Goofs

The shadows change direction between cuts throughout the gunfight scene between Frank and Harmonica.

Jill's luggage is schlepped from the train - twice.

During Harmonica's confrontation with Frank towards the end of the movie, his hair appears to have grown significantly from earlier in the film; however, when he enters the house to talk to Jill, his hair is short again.

When Harmonica arrives at the McBain ranch and plays his harmonica at night, he lights a match, which is shot out by Mrs. McBain. In the shot of Harmonica the next day when he confronts Mrs. McBain, he has a cut on his left cheek from the earlier night with the gunshot. In all following scenes, the wound has disappeared.

At the very end of the movie, the camera pans back to show the complete scene of men working at the station. The train and carriage have come through the embankment 'cutting' and are passing through the new station. Then the scene cuts to a camera behind the 'cutting' and the train has only just passed through it.

When Frank rides to meet Harmonica for the showdown, he is riding on a white horse, a minute later the horse changes color and is a dapple gray color.

The white horse's shift was over so the dapple gray tagged in. Horses have to have regular breaks.

Near the beginning, Brett McBain is shooting birds, and Timmy (Brett's son) collects the birds and shows them to his sister Maureen. The birds are chukkar partridge, which were introduced into the United States by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the 1920s and were not present before then.

Those birds were quail, native to Utah and Arizona.

In the opening scene. Harmonica is involved in a gunfight with three of Frank's men at the Cattle Corner Train Station. During the gunfight, Harmonica is shot by Stony. When Harmonica regains consciousness and sits up, a bullet hole is visible in his coat where he was shot in the left shoulder. The bullet hole in Harmonica's coat becomes quite visible in the tavern when Cheyenne points to where Harmonica was shot with his gun and says, "And maybe faster than you." After that tavern scene, the bullet hole disappears from his coat throughout the rest of the movie.

Either the coat was mended and cleaned or he had a identical spare coat in his bag.

On the DVD case, Sergio Leone is quoted as saying "All of the characters in the film, except Claudia (Cardinale), are conscious of the fact they will not arrive at the end alive". He had apparently forgotten the ending.

DVD extras: We don't accept goofs pertaining to director's commentaries, or other DVD extras.

During the final flashback ("Keep your lovin' brother happy") from shot to shot the harmonica changes back and forth from clean and undamaged to dented and dirty.

Flashbacks are based on memory and are rarely accurate.

At around 1:20 in the movie, when Frank is inside the train with Morton and the Mexican-looking man, the tie on Frank's hat is on his right side when he sees Harmonica's shadow on the roof. In the next scene, it's on his left.

During the standoff gunfight a vertical cosmetic plastic surgery scar can clearly be seen on the left side of Henry Fonda's neck.

Frank goes to Morton's train and finds that dead bodies are scattered around. But the train's fireman appears not to be bothered. The engine's safety valve opens frequently, which means that the fireman dutifully keeps doing his job and keeps the boiler at maximum pressure. (The fireman and the driver never appear in the movie, but they must be there.)

When Sam is taking Jill McBain to the ranch, they have to go through the construction site for the railroad. Disgusted by the construction, Sam starts whipping the horses to try and speed up the buckboard. During one of the backhands with the whip, Sam accidentally hits Jill in the head. Jill gives him a "what the hell" look and says something inaudible to him which one can imagine what it was.

When Harmonica climbs down the ladder, only to meet Frank at the other end of a .45, the ladder is shown to be electro-welded to the wagon and the steps are also electro-welded to the legs of the ladder. A rather lousy welding job, by the way! The movie takes place around 1870. Electro-welding started during the 1890s, but the method got practicable only in the 1920s and began to be commonly used in the late 1930s when the great navies (except for the Royal Navy) started to use the method for their first-line ships. The great leap forward came during WW2, when Liberty ships and many other vessels were electro-welded.

When Jill arrives at the station, she is one of many people leaving the train, and her baggage is carried by two men and placed beside her as she walks along, and stands on, the platform. She looks at the clock and her watch. Shortly after that, she is again seen leaving the train, this time on her own, and now the two men again carry her bags from the train as she walks onto the station once more.

In the stable scene, Harmonica says to Cheyenne, "I saw three of these dusters a short time ago. They were waiting for a train. Inside the dusters, there were three men." While all three were wearing dusters upon arrival, only two of the three gunslingers were actually wearing dusters when Harmonica arrived.

As Frank and his gang ride away from the train, tire tracks are visible in the dirt.

While preparing for the wedding feast, Brett's daughter sings a few lines of "Danny Boy". The words to this song were written in 1910.

In the opening scene at the rail station, Woody Strode's character is shown to be carrying a cut down version of a Winchester model 1892. If the movie is supposed to take place in the 1870's the rifle doesn't exist for another 20 years.

Rungs of a ladder are arc welded, but the technique hadn't been developed yet.

As the speed of rotation of the wind-pump sails varies, the sound of the squeak does not. At no point does it match the period of rotation.

Railroad Baron, Mr. Morton. paid goons to kill Frank and what did they do? They got themselves killed by riding into the bustling town to ambush Frank in broad daylight by lying in wait on roof tops, etc. In real life they, individually or as a group, could have killed Frank in various safer means, including shooting him in the back, preferably out of town and during the dark of night.