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#697 - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Sergio Leone, 1966
During the American Civil War, a trio of gunslingers compete against each other in order to be the first to find a buried crate of Confederate gold.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is arguably the closest there is to a consensus pick for Sergio Leone's best film and I don't see much reason to disagree with that assessment. It sees the conclusion of the loosely-connected Dollars trilogy, a collection of features united mainly by the presence of Clint Eastwood as a gruff, steely-eyed gunslinger who has little motivation beyond acquiring money through frequently violent means (and also apparently playing separate characters in each film). A Fistful of Dollars saw him play both sides of a border-town gang war for as much cash as possible, while For a Few Dollars More saw him team up with Lee Van Cleef's rival bounty hunter in order to claim one extremely lucrative reward. Elements of both those films find their way into the third film as it involves constantly-shifting loyalties and unlikely companions working their way towards an incredible prize; this time around it's a box of gold buried by some rogue Confederate soldiers. A series of unfortunate events results in the box drawing the attention of three separate men. Eastwood is the supposedly "good" character, a bounty hunter who has a scam worked out with Eli Wallach's "ugly" bandit that involves Eastwood constantly capturing and releasing Wallach in order to keep claiming the bounties on Wallach's head. Meanwhile, there's a hired killer (Van Cleef) who quickly establishes himself as the "bad" when he shows himself willing to stop at nothing in order to claim what he believes is his.
While Leone would expand upon the epic scope with his later films, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly features that scope without sacrificing the personality that made his first two films so much fun to watch in the first place. Much of that is due to the three leads. Eastwood's iconic presence full of grit and squint manages to compensate for his character's more glaring flaws, as does Van Cleef's gleefully sadistic turn as a character who is similar to Eastwood's in terms of motivation and competence but is far more brutal in his treatment of others. Caught between these two is Wallach, who may be a callous criminal (and listening to court officials rattle off some especially despicable-sounding crimes does make liking him seem very questionable even if you were to assume that they were made up for the purposes of the scam) but he's far and away the most human of the three. While Eastwood and Van Cleef play some rather flat characters (albeit with their own little moments that hint at greater depths, such as Eastwood idly playing with a kitten at one point), Wallach is the grimy, rat-faced heart of the film; without him, things just don't work. His extremely animated delivery and mannerisms certainly make him an excellent counter-point to the laconic coolness of the other two leads to the point where attempts to develop his backstory don't feel like intrusions. Though it's easy to miss the rest of the cast, one can't help but note minor characters like a brutish one-eyed soldier or a drunken captain with dreams of destruction.
In a similar vein to Kubrick, Leone is only so concerned with developing his characters as they serve to prop up the rest of the film. Even then, the epic nature of the tale does have its fair share of lulls, especially when you end up watching the Restored Edition (which doesn't really add anything of note). While Leone is a filmmaker who has built a reputation on slow and deliberate pacing, there are some instances where it is felt in a less-than-preferable way. Fortunately, things are kept rolling along at a strong enough pace that such instances are rare and ultimately negligible. Being a film where actions frequently speak louder than words, what little dialogue there is ends up being extremely blunt for the most part (though I do wonder if something is lost in the translation from Italian to English), but that only adds to the film's rugged, laconic charm. The film definitely excels at visual storytelling and manages to use a wide variety of techniques to maximum effect, whether it's sweeping panoramic shots of the dusty scenery or the infamously tight close-ups on the characters' filthy, sweaty faces Though it's easy to write off the film's eclectic use of cinematic language as being just for show and occasionally resulting in a plot hole, these instances are simply a by-product and to allow yourself to be too distracted by them is like noticing the edge of a theatre stage. The intent behind such bombastic cinematic tools is easily observable; it was only on this most recent viewing that I noticed how carefully orchestrated every shot, cut, and character action in the film's iconic climax is meant to be. The more tacitly dangerous moments are great, such as Wallach being made to do a potentially lethal stunt involving an oncoming train or flying debris threatening to strike our leads for real.
The reason that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly has endured for almost fifty years after its release is that it manages to create a grand work of cinema without succumbing to the same dry stuffiness and broad sentiment that could and would undermine other epics of the era. The film isn't exactly devoid of sentiment either as it adds in moments great and small that stop the film and its characters from being a bland, apathy-inducing (but good-looking) mess. The hypocrisy of the so-called civilised folks is a hold-over from the last couple of films, but that soon bleeds into superficial anti-war rhetoric as the trio venture from relatively peaceful frontier towns to a number of war-torn locations, each one more miserable than the last. These range from stockades where prisoners are made to play music to cover the sound of their comrades being tortured to a strategically redundant bridge that is still the place where a bloody and pointless battle rages without end. This being a film about a bunch of cowboys trying to kill each other over some money, it's of course unsurprising that any trenchant anti-war commentary serves as little more than window-dressing to the film's main plot. Even that knowledge isn't enough to prevent this from being an out-and-out fun film that is most definitely worth busting out again and again...and I never even mentioned Ennio Morricone's score.
Sergio Leone, 1966
During the American Civil War, a trio of gunslingers compete against each other in order to be the first to find a buried crate of Confederate gold.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is arguably the closest there is to a consensus pick for Sergio Leone's best film and I don't see much reason to disagree with that assessment. It sees the conclusion of the loosely-connected Dollars trilogy, a collection of features united mainly by the presence of Clint Eastwood as a gruff, steely-eyed gunslinger who has little motivation beyond acquiring money through frequently violent means (and also apparently playing separate characters in each film). A Fistful of Dollars saw him play both sides of a border-town gang war for as much cash as possible, while For a Few Dollars More saw him team up with Lee Van Cleef's rival bounty hunter in order to claim one extremely lucrative reward. Elements of both those films find their way into the third film as it involves constantly-shifting loyalties and unlikely companions working their way towards an incredible prize; this time around it's a box of gold buried by some rogue Confederate soldiers. A series of unfortunate events results in the box drawing the attention of three separate men. Eastwood is the supposedly "good" character, a bounty hunter who has a scam worked out with Eli Wallach's "ugly" bandit that involves Eastwood constantly capturing and releasing Wallach in order to keep claiming the bounties on Wallach's head. Meanwhile, there's a hired killer (Van Cleef) who quickly establishes himself as the "bad" when he shows himself willing to stop at nothing in order to claim what he believes is his.
While Leone would expand upon the epic scope with his later films, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly features that scope without sacrificing the personality that made his first two films so much fun to watch in the first place. Much of that is due to the three leads. Eastwood's iconic presence full of grit and squint manages to compensate for his character's more glaring flaws, as does Van Cleef's gleefully sadistic turn as a character who is similar to Eastwood's in terms of motivation and competence but is far more brutal in his treatment of others. Caught between these two is Wallach, who may be a callous criminal (and listening to court officials rattle off some especially despicable-sounding crimes does make liking him seem very questionable even if you were to assume that they were made up for the purposes of the scam) but he's far and away the most human of the three. While Eastwood and Van Cleef play some rather flat characters (albeit with their own little moments that hint at greater depths, such as Eastwood idly playing with a kitten at one point), Wallach is the grimy, rat-faced heart of the film; without him, things just don't work. His extremely animated delivery and mannerisms certainly make him an excellent counter-point to the laconic coolness of the other two leads to the point where attempts to develop his backstory don't feel like intrusions. Though it's easy to miss the rest of the cast, one can't help but note minor characters like a brutish one-eyed soldier or a drunken captain with dreams of destruction.
In a similar vein to Kubrick, Leone is only so concerned with developing his characters as they serve to prop up the rest of the film. Even then, the epic nature of the tale does have its fair share of lulls, especially when you end up watching the Restored Edition (which doesn't really add anything of note). While Leone is a filmmaker who has built a reputation on slow and deliberate pacing, there are some instances where it is felt in a less-than-preferable way. Fortunately, things are kept rolling along at a strong enough pace that such instances are rare and ultimately negligible. Being a film where actions frequently speak louder than words, what little dialogue there is ends up being extremely blunt for the most part (though I do wonder if something is lost in the translation from Italian to English), but that only adds to the film's rugged, laconic charm. The film definitely excels at visual storytelling and manages to use a wide variety of techniques to maximum effect, whether it's sweeping panoramic shots of the dusty scenery or the infamously tight close-ups on the characters' filthy, sweaty faces Though it's easy to write off the film's eclectic use of cinematic language as being just for show and occasionally resulting in a plot hole, these instances are simply a by-product and to allow yourself to be too distracted by them is like noticing the edge of a theatre stage. The intent behind such bombastic cinematic tools is easily observable; it was only on this most recent viewing that I noticed how carefully orchestrated every shot, cut, and character action in the film's iconic climax is meant to be. The more tacitly dangerous moments are great, such as Wallach being made to do a potentially lethal stunt involving an oncoming train or flying debris threatening to strike our leads for real.
The reason that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly has endured for almost fifty years after its release is that it manages to create a grand work of cinema without succumbing to the same dry stuffiness and broad sentiment that could and would undermine other epics of the era. The film isn't exactly devoid of sentiment either as it adds in moments great and small that stop the film and its characters from being a bland, apathy-inducing (but good-looking) mess. The hypocrisy of the so-called civilised folks is a hold-over from the last couple of films, but that soon bleeds into superficial anti-war rhetoric as the trio venture from relatively peaceful frontier towns to a number of war-torn locations, each one more miserable than the last. These range from stockades where prisoners are made to play music to cover the sound of their comrades being tortured to a strategically redundant bridge that is still the place where a bloody and pointless battle rages without end. This being a film about a bunch of cowboys trying to kill each other over some money, it's of course unsurprising that any trenchant anti-war commentary serves as little more than window-dressing to the film's main plot. Even that knowledge isn't enough to prevent this from being an out-and-out fun film that is most definitely worth busting out again and again...and I never even mentioned Ennio Morricone's score.