The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
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Released in 1966, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo) is one of the most widely-known Western films of all time, and is often cited as the quintessential film of the "Spaghetti Western" genre. The film was directed by Sergio Leone and stars Clint Eastwood (Blondie, the Man with No Name, or "The Good"), Lee Van Cleef ("Angel Eyes", Sentenza, or "The Bad"), and Eli Wallach (Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez, "The Rat", or "The Ugly").
Overview
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly tells of three men seeking a fortune in buried gold, the catch being that each of them know part of the puzzle but need each other to find the prize. The film is set in 1862 New Mexico (USA) during the New Mexico campaign of General Henry Hopkins Sibley, an officer of the army of the Confederate States of America (CSA), in the American Civil War.The movie is particularly known for its original music score, created by Ennio Morricone. The main title theme is considered by many to be the most recognized music affiliated with the western genre (along with the William Tell Overture finale as used by the Lone Ranger). Morricone combined in his score a series of riffs and even unusual pieces of music like gunfire and whistling. Morricone has said the main theme was meant to resemble coyotes howling. The strains of the mournful "La Storia Di un Soldato" ("The Story of a Soldier") haunt the aftermaths of the Civil War battle scenes. The music of the film's climactic sequence in the graveyard is especially noteworthy, as the scenes are first accompanied with the enormously popular sounds of "L'Estasi Dell'Oro" ("The Ecstasy Of Gold"), and then by "Il Triello" ("The Triple Duel") for the famous three-way showdown. This epic showdown with the three participants is considered to be one of the most electrifying climaxes ever filmed, and the music is a huge part of the power of this scene.
The film is also notable for several Leone trademarks - namely, the sparse dialogue, long scenes that slowly build to a climax (for this film, in the form of a Mexican standoff) and contrasts between sweeping long camera shots and extremely tight close-ups on eyes and fingers. The first ten minutes of the film have no dialogue, and the only character who frequently talks is Eli Wallach's character, who far and away has the most lines.
The film is part of a loose trilogy with Leone's earlier films A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. Eastwood stars in all three, with the same clothing and mannerisms, so the role is popularly dubbed "The Man With No Name." In lieu of a "name," the character is addressed by three different monikers: "Joe," by one character in the first movie; "Monco",[link] only twice in the second movie; and "Blondie," regularly in the third. These monikers have misled some people to state that the "Man With No Name" was in fact named, but all three of these names served merely as placeholders and nicknames. "Joe", for example, is used in a similar fashion to "Mack," as a way to address a stranger, and "Blondie" is Tuco Ramirez's nickname for his fair-haired partner.
Some fans see The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as a prequel to the earlier two movies, as Eastwood's character acquires his trademark poncho toward the end of the movie. This is left to speculation, as although Angel Eyes dies, Lee Van Cleef plays a completely different character (Colonel Mortimer) in For a Few Dollars More. However, there is no solid continuity between the movies to deduce an absolute link or order. Christopher Frayling has pointed out in his massive Leone biography, Sergio Leone: Something To Do With Death, that the three films were not intended by Leone or his various script collaborators to be seen as a history of the exact same individual. Indeed, it was United Artists, not the filmmakers, who came up with the idea of specifically linking the three films together as a series by referring to the Eastwood character as "The Man With No Name" in all advertising materials for the movies. However, it should be noted that the actor portraying the Undertaker from the first film shows up in the second as someone Eastwood's character is familiar with. Whether this points to the old man playing the same person or not is unknown but the fact that Eastwood indicates that he knew who to ask for specific information gives a stronger argument for the second film being a follow-up.
The film was mostly filmed in Spain using 1,500 local militia members as extras for a cost of $1,600,000. It was released on December 23, 1966 in Italy and in the USA on December 29, 1967.
Since the film's release, "the good, the bad, and the ugly" has become a common phrase (helped in part by Robert F. Kennedy's use of the phrase in campaign speeches). The Italian title translates as "The Good, the Ugly, the Bad."
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Plot
The story traces how three men gain, often at the expense of others, information about the location of a buried treasure of gold, and then uncover that treasure. The first character introduced in the movie is Tuco (Eli Wallach), who barely escapes an attack by bounty hunters (the lone survivor of whom appears later in the film, missing an arm and hoping to exact revenge on Tuco in a memorable sequence). The second character we see is Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef). We find him actively obtaining information about the gold from a man, whom he immediately kills, along with the man's son and then the employer who sent Angel Eyes in the first place. Next, we are introduced to the duo, Tuco (Eli Wallach) and The Man With No Name (Blondie) (Clint Eastwood), who are defrauding local authorities by turning in the wanted Tuco for reward money, and then, during his hanging, shooting the rope from Tuco's neck and escaping to split the reward.Blondie grows tired of his relationship with Tuco, and leaves Tuco in the desert with no water. When Tuco returns from the desert, he steals a gun, finds Blondie, and takes him to the desert for equal punishment. However, before Tuco could complete his torture, a runaway stagecoach full of dead and dying Confederate soldiers happens through the desert. Bill Carson, the man with knowledge of the whereabouts of the gold, dying from thirst, persuades Tuco to get him a drink by disclosing the name of the graveyard where the gold is located. As Tuco goes for the water, Carson dies, but not before revealing the name on the grave to Blondie.
Now, Tuco and Blondie need each other, since each has a different piece of the gold's location. Tuco takes Blondie, near death, to the mission of his brother, a priest, where Blondie recovers. One of the movie's most touching scenes happens here, when Tuco and his brother (Luigi Pistilli) confront each other about the mistakes each has made in life. When they leave the priest's mission, they dress in the clothing of the dead soldiers, trying to fool Confederate soldiers. However, the plan backfires and they are captured by Union soldiers, who take them to a Union prison camp. Angel Eyes has followed the trail of Bill Carson to the prison camp and has infiltrated the union military running the Union prison camp. Angel Eyes tortures Tuco for the information about the gold's location, and eventually gets Tuco to break, but when he learns that Blondie knows the name of the grave and not Tuco, he changes tactics. Figuring that Blondie is "smart enough to know that talking won't save you", he proposes a partnership, and, accompanied by five or six other killers, they leave to find the gold. Tuco escapes from the camp and eventually is found by Blondie. [Before meeting Blondie, he encounters the last bounty hunter, now a one-armed left-handed gunman. The hunter bursts in on him while he is immersed in a bathtub. He gloats over his (Tuco's) position and tells him how he (the Hunter) has prepared himself for this moment by learning to shoot with his left hand. Tuco listens silently, and without warning, shoots from a gun that he was holding under the soapy bathwater. As the hunter collapses, Tuco delivers a memorable line - "When you have to shoot, shoot. Dont talk!!!"]The two resume their old partnership, and kill Angel Eyes' gunmen together, but Angel Eyes himself escapes.
Before the film's climax Tuco and Blondie stumble on a battle between the Union and the Confederates, fighting for a useless bridge. The battle is in their way, so they decide to blow up the bridge, not only to just make all the soldiers go somewhere else to fight, but also to do a favor for the drunken Union captain, who briefly befriended them before being fatally wounded in one of the many battles over the bridge. While they are setting up the dynamite, Tuco convinces Blondie to reveal the name of the grave. Blondie acquiesces and reveals that the gold is buried under the grave of 'Arch Stanton'.
After the destruction of the bridge, the two wait until the next day when the armies finally clear out after pounding each other with their cannons, then cross the river. On the Confederate side Blondie encounters a young abandoned soldier who is dying, and offers the boy some comfort. While he is distracted Tuco deserts Blondie and finally enters the graveyard as the film's legendary climax begins.
The legendary showdown is preceded by a famous sequence known as the 'Ecstasy of Gold'. It features Tuco searching frantically around the graveyard for the grave of Arch Stanton. This scene is accompanied to Ennio Morricone's operatic score and is considered by many to be the highlight of the film. Eventually Tuco's search ends but before he can begin digging he's held at gunpoint by Blondie who in turn is held at gunpoint by Angel Eyes who has finally caught up to both of them. However it is revealed that Blondie lied to Tuco and that Arch Stanton's grave contains only a decomposing corpse.
Blondie then leads the three of them into an empty patch of land in the middle of the cemetery. He writes the name of the real grave under a stone which he places in the center of the land. The trio then each take triangulating positions. After a Mexican standoff the shootout begins... and ends in moments.
Having previously unloaded Tuco's pistol during the night after they blew up the bridge, (unbeknownst to Tuco, of course), Blondie wins the showdown by killing Angel Eyes. Blondie then reveals that the real location of the gold is an unmarked grave right next to Arch Stanton (the stone has no name on it, because there is no name on the grave). Tuco digs up the gold from the grave only to find himself staring down the barrel of Blondie's gun who holds a noose in his hand. After placing Tuco into the noose, fastening it to a nearby tree and making Tuco stand on the unstable wooden cross of one of the graves, Blondie takes half the gold and rides away while Tuco cries for help.
In a dramatic twist, Blondie turns around to shoot the rope above Tuco's head, as he used to do in their times of partnership, freeing him one last time before riding off as Tuco screams in rage in his wake.
Critical opinion and analysis
Critical opinion of the film on initial release was mixed as many reviewers at that time looked down on the spaghetti western genre. However, opinion has evolved and today it is regarded by many critics as a classic. It remains one of the most popular and well known Westerns and is considered to be one of the greatest of its genre. Particular praise has been given out to Eli Wallach's performance who some have believed steals the film from his two co-stars.
The film is the highest rated Western in the IMDB Top 250 List of movies and is frequently in the top ten films. These rankings are based on user ratings. It was part of Time's 100 Greatest movies of the last century as selected by critics Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel. It is also one of Roger Ebert's Great Movies. In addition, it is one of the few films which enjoy a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes [link]
Cinematography
Fans have noted an uncommon type of cinematography used in the film. As Ebert noted,
- Sergio Leone established a rule that he follows throughout "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." The rule is that the ability to see is limited by the sides of the frame. At important moments in the film, what the camera cannot see, the characters cannot see, and that gives Leone the freedom to surprise us with entrances that cannot be explained by the practical geography of his shots. There is a moment, for example, when men do not notice a vast encampment of the Union Army until they stumble upon it. And a moment in a cemetery when a man materializes out of thin air even though he should have been visible for a mile. And the way men walk down a street in full view and nobody is able to shoot them, maybe because they are not in the same frame with them.[link]
Trivia
- In Italian, Eastwood's character is sometimes called "Biondo", which simply means, "The Blonde Man". Angel Eyes in the original Italian is "Sentenza" ("Verdict" or "Sentence").
- The bridge in the film had to be remade due to an army general blowing up the bridge before the cameras were rolling. The general asked a camera man if he was ready, when the camera man replied “yes” the general thought that meant he was ready for the bridge to be blown up. Naturally the army had to rebuild the bridge while other shots were being filmed.
- Because the Italian title translates literally as The Good, the Ugly, the Bad, reversing the last two terms, ads for the original Italian release show Tuco before Angel Eyes, and when they were translated into English Angel Eyes was erroneously labelled "The Ugly" and Tuco "The Bad".
- Quentin Tarantino in a 2002 Sight & Sound poll voted The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as the greatest film of all time. Tarantino has often said that the film's climax is the most perfect ever filmed.
- Clint Eastwood's classic film, Unforgiven, is dedicated to Sergio Leone (and Don Siegel).
- The film was not released in America until early 1968. The original Italian cut was 2 hours and 59 minutes long, but when released in America, it had been cut to 2 hours and 41 minutes. Now, the film has been restored and released on DVD, with 18 minutes of rarely seen footage and deleted scenes.
- The film's graveyard discovery theme, titled The Ecstasy Of Gold, is used to open shows by the band Metallica. This piece is played live and featured on their album S&M. The Ecstasy of Gold is also played at the start of The Opie and Anthony Show on CBS Radio and XM Satellite Radio. It is also the main sample used in Jay-Z's song Blue Print 2.
- During the scene where Blondie and Tuco are planting explosives on the bridge, a car can be seen in the distance, moving right to left.
- Blondie and Tuco use dynamite to destroy the bridge, but it wasn't invented until 1866, after the end of the Civil War.
- The title of the film first gained wide usage in America as a colloquial phrase when Robert F. Kennedy used it as a slogan during his 1968 presidential campaign. Ever since then, innumerable TV and radio announcers, newspapers, politicians, and others have used "the good, the bad and the ugly" as a phrase, often to describe an overview of the various qualities of something (a sports team, for instance).
- There are multiple references to the film in media. One is in the PC game Fallout 2. There are 3 NPC bandit leaders named "Blondie", "Angel Eyes" and "Tuco" hiding in the cave. There is also a safe in the same cave, containing a considerable amount of gold.
- The band Gorillaz made a hit single "Clint Eastwood" on a sample of this movie.
- When Tuco and Blondie are riding in the wagon towards the cemetery, they pass through enemy lines. This was cut from the American release print. Also, in that same sequence, (one which was not cut from any print) the two stumble upon dust-covered Union soldiers. Tuco mistakes them for Confederates and screams: "Hurray! Hurrah for the Confederacy! Down with General Grant! Hurrah for General... Lee! Yeah! Lee!" But, in 1862, Grant was not yet the main commander of the forces of the North.
- The battle scene at the end was somewhat anachronistic with its use of trench warfare. While such combat did became popularized later in the Civil War (specifically during the sieges of Atlanta and Petersburg in 1864-5), by the time of the film's events (early 1862) it was not, and the battle scene is fictional and not based on any historical event. Leone meant the scene to be reminiscent of World War I more than a documentary depiction of the New Mexico campaign.
- The famous war sequence of the movie is mainly an exaggeration of the combat that took place around Texas during the Civil War. Very little conflict in fact rose in Texas.
- Eli Wallach was almost poisoned during filming when he accidentally drank from a bottle of acid that a film technician had set next to his soda bottle. Wallach mentioned this in his autobigraphy and complained that while Sergio Leone was a brilliant director, he was very lax about ensuring the safety of his actors during dangerous scenes.
- Wallach was endangered in another scene, where he was to be hung after a pistol was shot and the horse underneath him was to run away in fright. While the rope around Wallach's neck was severed, the horse was frightened a little too well. The horse rode off for about a mile with Wallach still on top of the horse and his hands bound behind his back.
- The third time Wallach's life was threatened was during the scene where he and the actor he is handcuffed to jump out of a moving train. The jumping part was fine, where his life was endangered came afterwards, when Wallach's character attempts to sever the chain binding him to the (now dead) henchman. Tuco places the body on the railroad tracks, making the train roll over the chain to sever it. What Wallach (and presumable everyone else) was not aware of was the heavy, iron steps that jutted out of every box car about a foot. If Wallach had stood up from his prone position at the wrong time, one of the jutting steps could have taken his head clean off.
See also
External links
- [www.spaghetti-western.net] The Spaghetti Western Database
- [Official Site]
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