Once Upon a Time in the West goofs

As the wedding feast is being prepared, Brett's daughter sings a few lines of "Danny Boy". The lyrics were penned in 1910.

Tyre marks are left in the dust as Frank and his gang ride off from the train.

In the film’s opening at the railway station, Woody Strode’s character is seen carrying a cut-down Winchester Model 1892. If the film is meant to be set in the 1870s, that rifle would not be produced for roughly another twenty years.

Frank approaches Morton's train and discovers corpses strewn about. Yet the train's fireman seems entirely unperturbed. The locomotive's safety valve releases steam intermittently, indicating that the fireman is dutifully carrying out his duties and maintaining the boiler at full pressure. (The fireman and the driver never appear in the film, but they must be present.)

Throughout the shoot‑out between Frank and Harmonica, the shadows shift direction from cut to cut.

When Harmonica arrives at the McBain ranch and plays his harmonica after dark, he strikes a match which Mrs McBain shoots out. In the close-up of Harmonica the next day, as he confronts Mrs McBain, there is a cut on his left cheek from the shooting the previous night. In all subsequent scenes the wound has disappeared.

In The Man's flashback, which recounts how he came to own the harmonica, the instrument appears intact, then damaged, and then intact once more.

At the film's very end, the camera pulls back to reveal the whole scene of men working at the railway station. The train and carriage have just come through the embankment 'cutting' and are passing through the new station. The shot then cuts to a camera positioned behind the 'cutting', where the train has only just passed through.

Jill's luggage is lugged off the train — twice.

When Frank returns to the train and discovers the dead men scattered about, the smoke from the locomotive's chimney alters direction between shots.

When Jill McBain departs for the ranch in Sam's carriage, her (four) suitcases are neatly arranged in a single layer, uncovered. In subsequent shots an additional layer of luggage appears, and the whole lot is covered with a blanket and lashed with ropes.

The train's covered goods vans are four‑wheeled, possess a rounded roof and other traits more in keeping with European railway practice. The passenger carriages have a distinctly more American appearance, yet they are fitted with buffers and chain couplings that were not used on US railways. The locomotive, despite being equipped with a bell, a cowcatcher and other fittings typical of American engines, uses a plate frame, whereas American locomotives employed bar frames.

Brett McBain instructs his daughter Maureen to slice the bread more thickly because "they're throwing a party". Maureen retorts that she already cuts them as thick as usual. In actual 19th-century life, the affluent typically ate their bread in very thin slices, since cheese, meat and other accompaniments were considerably more expensive than the bread itself; poorer households cut thicker slices to make their toppings last longer.

Early on, Brett McBain is shown shooting birds, and Timmy, Brett's son, gathers them and shows them to his sister Maureen. These birds are chukkar partridge, a species introduced to the United States by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the 1920s and absent from the country prior to that time.

The birds in question were quail, native to Utah and Arizona.

In the opening scene, Harmonica is involved in a shoot‑out with three of Frank's men at the Cattle Corner train station. During the exchange, Stony shoots Harmonica; when he comes round and sits up, a bullet hole can be seen in his coat where he was hit in the left shoulder. The hole in Harmonica's coat is plainly visible in the saloon when Cheyenne points to the spot with his gun and says, "And maybe faster than you." After that scene, the bullet hole disappears from his coat for the remainder of the film.

Either the coat was repaired and cleaned, or he had an identical spare tucked away in his pack.

On the DVD sleeve, Sergio Leone is quoted as saying 'All of the characters in the film, except Claudia (Cardinale), are aware that they will not survive to the end.' He had apparently forgotten the ending.

DVD extras: We do not accept goofs relating to director's commentaries or other DVD extras.

Even after being shot in the left shoulder, Harmonica is able to physically manhandle Wobbles in the laundry as he tries to force him to talk about Frank. Harmonica seizes Wobbles by his scarf, hurls him about the laundry, feeds the scarf into a clothes mangle and, with his left arm and hand, tightens it around Wobbles' neck using the hand-crank.

Film cowboys are tough.

When the train carrying Harmonica draws into the station at the beginning of the film, one shot shows the locomotive halted short of the water-tank spigot. In subsequent shots the front of the locomotive is positioned where it would have to be to take on water.

Bringing a train to a halt with pinpoint accuracy is not something that can be achieved; it initially stopped short, then inched forward.

The train in the film's opening sequence comes into the station yet takes on neither water nor fuel. In the heart of the desert, water is indispensable and fuel almost as much.

The introduction to the film is not part of the narrative.

Immediately after Harmonica shoots Frank, Frank collapses and his body goes slack, his head settling on the ground with his face turned towards the camera. Fonda is excellent at keeping his eyes open and completely still while appearing 'dead'. However, the living actor portraying the corpse does exhale, causing two blades of grass or a couple of straw strands directly in front of his mouth to move.

This implies either 1) a small eddy of wind, or 2) that it was his final, dying breath.

The handle and head of Jill's bath brush give the impression of being moulded from black plastic.

However, such suspicions do not count towards Goofs — there are many materials that can produce a black finish for a handle without being plastic.

When Cheyenne's boot first comes into view outside the carriage window, it's the left one. The next time it's shown, it's the right. As Frank's henchman approaches, it looks once more like the left. Yet when the man leans in, the shot reveals the right boot.

He *does* have two boots.

Railway baron Mr Morton hired thugs to kill Frank — and what did they do? They rode into the bustling town and, by lying in wait on rooftops to ambush him in broad daylight, ended up getting themselves killed. In reality, whether acting individually or as a group, they could have dealt with Frank by far safer means, such as shooting him in the back, preferably away from town and in the dead of night.

At approximately 1:20 into the film, when Frank is aboard the train with Morton and the man who appears to be Mexican, the tie on Frank's hat is on the right-hand side as he notices Harmonica's shadow on the roof. In the following shot it is on the left-hand side.

During the standoff gunfight, a vertical scar from cosmetic surgery is clearly visible on the left side of Henry Fonda's neck.