Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The (1966)
Review #1,261 |
THE SCOOP
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef
Plot: A bounty hunting scam joins two men in an uneasy alliance against a third in a race to find a fortune in gold buried in a remote cemetery.
Genre: Western
Awards: -
Runtime: 179min
Rating: PG for some action violence.
International Sales: Park Circus
Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IN RETROSPECT (Spoilers: NO)
“You see, in this world there's two
kinds of people, my friend: those with loaded guns and those who dig.”
Spaghetti
westerns don’t get any bigger or more epic than this. A must-watch in every sense of the word,
Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the
Ugly may be presented in all of its 3-hour glory, but it is so entertaining
that you might actually forgo that toilet break. It is however not Leone’s magnum opus – that
distinction goes to what I think is the greatest western in the history of
cinema: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).
That,
however, should not take away the utter pleasure of seeing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly unfold. It is a brilliant piece of populist
filmmaking and a sparkling showcase of the supreme talents on both sides of the
camera.
We
have, on one end, three faces that you will remember for ages: a
tobacco-chewing Clint Eastwood (playing Blondie the Good), a smug Lee Van Cleef
(Angel Eyes the Bad), and a cunning Eli Wallach (Tuco the Ugly), all of whom
give terrific performances.
While
the main star of the movie is Eastwood, who continues his character’s cool if
stoic persona from the two preceding films that make up the ‘Man with No Name’
trilogy – A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
and For a Few Dollars More (1965),
the most memorable display is from the great Wallach, whose character (painfully
dumb he may be) gives the film its strong comic thrust that is a delight to
watch.
On
the other end, we have Leone and his crew, particularly composer Ennio
Morricone, whose sensational score remains his most famous. Cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli and editor
Nino Baragli (both frequent collaborators of Pier Paolo Pasolini as well)
realize Leone’s vision of a gritty, grim if sometimes absurd western through
their craft.
There
are some outstanding moments to savour: the climactic sequence at the cemetery
springs vividly to mind, accompanied by Morricone’s soaring ‘Ecstasy of
Gold’. Leone cranks up the suspense
through rapid intercutting of extreme close-ups, a cinematic technique now very
much indebted to him.
The
story unfolds with all the three main characters given due introductions: in a
race against each other, the trio attempt to find a fortune hidden in a grave
that would set himself up for life. Along
the way, they stumble headlong into the Civil War. In one particularly poignant scene,
Morricone’s emotive ‘Story of a Soldier’ is diegetically played by a lonely
band of prisoners-of-war.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the definitive spaghetti
western, a more stylized and rhythmic cousin to the more operatic and
nostalgia-laden Once Upon a Time in the
West. Go see both, and you may find
yourself placing Leone on the pedestal reserved only for masters of
cinema.
Verdict:
The legendary spaghetti western to end all spaghetti westerns.
GRADE: A+
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