Haven't had a chance to comment yet, but I must say this is fantastic! Those IB-preserved colors really shine through. There might be a tad too much magenta in the "dry scan," but, honestly, it looks far more accurate as-is than the undynamic, desaturated Blu-Ray.

The color timing of all Leone's films on home video have always been questionable, and it's not surprising that this would look much better. Maybe the RHV BD of A Fistful of Dollars is accurate, though I'm not sure... In any case, for any eventual preservation of Once Upon a Time in the West, I'd be wary of attempting to "naturalize" the vivid, technicolor look of the print.

I definitely vote for scanning the whole print, a very worthwhile preservation. Even if there's no digital clean-up, it would be nice to see how Leone's films, this and GBU, looked theatrically.

The 56 seconds is icing on the cake. It's great that we have an accurate version of how the international cut looked, at long last.