The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) August 22, 2007
Posted by Cal in : Action, War, Non-Asian, 1960s films , trackbackDirector: Sergio Leone Cast: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef Territory: Italy
Original title: il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo
A drifter known only as Blondie (Eastwood) and a Mexican bandit Tuco (Wallach) have a nice scam going where the latter, wanted for heinous crimes, allows himself to get captured by the former, who collects the reward money and saves the bandit’s life at the last moment. They then split the reward money and head on to the next town to repeat the process. The partnership has many ups and downs (the couple distrust each other and try to kill each other with casual indifference) but the two are forced into working together again when they both come into separate pieces of information regarding the location of a cache of stolen Confederate gold worth $200,000. Unfortunately, Angel Eyes (Van Cleef) also knows about the gold, and his ruthlessness and viciousness outweighs even that of Tuco’s and Blondie’s. Paths cross and uneasy alliances are made and broken on the way to the gold, and all this occurring at a time when the country is being ripped apart by a bloody and horrific civil war.
More than a western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is more like an epic adventure. Finally, Leone had the budget to really go to town on this film, and the quantum leap between this and its predecessor is even more pronounced than between A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.
The first line of dialogue is delivered more than ten minutes after the beginning of the film. There are title cards for the three main characters that flash up on the screen upon conclusion of their introductory scene, and the last one appears when nearly a half hour has passed in film time. With those kind of statistics, you could be forgiven for thinking The Good, the Bad and the Ugly would be a little slow. Instead, it fits so many ideas into its running time that Leone could easily have made the film an hour longer and got away with it.
This time, Clint Eastwood is not as prominent, and there is a good argument to be made that Eli Wallach is the real star of the film. He certainly provides much of the humour and has more than his fair share of memorable scenes. Van Cleef provides a worthy adversary as the thoroughly evil Angel Eyes. His return is a thousand times removed from his role as the mostly benign Col Mortimer in For a Few Dollars More.
The simple story of three men in search of stolen gold is complicated only by the inconvenient interference of the war happening all around them. Oddly, it is rarely, if ever, directly commented on by the central characters until Blondie, witnessing a particularly futile attack, comments:
Never seen so many men wasted so badly…
Which pretty much sums up the folly of war in just a few words. Throughout the series, the Man with No Name has hit the nail on the head a few times, but never more so than here.
But that’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly all over. Practically every scene is outstanding, and it is by turns comic, poignant, witty, exciting, brutally violent, melancholic and dramatic without any of the disparate elements working against each other. The character of Tuco is especially entertaining, and rather than routing for Clint Eastwood all the time, the viewer can be strangely drawn to the rat-like bandit. He’s not simply there for comic relief, though. The scene where he confronts his brother, who has become a monk, is surprisingly weighty and well acted by Wallach.
Blondie, meanwhile, seems to have hardened somewhat from previous incarnations (if they are previous incarnations – see below) while paradoxically seemingly more compassionate and lyrical. His introductory scene sees him leaving Tuco to die in the desert – hardly the actions of a man with a strong code of justice. His sense of humour is wry and often dark to the point of absolute black (“sorry, Shorty”) and he dispenses put-downs and trades one-liners with Tuco to great effect.
Angel Eyes is, unsurprisingly, an altogether less sympathetic character. He’s also the least well drawn of the characters, but this may have been intentional; our lack of any background on him only goes to make him more mysterious and deadly. His introduction sets the tone when he refuses to renege on a job when offered more money to spare a man’s life and instead kill his employer: he takes the money and kills both parties, which has a kind of perverse sense of honour to it. Where he goes, extreme brutality usually follows, and the scenes of torture and cold-blooded murder are still quite shocking in the 21st Century – I can only speculate how nasty they looked back in 1966. He often disappears from the film for great lengths of time only to reappear out of nowhere and cause mayhem and destruction.
I’ve tried to avoid pointing out scenes in this review as I just got totally bogged down with “if I mention this, I have to mention that” and you realise the film is just so rich you’d spend all day saying stuff like “well, Tuco’s in the bath, and…” or “Tuco goes to a gun shop” or describing the bridge scene in great detail or any number of other occurrences.
There are a lot of clues that The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a prequel to the other “Dollar” films. Blondie starts the film in an entirely different outfit from the other films and acquires his hat and sheepskin jacket from Angel Eyes at the Betterville prison camp, while he takes his trademark poncho from a dead soldier. This backs up other “evidence” from A Fistful of Dollars, where a grave is seen to carry the year 1870, five years after the end of the Civil War. Or it could all be accidental!
The score is once again provided by Ennio Morricone and it’s a great testament to him that there are probably only a handful of films in existence in the entire world that have a more instantly recognisable theme. But it doesn’t stop there – his ideas permeate the film and add to the atmosphere throughout. Of particular note is the “Ecstasy of Gold” score, which excellently compliments the stunning visuals.
It’s a shame that relationships began to be strained between Eastwood (and others) and Leone and they never worked together again. I’ve yet to see Once Upon a Time in America, but The Good, the Bad and the Ugly seems pretty unbeatable as Leone’s greatest work – certainly Once Upon a Time in the West didn’t feel as well-paced and accessible as this.
The version on review here is the somewhat controversial MGM Special Edition, with the addition of around 18 minutes’ worth of rare footage that was never dubbed into English before. One of the problems is that Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood both came in to do their lines more than thirty years after the film was shot, while Van Cleef, having died in 1989, is voiced by a professional voice actor. The somewhat predictable result is a jarring transition at times between the old and restored footage, particularly where the now very elderly Wallach is concerned. Eastwood commented that dubbing his old self was like “looping my son”, while you can hardly tell the difference in Van Cleef’s dialogue. It’s one of those impossible situations where people would have screamed blue murder if Wallach and Eastwood hadn’t come back to do their lines and professional “impersonators” had done the job for them. The restored footage does help resolve a few continuity problems that occur in the regular release, and we get another good bit of Blondie and Tuco banter in the desert, so I say it was worth it. Maybe I’m biased, though, as it’s the only version I’ve seen! A lot of people were annoyed, though, that the audio was overhauled completely, which I understand resulted in the replacement of all of the original gunshot sounds with new ones amongst other changes.
I usually shy away from mentioning much about the DVD releases of films and concentrate on the actual film when I’m writing this stuff, but a special mention has to be made to the extras on this 2-Disc set. There are masses of good mini documentaries in here, and Wallach and Eastwood are both present. Wallach, particularly, is insightful into the making of the film, and recounts the few times he was nearly killed on set with good-humour. He also recounts that he didn’t think the “shoot, don’t talk” line was supposed to be funny and played it straight – which probably adds to the effectiveness of the gag. The somewhat relaxed attitude to safety in Italian film is mentioned throughout, with Eastwood telling a nice anecdote about where he intended to be when the bridge blew, having worked on Leone pictures before! There are also featurettes on the real General Sibley, Leone, Ennio Morricone, plus a couple of “lost” and reconstructed scenes, a featurette about the restoration of the film and a few easter eggs. All in all, a grand package for a film that immediately entered my Top Ten films when I first saw it and promises to be a firm favourite for many years to come.
Comments»
Once Upon a Time in America is a great work of art (talking about the Director’s cut). It is misogynistic, which detracts a bit from the film, but you will never hear a telephone ring the same way again. De Niro and Woods work so well in this film.
I am such a huge fan of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly that I’ll probably get the double-disk set (I’m trying to get all four of the Leone collection).
Both works deserve more comments, but I have to go
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You mention the fact that Clint and Leone’s relationship was breaking down. This was a real shame as Leone planned the beginning of Once upon a Time in the West to feature Charles Bronson gunning down Eastwood, Wallach and Van Cleef’s characters at the train station as opposed to Jack Elam, Woody Strode etc. This would have provided an incredible way to open the movie but sadly Eastwood declined to take part, a decision he admitted was a mistake years later.
Shawn - I AM going to get around to Once Upon a Time in America, I promise. As you know, I keep being distracted by other films(!) but it’s the only film of his I haven’t seen and I do feel I’m missing out. If you’re a fan of GBU, you should get the 2-disker even if you don’t want to watch the “new” version of the film - I don’t think it’s possible to be disappointed with these extras!
Charlie - Yes, I’ve heard that one before, and it certainly would have been a unique start to a film! I’ve read in various places that Leone was becoming difficult to work with around this time, and I think this hurt his future films a little. I’ve got to see Once Upon a Time in the West again to see if I like it more this time, but following up this film was never going to be easy and I felt the film wasn’t as compelling as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Thanks for the comments
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Yes I love Once Upon a Time but the Good the Bad does indeed shade it. Actually, the one that is fast growing in my affections is A Fistful of Dynamite, Leone’s most overtly political work. The more I watch it the more I forgive its flaws…it should have been called Once upon a time in the Revolution (as it is in France) and could be classed as being the second in the triology that loosely includes ..in the West and …in America. In addition, it has James Coburn at his best and just before his career high performance in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (my favourite western by the way).
The main problem I have with that film is the title - I simply hate it. However, it is still better than “Duck, you sucker!” which is pretty much unforgiveable. I am planning to rewatch it soon, and although I was disappointed on first viewing there have just been too many people saying that it’s a “grower” for me to ignore.
I’m thinking of picking up Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid at some point too. I saw it about eight years ago and didn’t really “get” it. But at that time I hadn’t seen enough westerns to appreciate the genre and I only wanted to watch it because I was having a mad Dylan phase!
Charlie Gordon is spot on; I think the sometimes neglected ‘Gui La Testa’ (go on, let’s give another title…) can be counted as one of Leone’s truly great films, and ‘Garrett’ is also becoming one of my very favourite westerns. Give ‘em both another shot Cal; but if you buy the DVD for the latter, please watch Peckinpah’s workprint before tackling the travesty that is the 2005 Seydor cut.
Thanks for the advice on Garrett - I’ll pick it up for sure at some point.
As for the other, “Gui La Testa”’s probably the name I’m going to use when I review it - I just can’t stand the other titles. Well, “Once Upon a Time…the Revolution” sounds fine, but seems the least popular name for it!