Stanley Kubrick admired the film as well. So much so, according to Leone, that he selected the music for Barry Lyndon before shooting the film in order to attempt a similar fusion of music and image. While he was preparing the film, he phoned Leone, who later recalled: ‘Stanley Kubrick said to me, “I’ve got all Ennio Morricone’s albums. Can you explain to me why I only seem to like the music he composed for your films?” To which I replied, “Don’t worry. I didn’t think much of Richard Strauss until I saw 2001!” Barry Lyndon could habe been Once Upon a Time in Georgian England: the music, the choreography, the deliberate pace, the ritualized duels. Leone reckoned, though, that maybe Kubrick didn’t quite have the common storyteller’s touch to pull it off.
In his (fantastic) biography on Sergio Leone, Something To Do With Death (p299), Christopher Frayling writes about Once Upon a Times in the West.
Source: binarybonsai.com
A Fistful of Dollars Audio Commentary. Sergio Leone biographer Christopher Frayling shares anecdotes, trivia and interesting facts surrounding the production of Leone’s classic Western.