How was the opening scene with the fly made?

Question

This may sound like a bit of an odd question, but I was wondering how the opening scene in Once Upon A Time in The West was made and more specifically, how they made the fly do what it did. It must not have been easy to get a fly to fly to his beard and stay there despite all of his attempts to get rid of it. So how did they make this fly do this?

Answer 1

HA HA HA. I have never seen this movie.. But I am going to now. The use of audio at the start is amazing and some really nice shots. Of course today it would be fairly easy to do this with special effects however back then is was practical effects. My guess is it took a long time to do this. Probably had a ton of flys on standby really. Pretty sure put sugar or something on this face and probably just waited for the flys to do stuff. Probably left alot on the cutting room floor here. The fly on the wall definitely looks fake probably a dead fly on

a string ... I do love the detail in these shots.