I tried to put together a release history based on the info posted in this thread and whichever other sources were at my disposal or available at the touch of a button. Comments and corrections welcomed!
December 13 1968 – Submission to Italian censors (Ministero del Turismo e dello Spettacolo) lists runtime as 4869 metres, roughly 177½ mins. (This figure is also repeated on a doc dated December 20th, more info here:
https://cinecensura.com/wp-content/uplo ... cicolo.pdf). If the post-production was anything like that of GBU (i.e. very chaotic, with Leone constantly second-guessing himself), editing changes were likely made right up to the last minute, and further changes to the cut may have been made even after the premiere on December 21st.
December 23 1968 – Italian theatrical cut goes on wide release, running 167 minutes including title spinning just before end credits rolling over black with “Cheyenne’s Theme” playing (watch 16mm excerpt here, same as Italian VHS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP8b2_GPUXU). Compared to the version currently in circulation on Blu-ray and UHD, the Italian theatrical cut (assuming this is the version released on initial Italian VHS) has 70 secs of additional footage in the opening, no ‘Harmonica rising’ sequence and ending as above.
May 28 1969 – English-language version premieres in New York, essentially the same 167-min cut as the Italian version, except title and end credits roll appear earlier (over “Finale” music) and “Cheyenne’s Theme” plays as exit music over black. Steven Lloyd claims the title did not spin on this version; this cannot be verified at present.
June 12 1969 – English-language version also approved for distribution in Italy.
June 1969 – Paramount are unhappy with the reception to the longer version and exercise their contractual right to cut the film to under 150 minutes for the wider release, without Leone’s input. English-language version cut down (manually to each print) to 144 minutes, losing 70 seconds in first reel, trading post scene, Jill firing on Harmonica at night, Navajo Cliffs hideout scene between Frank and Morton, Cheyenne’s death, shot of Harmonica riding away with Cheyenne’s body (according to Lloyd). According to Frayling and MFB (via MichaelB), Frank first discovering the aftermath of the train shootout (cutting straight to Morton’s death instead) was also cut from some prints. (Lloyd does not mention this edit, so perhaps UK prints were edited differently to US ones.) Unclear as to whether ‘Harmonica rising’ was added to the film at this point or in 1970, but likely the latter. (In Frayling’s book on the film, Joe Dante claims these cuts were made over a single weekend by someone working in the publicity department at Paramount.)
July 2 1969 – date of BBFC submission of 144-min version for UK release. The bed scene between Fonda and Cardinale is cut for an ‘A’ certificate.
August 14 1969 – 144-min version premieres in London (Wider release in UK on August 31). Meanwhile, the 167-min (possibly missing exit music) version is released in West Germany (dubbed), and also opens in Paris.
November 1970 – Films Incorporated (non-theatrical distributor of Paramount films) distribute English-language 16mm prints of the 144-min version. Lloyd claims this is where the ‘Harmonica rising’ scene first appeared and also a truncated version of the final shot where the title spin supposedly originated (though he is incorrect about the Italian cut title not spinning), with the title and credits starting sooner. According to Lloyd, these changes were now made to Paramount’s “negative” (presumably an interpos or interneg master rather than the Techniscope OCN, which would still be in Italy).
March 1973 – According to Lloyd, Paramount and Leone partner on a reconstruction of the original version (except for the final shot, still truncated) using dupes of the deleted material sent from Italy, distributed on 35mm and 16mm. Films Inc. reportedly offer a handful of full-length prints, available in pan-and-scan or ‘scope, for hire as late as 1981. (Ancedotally, these prints featured the ‘Harmonica rising’ scene, per HTF user ‘Sultanofcinema’)
1970s, unknown – 16mm prints of the full-length version (minus ‘Harmonica rising’) are sent to American television stations throughout the decade, and air as late as October 1983 (ABC affiliate WFAA in Dallas, TX). Though nominally uncut, these are reputed to be time-compressed to fit in more commercial breaks in a three-hour broadcast slot.
Feb 21 1980 – Italian-language version (“identical to the 35mm original”) approved for 16mm distribution by San Paolo Film in Italy (see clip linked above).
1980 – Lloyd claims that Paramount were unable to send a 35mm print of the long cut to the Sandburg Theater in Chicago for a booking there, despite the theater owners’ insistence. Whatever happened to the 35mm prints struck in 1973 is unknown (Paramount apparently offer a pan-and-scan 16mm print of the long cut instead). Instead, the cinema receives the studio’s vault print, which is the 144-min version.
(EDIT: in August 1980, Richard Corliss writes briefly in passing during an article in Time magazine that the full-length film has been restored by "heroic film scholars" -
https://time.com/archive/6882058/cinema ... -rough-cut)
1981 – German 8mm distributor Marketing Films International offers English, French and Spanish-dubbed Super 8 pan-and-scan prints of the full-length ‘165-min’ version, as well as a three-part 66-min digest. (Catalogue here:
https://super8database.com/catalogs/26/link/11347; digests also advertised in 1979 catalogue:
https://super8database.com/catalogs/14/link/8294) According to HTF user akatanaka, this version omitted ‘Harmonica rising’ and had the full final shot with “Finale” playing to the end.
June 1982 – The “original uncut version” is released in London cinemas by UIP, premiering at the Empire Leicester Square. However, this is most likely the first release of the botched reconstruction with 70 secs of missing footage in the opening, ‘Harmonica rising’ included, title and credits appearing prematurely (timed to when they appear in the 1970 version instead of the 1969 one, despite the full length of the last shot being restored) and “Cheyenne’s Theme” interrupting “Finale” instead of being exit music.
April 1983 – VHS/Beta released by CIC in the UK (and other European countries), confirmed to be the botched reconstruction.
November 1983 – First German VHS release is still the original theatrical cut, albeit German-dubbed version with no exit music.
September 1984 – The reconstruction gets a limited theatrical release in North America "released in repertory through Films Incorporated”, with the poster declaring it to be “The Fully Restored Director’s Cut”. VHS and laserdisc editions follow in 1985 and every home video version hereafter (except in Italy). Paramount logos at start and end also altered to ‘blue mountain’ variant compared to 1983 VHS (which has the original 1968 logo at start); this carries over to every subsequent version.
(EDIT: Dave Kehr wrote this in a
Chicago Reader review dated Feb 4 1983: "Various “restored” versions have surfaced at the film societies and revival houses over the years, but none until now has been definitive. The Wilmette-based distributor Films Incorporated has just issued a superb new thirty-five-millimeter print of the 168-minute European cut; though stories persist in buff circles of even more “complete” versions, this is likely to be as close as we will ever come to
Once upon a Time in the West as Leone intended it." Perhaps the reconstruction was available sooner than 1984?)
1995 – An interpositive of an earlier 178-min cut – perhaps the same one initially submitted to the Italian censor board - is found at Technicolor Rome, and a standard-definition video remaster of this extended Italian-language version is supervised by film historian Claver Salizzato in league with Leone’s family and close collaborators, released in subsequent years on VHS and DVD as a “Director’s Cut” (though this is very, very much open to debate). (More info:
https://ilmanifesto.it/archivio/1995020435)
2003 – Paramount remaster the 1982 version for DVD.
2007 – Paramount and The Film Foundation photochemically restore the 1982 version, now with a handful of missing shots reinstated in the opening reel, but others still missing and other errors still present. This version is released on Blu-ray in 2011.
2018 – Same again, this time in 4K using the Techniscope OCN (unclear as to whether this element was used at all for prior restorations), released on UHD in 2023.