Year Of The Western! #10 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

And here we are, 1/3 of the way through the list. I am glad that this was the 10th film to get to, not just because I was really looking forward to this particular film, but because I have some foundation with the previous 9 in order to appreciate how great this film really is. Had I watched it first, I would have still loved it, but the bar would have been set too high and my lense through which I would view the rest would have been artificially skewed. 

Film #10 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production. 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is just one of those films that even if you have never seen a frame of it, you know about it. Whether it be by name alone, the iconic image of Clint Eastwood, or the amazing score. People have heard of this film. It has shaped westerns and pop culture. 

Like I stated in an earlier post, I had only see half (probably closer to the 1/3) of the this film before this viewing but I have owned the score for years. It is an odd way to approach loving a movie I had never seen, but stranger travels have taken place. I owe the journey to Metallica and their album, S&M. It came out my senior year in college and we had gotten an advance copy sent to my college radio station. I wasn't (and still am not) much of a Metallica fan but the first track 'The Ecstasy of Gold' knocked me on my ass. I thought there was a part of Metallica I had been missing, so I dug a little bit, very at the little time, and learned the true origins of the music. I then stopped listening to S&M and bought the full score of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I think I upgraded nicely.

So the plot of the film is pretty straight forward. There are three men: Blondie 'The Good' (Clint Eastwood), Angel Eyes 'The Bad' (Lee Van Cleef) and Tuco 'The Ugly' (Eli Wallach, most recently seen on this list as the bad guy in The Magnificent Seven), which all three find out through various means that a Confederate soldier stole $200,000 in gold coins and buried it in a coffin in a massive graveyard. The story then becomes a series of complications/alliances between the three men as they all are trying to get the gold. 

That is a very simple and understated explanation. While this film wears the clothes of  Western, it feels more like a grand adventure film. At various points, Blondie is trying to be rid of Tuco, but then the tables turn and Tuco is hunting down Blondie, and eventually they team up after learning that Angel Eyes knows they know about the gold. This feels very Indiana Jones in the sense that you have a common goal with a known enemy but you team up with them because the devil you know is better than than the one you don't know. Throughout the journey, the three will cross paths and have to be reluctantly involved in the western most edges of the Civil War. 

I really liked the Civil War backdrop for this story. It provided a big problem for three as they had to navigate between the Union and the Confederacy while just trying to get to the gold. They know they have to cross multiple enemy fronts in order to reach the cemetery in question. Its not a wrinkle I have seen in the previous films I have watched, but it really makes the world seem bigger and more alive when the unrelated actions of the troops in the background may affect what lies ahead. 

This sequence, when Blondie and Tuco team up (again... its complicated) to take out Angel Eye's men, they are walking through a town that has been blown up in to splinters as the Union's cannons continually fire on it. I like that not only do the two have to deal with bad(der) guys with guns, there is always the chance of random cannon balls finishing the job for everyone. 

I suppose it wouldn't do this film justice to not talk about the three leads.

Clint Eastwood as Blondie is just goddam cool. He always seems to be two steps ahead of everyone and his face doesn't give away anything of what he is thinking. He is a man of few words, but when he speaks, its usually sharpened with sarcasm and I loved it. Though he does kill a lot of people in the movie, he has a sense of honor and decency about him. There is a quiet moment when he puts his jacket around a dying Confederate soldier gently like a blanket and then offers him a smoke that shows that he doesn't really care about the war and that it was just important to give this man a last moment's comfort before passing away.

Lee Van Cleef as Angel Eyes is what Blondie would be if he didn't have a moral compass. There is a rule he does abide by, if you pay him to complete a  job, he will complete it. He will use anything at his disposal to get what he wants, including posing as an officer at a Union army prison camp in order to steal from the captured Confederates and rough them up for information regarding the man that buried the gold. Van Cleef is so matter of fact in how he carries himself, especially since he knows that if he doesn't get the information he wants from asking, that he will get it from beating (or having his larger officer pal do it) the person to death to get it. He does deserve the title The Bad.

Eli Wallach as Tuco is the biggest surprise of the film for me. He is actually the main character in the film (as he gets the most screen time), and he is the most complicated. Never once did I doubt that Tuco was only looking our for Tuco, and never did I doubt that he was a bad man (his self satisfied joy at forcing Blondie to walk the desert without shade or water shows that), but I did feel some sympathy for him in the way he always carried himself bigger and more important that what he was. He will take any set back and defeat and within seconds make it fit in with his personal narrative of how it was always meant to be that way or he will outright lie to make himself feel better about how things went. He has a conversation with his brother, who is the head priest at a mission that Tuco and Blondie were recovering at, and his brother is ashamed the Tuco is a thief and that he missed their parents' death. Tuco storms out of the mission only to tell Blondie that his brother was so happy to see him and some other such puffery. Blondie doesn't care, but Tuco feels it is important to always have the myth of Tuco be big and out in front. He is tragic and will never truly win, but you do feel for him. He is the dark and abused heart of the film.

One last bit about Eli Wallach. I was terrified I was going to watch him die on screen when he had his head down near some railroad tracks. He is waiting for a train to pass by to break the handcuff chain between him and a dead guard. It comes and it does the job but...  just watch the scene.

 

You won't see anything like that today. Had he had his head a few inches higher, he would have been decapitated. The Good, the Bad, and the Headless. Still a real well done shoot, though.

That brings me to the directing. 

Sergio Leone directed the hell out of this film. The transitions between scenes, the edits, the close ups to the characters eyes showing the tensions build. Every inch of this 3 hour film is stuffed full of style and beautiful shots. I wish I had a better vocabulary to describe how well this film was shot. It is definitely the result of a singular focused vision. Finding out that Eastwood grew tired of Leone's perfectionism and never worked with him again is kind of a back handed compliment to Leone. He was so good that you worked with him for three films and he elevated you to stardom, but he was seeking perfection at his job that you didn't want to work with him again? I wonder how much of Leone's attention to detail ended up in Eastwood's directing efforts.  

And last, but certainly not least, the score. Ennio Morricone can do no wrong in my book. Everything I have heard of his, I have loved. His music brings such character (with the three characters having their own theme in the film) and texture to an already densely packed spectacle of a film that it just sends this film to the stratosphere. 

When I think of westerns, this will always likely be the one my mind goes to first. When I think of great all time films, this is now on my list going forward.

If you have not seen this film, watch it. If you have seen this film, watch it again.

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? Well Angel Eyes is an odd name, but it fits Lee Van Cleef's face, so I am good with that. That man was the angel of death. 
• Beautiful landscapes? Yes. Start the film at the beginning and then stop it at the end. 
• Does a building catch fire? No, but there is a building at blown by cannon fire and a bridge that blows up due a lot of dynamite.
• How many Ernest Borgnines? None, and I fear that will be a trend with the Italian westerns. I am sure there are good characters in this cast that are in every western, but I wouldn't know it to look at. 
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? Not a song, but the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is simple amazing. 

Added bonus music. Here is the Ecstasy of Gold. May it change your life.  

Rating:

6 of 5 tin stars. I am breaking my rules here a bit, but it deserves it. A masterpiece of a film with great acting, beautiful landscapes, amazing directing, and a score that might be more well known than the film itself. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is Great, Great, and Great.