ABSTRACT
With the emphasis on taste, the appellation of ‘Spaghetti’ to refer to Italian Westerns is quite apt as we begin to consider how Once Upon a Time in the West conveys rasa. When watching the film, the spectator is effectively engaging with it as if having a meal, savouring its combination of emotions as if they were spices. The French critic Michel Mardore said that the images of Leone’s film ‘reveal a formidable appetite’ (quoted in Fawell 2005, 29). This metaphor indicates that the images contain rich feelings and emotions that we can taste and feel as spectators. Our purpose is to offer an analysis of Once Upon a Time in the West from this perspective of taste and feeling and to consider just what the emotions are that we are consuming. In attempting such an analysis, the perspective is different
from the usual kind of textual criticism. The employment of rasa conforms to our avowed objective in this book of looking at Westerns from the Eastern perspective. Rasa, with its emphasis on the experiential, adds its own unique dimension.
