opening chapter frames a farmhouse doorway against open land as an enemy arrives. Critics have widely read this as a nod to Ford's door shots in The Searchers.

    To Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una volta il West) (1968)

    Direct source, well documented.

    Leone, Bertolucci and Argento wrote the script as a web of quotations from American westerns. The massacre of the McBain family at their isolated homestead restages the Comanche attack on the Edwards ranch in Ford's film.

    Where it came from

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Preview card: the tree of influence behind Once Upon a Time in Hollywood