and the director's novelistic use of and attention to scenic texture and detail give substance to the myth.Before Leone's pictures the West itself had never been used as a character in films.In fact,it had hardly existed;in the westerns of Gary Cooper and Randolph Scott the country was used only as a backdrop for the plot. Leone was never as concerned with story lines in his westerns as he was with exploding the romantic myth of the old West and exploring and analyzing the basis of that myth. ...
