The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

From Free net encyclopedia

Template:Infobox Film 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 Benedito Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez, "The Rat", or "The Ugly").

1 Overview
2 Plot
3 Critical Opinion and Analysis
4 Trivia
5 See also
6 External links

[edit]

Overview

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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 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 movie is particularly known for its original music score, created by Ennio Morricone. The main title theme is considered by many as the most recognized music affiliated with the western 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 says the main theme was meant to resemble coyotes howling. The music of the film's climactic sequence in the graveyard is also noteworthy, as the scenes are first accompanied with the enormously popular sounds of L'Estasi Dell'Oro (The Ecstasy Of Gold) - a recording of which is also played to open the band Metallica's concerts - and then by Il Triello (The Trio) for the famous three-way showdown. This epic showdown with the three participants is considered to be one of the most electifying 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 closeups on eyes and fingers. The first ten minutes of the film have no dialogues 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,"[1] only twice in the second movie; and "Blondie," regularly in the third. These monikers have led 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.

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."

Image:ClintEastwood.JPG

Image:LeeVanCleef.JPG

Image:EliWallach.JPG

[edit]

Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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. Next, we are introduced to the duo, Tuco (Eli Wallach) and 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 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 his brother, a priest, where Blondie recovers. 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 who 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, but takes Blondie to find the gold. Tuco escapes from the camp and eventually meets with Blondie who deserts Angel Eyes.

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 died because of it. 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, 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 finally catches up on 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 (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 and taking half the gold, Blondie 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.

[edit]

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 fifteen 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 [2]

[edit]

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.[3]

This enables the audience to be closer to the character as we see what he sees and it also enables the film to achieve a certain mystical feel.

[edit]

Interpretations

Some viewers have interpreted the movie as an allegory for the relationship between God, Satan and Humanity. Although Leone never indicated that his film was to be taken in anything but the literal sense, the movie is filled with symbolism to support the argument. Most notably in the scene where Tuco takes Blondie to his brother's (who is a priest) church to rescue Blondie. The climactic graveyard scene also supports this argument.

In the shootout, it is only Blondie and Angel Eyes (The Good and the Bad) who had any hope of winning the shootout while Tuco (the Ugly) can only watch. This is seen to represent the battle between God and Satan for the souls of mankind. In that same scene, Tuco (the Ugly) can be seen standing upon the cross of the unknown grave as he struggles to maintain balance and thus prevent his own death. Man, as represented by the Ugly, both attempts to stand upon the firm foundation of the Cross (Christianity) while simultaneously attracted by the "bad" force of greed towards the $100,000 sitting in front of him.

Another important yet subtle clue that supports this interpretation is the fact that on the occasions when Blondie was at his most vulnerable, he was rescued by lucky coincidences. Tuco has Blondie cornered and is about to execute him when remarkably, and for no reason, a cannon is fired into the room and Blondie escapes. In the desert torture scene he is about to be finished by Tuco when a carriage arrives and diverts his curiosity. Blondie overhears information that Tuco needs and so he takes him to his brother's church where he recovers. In the prison camp, Tuco is brutally tortured by Angel Eyes while Blondie is merely asked to accompany him. These recurring instances of Deus Ex Machina hint towards Blondie's allegorical position.

Also in the film is a reference to Judas Iscariot, the infamous betrayer of Jesus Christ. Tuco, in fact, is the one making the allusion, bombing it at Clinton Eastwood's character before he is about to be executed through lynching, which he remarkably escapes from.

There is a scene early in the movie where Angel Eyes sees Tuco, about to be hanged, and comments that even he has "a golden-haired angel" watching over him. This supports that Blondie (God) is watching over mankind (Tuco). Also, blonde hair is commonly associated with heavenly beings such as angels.

[edit]

Moral Ambiguity

The other point of discussion among both fans and critics is the meaning of the phrase: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The opening scenes which introduces the audience to each character is accompanied by captions telling the audience who is Good, who is Bad and who is Ugly. Yet, Clint Eastwood's character like the earlier films is presented as morally ambiguous. He abandons Tuco in the opening scenes without leaving him any money and Tuco follows him in a quest of revenge. Tuco who is a criminal of considerable crimes is explained later in the film to have turned to crime in order to avoid poverty. Angel Eyes is established as a ruthless cold blooded murderer, yet in the opening scene after killing a man and one of his sons, he leaves the other son alive. In the Italian version of the film, Angel Eyes is not meant to be the personfication of wickedness that he became in the 1968 US cut. At one point he too shows that he is capable of compassion when he gives a bottle of whiskey to a group of wounded soldiers to ease their pain. A rare sentimental moment for a hardened drifter and bounty hunter, yet such ambiguous traits were anathema to the approach to the genre of Hollywood directors such as John Ford and Howard Hawks. In fact it is hardly surprising that US distributors would have dispensed with scenes mitigating Lee Van Cleef's character.

One interpretation is that the title refers to 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' present in each human. This has credence given the revisionist nature of the spaghetti westerns which stood in sharp contrast to simplistic nature of the earlier western films. In this sense, the title is meant ironically as the film questions and rejects the simplistic good/bad morality of the Western.

Other interpretations state that the events of the film are something of a test for the characters in order to show each one's true nature. Tuco betrays Blondie after he reveals the location of the grave (about which Blondie lied), Angel Eyes brutally tortures Tuco in order to extort information from him, and finally Blondie, after defeating Angel Eyes, chooses to split the gold with Tuco (and to split the rope about to hang him) when he could have admittedly walked away with the entire treasure without any fear of fatality.

[edit]

Anti-War

The film is also notable for its anti-war themes. While the main plot is a treasure hunt, the film as noted by Ebert and other critics is actually a commentary on the American Civil War and perhaps war in general. These themes are present on both the macro and micro levels.

Blondie and Tuco frequently find themselves in situations concerning the war, most notably when they are captured and when they later blow up the bridge in the final scenes of the film. However, the film takes an ambivalent view and presents both the Union and Confederate sides fairly. The Union camp is headed by a crippled general who wishes to treat the prisoners of war with dignity, though he is supplanted by Angel Eyes. In one of the most haunting scenes of the film, Blondie and Tuco later come across a battlefield where thousands of soldiers are killed. When Blondie comes across one of them who is about to die, he offers him a cigar to give him a final moment of reprieve before he dies. Another powerful image is in the Union POW camp where a group of soldiers are forced to play music in order to hide Tuco's screams while he's being tortured (a reference to the real-life orchestras organized at Nazi death camps in the Holocaust). The large-scale battle scene towards the end of the film was meant to recall the pointless trench warfare of World War I.

On the minor level, the relationship between Tuco and Blondie can be said to represent the Civil War. While both clearly dislike each other, they need each other and on some level even respect each other. While it can be argued that Tuco is the worse of the two, Blondie is certainly no saint as he consciously commits treachery against Tuco early on; it can be argued that his brutal punishment at Tuco's hands is even justifiable on a certain level. Their relationship is said to represent the gray nature and ambiguity of war where often there are few heroes and villains.

Even the main story can be considered a satire on war-profiteering. The three men care only about the gold in the graveyard and little about the Civil War. Tuco's final search for gold in a graveyard is a visual metaphor for people who make money from the deaths of men.

[edit]

Trivia

In Italian, Eastwood's character is sometimes called "Biondo senza nome", which simply means, "The Blonde Man with No Name". Angel Eyes in the original Italian is "Sentenza" ("Verdict").

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.

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.

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.

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 Note that the song is named after the staring role

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 anarchronistic 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.

This film, along with Sergio Leone's other Westerns (Once Upon a Time in the West and A Fistful of Dollars), is considered one of the best ever made.

[edit]