The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Il buono, Il brutto, Il cattivo)
File:Ilbuonoilbrutto.jpg Original Italian film poster
Directed by	Sergio Leone
Written by	Story: Sergio Leone Luciano Vincenzoni Screenplay: Age & Scarpelli
Produced by	Alberto Grimaldi
Starring	Clint Eastwood Eli Wallach Lee Van Cleef Mario Brega Al Mulock
Cinematography	Tonino Delli Colli
Edited by	Original: Eugenio Alabiso Nino Baragli Restored version: Joe D'Augustine
Music by	Ennio Morricone
Distributed by	United Artists
Release dates	December 23, 1966 December 29, 1967
Running time	161 Min Theatrical 179 Min Director's Cut
Land	Italien
Sprache	Italian
Budget	$1,300,000

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Italian: Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo) is a 1966 Italian epic spaghetti Western directed by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach in the title roles. The screenplay was written by Age & Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni and Leone, based on a story by Vincenzoni and Leone. Director of photography Tonino Delli Colli was responsible for the film's sweeping widescreen cinematography and Ennio Morricone composed the famous film score. It is the third film in the Dollars trilogy following A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965). The plot centers around three gunslingers competing to find a fortune in buried Confederate gold amid the violent chaos of gunfights, hangings, Civil War battles, and prison camps.

Opening on December 23, 1966 in Italy and in the USA on December 29, 1967, the film grossed $6.1 million; but was criticized for its depiction of violence. Leone explains that "the killings in my films are exaggerated because I wanted to make a tongue-in-cheek satire on run-of-the-mill westerns...The west was made by violent, uncomplicated men, and it is this strength and simplicity that I try to recapture in my pictures." To this day, Leone's effort to reinvigorate the timeworn Western is widely acknowledged: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly has been described as by far European cinema's best representative of the Western genre film, and Quentin Tarantino has called it "the best-directed film of all time."

Tagline

• "For three men the Civil War wasn't hell... it was practice"

Plot Overview

The film tells the story of three men who pursue, often at the expense of others, information about the location of a buried treasure of coins. The first character introduced in the movie is Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez (the Ugly) - called Tuco - (Eli Wallach), who has a bounty on his head for numerous crimes. Tuco has a partnership with Blondie (The Good, played by Clint Eastwood) in which the latter turns him in for the reward money which the two then split after Blondie saves Tuco from hanging at the last moment. Meanwhile, a third character called Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef, playing the Bad) has learned of a hidden trunk of gold owned by a Confederate soldier named Bill Carson. He sets off to find the gold.

Soon, Blondie grows tired of his relationship with Tuco, and leaves Tuco in the desert with no water. Tuco survives and is intent on exacting revenge on his former partner. He finds Blondie, and turns the tables by planning to abandon him in the desert. However, before Tuco can complete his torture in the New Mexico desert, a runaway stagecoach full of dead and dying Confederate soldiers appears. 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 loot is located. As Tuco goes for the water, Carson dies, but not before revealing the name on the grave to Blondie.

Dressed in the uniforms of the dead soldiers, Tuco takes Blondie, near death, to a local Catholic mission run by his brother, a priest. While Blondie recovers, Tuco and his brother (Luigi Pistilli) confront each other about the mistakes each has made in life. After leaving the mission, the two, still impersonating Confederate soldiers are captured and taken to a Union prison camp. Angel Eyes has followed the trail of Bill Carson to the prison camp and is posing as a Union Sergeant.

Angel Eyes and his colleague Wallace beat and torture Tuco until he reveals the location of the cemetery. When Angel Eyes learns that only Blondie knows the name, he changes tactics. He proposes a partnership, and accompanied by five or six other killers, they leave to find the coins. Tuco escapes while being transported from the camp by train, in the process killing Wallace. At the nearest town, Tuco encounters a bounty hunter (Al Mulock) he had wounded at the beginning of the film, who seeks his revenge. As Tuco shoots the bounty hunter, Blondie, who is in the same town with Angel Eyes, recognizes the sound of Tuco's gun, seeks him out, and he and Tuco resume their old partnership. Together they kill Angel Eyes' gunmen along the main street, but Angel Eyes himself escapes.

Tuco and Blondie stumble on a battle between the Union and the Confederates, fighting for a bridge of questionable strategic value. Since the cemetery is on the other side of the bridge, they decide to destroy it and force the soldiers go somewhere else to fight. While they are setting up the dynamite, Tuco reveals that the cemetery is called Sad Hill and Blondie reveals that the coins are buried in a grave marked by the name of Arch Stanton.

On the other side of the river Tuco deserts Blondie by horseback and finally enters the nearby graveyard.

File:GoodBadUgly Mexicanstandoff.gif

The Mexican stand off climax at the Sadhill Cemetery remains one of the most popular scenes in film history.

Tuco frantically searches around the graveyard for the grave of Arch Stanton. Eventually Tuco finds it, 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, Blondie reveals 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.

At the conclusion of a three-way shootout, Blondie shoots Angel Eyes and Tuco finds his gun empty, having been unloaded the previous night by Blondie. Blondie then reveals that the real location of the coins is a grave marked "Unknown" right next to Arch Stanton. Tuco digs up the loot from the grave only to find himself once again staring down the barrel of Blondie's gun, who now 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 coins 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.

Cast/Characters

File:ClintEastwood.JPG

The Good (Blondie).

• Clint Eastwood as Blondie: The Good, the Man With No Name, a phlegmatic, cocksure bounty hunter who competes with Tuco and Angel Eyes to find the buried gold in the middle of the two warring factions of the American Civil War. Blondie and Tuco have a love-hate relationship. Tuco knows the name of the cemetery where the gold is hidden, but Blondie knows the name of the grave where it's buried, forcing them to work together to find the treasure. In spite of this greedy quest, Blondie's pity for the dying soldiers in the chaotic carnage of the War is evident. "I've never seen so many men wasted so badly," he laments. Rawhide had ended its run in 1965 and at that point none of Clint Eastwood's Italian films had been released in the United States. When Leone offered him a role in his next movie it was the only big film offer he had but the actor still needed to be convinced to do it. Leone and his wife traveled to California to persuade Eastwood. Two days later, he agreed to make the movie and would be paid $250,000 plus 10% of the profits from the North American markets – a deal that Leone was not happy with.

File:LeeVanCleef.JPG

The Bad (Angel Eyes).

• Lee Van Cleef as Angel Eyes: The Bad, a ruthless, unfeeling mercenary named "Angel Eyes" Sentenza who kills anyone in his path. When Blondie and Tuco are captured while posing as Confederate soldiers, Angel Eyes is the Union officer who interrogates them and tortures Tuco, eventually learning the name of the cemetery where the gold is buried, but not the tombstone. Angel Eyes forms a fleeting partnership with Blondie, but Tuco and Blondie turn on Angel Eyes when they get their chance. Originally, Leone wanted Charles Bronson to play Angel Eyes but he had already committed to The Dirty Dozen (1967). Leone thought about working with Lee Van Cleef again: "I said to myself that Van Cleef had first played a romantic character in For a Few Dollars More. The idea of getting him to play a character who was the opposite of that began to appeal to me."

File:EliWallach.JPG

The Ugly (Tuco).

• Eli Wallach as Tuco: The Ugly, Tuco Benedito Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez, a comical, oafish, fast talking bandito who is wanted by the authorities. Tuco manages to discover the name of the cemetery where the gold is buried, but he doesn't know the name of the grave - only Blondie does. This state of affairs forces Tuco to become reluctant partners with Blondie. The director originally considered Gian Maria Volonté for the role of Tuco, but felt that the role required someone with "natural comic talent". In the end, Leone chose actor Eli Wallach based on his role in How the West Was Won (1962), in particular, his performance in "The Railroads" scene. Leone met with Wallach in L.A. who was skeptical about playing this type of character again, but after Leone screened the opening credit sequence from For a Few Dollars More, Wallach said: "When do you want me?" The two men got along famously, sharing the same bizarre sense of humor. Leone allowed Wallach to make changes to his character in terms of his outfit and recurring gestures. Both Eastwood and Van Cleef realized that the character of Tuco was close to Leone's heart, and director and Wallach became good friends. Van Cleef observed, "Tuco is the only one of the trio the audience gets to know all about. We meet his brother and find out where he came from and why he became a bandit. But Clint's character and mine remain mysteries."
• Aldo Giuffrè as Union Captain: A drunken Union captain who befriends Tuco and Blondie.
• Mario Brega as Cpl. Wallace. A thuggish prison guard who works for Angel Eyes and tortures Tuco to get him to reveal the hidden location of the treasure.
• Antonio Casale as Jackson: The dying Bill Carson. He shares the secret of the gold's location with Tuco, telling him the name of the cemetery where it can be found, but tells only Blondie the name of the gravestone where it is hidden, and then dies.
• Luigi Pistilli as Father Pablo Ramirez: Tuco's brother.
• Antonio Casas as Stevens
• Rada Rassimov as Maria: A prostitute beaten by Angel Eyes.
• Al Mulock as One-armed Bounty Hunter. Seeks revenge, only to be killed by Tuco.
• Claudio Scarchilli as Bounty Hunter in Ghost Town
• Sergio Mendizábal as Blonde Bounty Hunter
• John Bartha as Sheriff: Captures Tuco.
• Sandro Scarchilli as Deputy:
• Molino Rocho as Captain Harper: The good captain at the Union concentration camp whose leg is slowly deteriorating by gangrene. Harper warns Angel Eyes not to be dishonest on his watch.
• Benito Stefanelli as Angel Eyes Gang Member: Henchman.
• Aldo Sambrell as Angel Eyes Gang Member: Henchman.
• Lorenzo Robledo as Angel Eyes Gang Member. Henchman.
• Enzo Petito as General store owner: The guileless store keeper.
• Livio Lorenzon as Baker:
• Angelo Novi as Monk
• Chelo Alonso as Stevens' Wife

Origins

After the success of For a Few Dollars More, executives at United Artists approached the film’s screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni to sign a contract for the rights to the film and for the next one. He, producer Alberto Grimaldi and Sergio Leone had no plans but with their blessing Vincenzoni pitched an idea about “a film about three rogues who are looking for some treasure at the time of the American Civil War.” The studio agreed but wanted to know the cost for this next film. At the same time, Grimaldi was trying to broker his own deal but Vincenzoni’s deal was more lucrative. The two men struck an agreement with UA for a million dollar budget with the studio advancing $500,000 up front and 50% of the box office takings outside of Italy. The total budget would end up being $1.3 million.

Leone built upon the screenwriter’s original concept to “show the absurdity of war...the Civil War which the characters encounter, in my frame of reference, is useless, stupid: it does not involve a 'good cause.'" An avid history buff, Leone said, “I had read somewhere that 120,000 people died in Southern camps such as Andersonville. And I was not ignorant of the fact that there were camps in the North. You always get to hear about the shameful behaviour of the losers, never the winners.” The Betterville Camp that Blondie and Tuco are imprisoned in were based on steel engravings of Andersonville. In fact, many shots in the film were influenced by archival photographs taken by Mathew Brady.

While Leone developed Vincenzoni’s idea into a script, the screenwriter recommended the comedy-writing team of Agenore Incrucci and Furio Scarpelli to work on it with Leone and Sergio Donati. According to Leone, "I couldn’t use a single thing they’d written. It was the grossest deception of my life." Donati agreed, saying, "There was next to nothing of them in the final script. They wrote only the first part. Just one line." Vincenzoni claims that he wrote the screenplay in 11 days, but he soon left the project after his relationship with Leone became strained. The three main characters all contain autobiographical elements of Leone. In an interview he said, "[Sentenza] has no spirit, he's a professional in the most banal sense of the term. Like a robot. This isn't the case with the other two. On the methodical and careful side of my character, I’d be nearer Blondie: but my most profound sympathy always goes towards the Tuco side...He can be touching with all that tenderness and all that wounded humanity.”

The film’s working title was The Two Magnificent Tramps and was changed just before shooting began when Vincenzoni thought up The Good, The Bad & The Ugly which Leone loved.

Production

The film was made with approval from the Franco regime and with the technical assistance from the Spanish army. The cast includes 1,500 local militia members as extras. Eastwood remembers, “They would care if you were doing a story about Spaniards and about Spain. Then they’d scrutinize you very tough, but the fact that you’re doing a western that’s supposed to be laid in southwest America or Mexico, they couldn’t care less what your story or subject is.”

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 autobiography and complained that while 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 hanged 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 to whom he is handcuffed jump out of a moving train. The jumping part was fine, but Wallach's life was endangered when his 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. Wallach and presumably, the entire film crew were not aware of the heavy iron steps that jutted one foot out of every box car. If Wallach had stood up from his prone position at the wrong time, one of the jutting steps could have decapitated him.

File:GBUBlowbridgebattlefield.jpg

The Bridge

The bridge in the film had to be constructed two times by sappers of the Spanish army. The first time an Italian camera operator signaled that he was ready to shoot which was misconstrued by an army captain as the similar sounding Spanish word meant to start. Luckily nobody was injured in the mistiming and mistake. Naturally, the army had to rebuild the bridge while other shots were being filmed. As the bridge was not a prop but a rather heavy and sturdy design it took a great amount of explosives to blow it up. Leone has said that this scene was, in part, inspired by Buster Keaton’s silent film, The General.

The cast for the movie was from all around the world; actors spoke in their native languages. Eastwood, Van Cleef and Wallach spoke in English, and were dubbed in Italian for the debut release in Rome. For the American version, their voices were left alone, and the other cast members were dubbed into English. This is noticeable in the synchronization of voices to lip movements on screen. In fact, none of the dialogue is completely in sync, because Leone rarely (if ever) shot his scenes with synched sound. Various reasons have been cited for this: Leone often liked to play Morricone's music over a scene (and possibly shout things at them as well) to get the actors in the mood; Leone cared more for visuals than dialogue (his English was limited, at best); and given the technical limitations of the time combined with the low budget, it would have been difficult to record the sound cleanly in most of the extremely wide shots Leone frequently used. Whatever the actual reason, all dialogue in the film was recorded in post-production. The relationship between Eastwood and Leone had remained strained from their previous collaboration and it only worsened during the dubbing sessions for the U.S. version because the actor was presented with a different script than the one they had shot with. He refused to read from this new script, insisting on using the shooting one instead.

Release

US original poster.

The film was not released in America until December 29, 1967 and some American cinemas until January 1968. The original Italian cut was 2 hours and 57 minutes long, but when released in America, it had been cut to 2 hours and 41 minutes. Since the scenes had been cut before they could be re-dubbed in English, the footage was rarely shown in North America (although MGM did include the scenes, in Italian with English subtitles, on its original US DVD release in 2000). In 2002, the film was restored and two years later re-released on DVD, with the 18 minutes of scenes cut for U.S. release edited back into the film (Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach were brought back in to dub their characters' lines, actor Simon Prescott substituted for the now-deceased Lee Van Cleef, and other voice doubles filled in to redub for other actors who had since passed away).

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".

International release dates
Land	Date
Italien	December 23, 1966
West Germany	December 15, 1967
Japan	December 30, 1967
Finnland	February 2, 1968
Frankreich	March 8, 1968
Schweden	April 10, 1968
Hongkong	June 13, 1968
Vereinigtes Königreich	August 22, 1968
Pakistan	July 21, 1974
Philippinen	August 7, 1977 (Davao)
Norwegen	October 8, 1982

Acclaim

Critical opinion of the film on initial release was mixed as many reviewers at that time looked down on spaghetti westerns. Roger Ebert, who later included the film in his list of Great Movies, retrospectively noted that in his original review he had "described a four-star movie but only gave it three stars, perhaps because it was a 'spaghetti western' and so could not be art". Ebert also points out Leone's unique perspective that enables the audience to be closer to the character as we see what he sees:

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.

Today, the film is regarded by critics as an absolute classic. It remains one of the most popular and well known westerns and is considered by many to be the greatest of them all. It was placed at the top end of Time's "100 Greatest movies of the last century" as selected by critics Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel. In addition, it is one of the few films which enjoy a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Particular praise has been given to Eli Wallach for his role as Tuco, who has the most lines, and as neither "Good" nor "Bad" is the most 'morally' ambiguous and therefore interesting of the three characters.

As of 2007 the film is rated as #4 in the IMDb Top 250 List of movies and is the highest rated western and foreign (non-American movie), based on viewers' ratings. In a 2002 Sight & Sound magazine poll, Quentin Tarantino voted The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as his choice for the best film ever made.

Anachronisms and Gaffs

Even to admirers, Leone's pretense to authenticity has always been suspect. Film critic Richard Schickel has pointed out that Leone should be looked to for masterful storytelling rather than accurate history. In his evaluation of Leone's historicity, Schickel is partly right and partly wrong.

Where Schickel is wrong, he has considered the events that form the historical backdrop of the film to be entirely minor and, on at least one occasion, has said he believes that the events might have occurred in Texas. Actually, the New Mexico Campaign of the American Civil War, which Leone explicitly referenced, is arguably of some historical significance, and the film is clearly set in the New Mexico Territory, as references to such cities as Albuquerque and Santa Fe and places such as Fort Craig make amply clear. He is right, however, to be suspicious of Leone's claims to historical accuracy which are often mixed.

Leone went to great lengths to obtain the use of a vintage railroad train which is certainly accurate to the period but not to the place: No railroad was built in New Mexico until after the Civil War. One of the most expensive scenes in the movie involves a battle at a bridge over a river, presumeably the Rio Grande, but during the Civil War there were no major bridges in New Mexico, few minor ones and none on the Rio Grande. There were no prison camps built by either side in New Mexico, and Andersonville, which is referenced by the film, had not yet opened in 1862 when the New Mexico Campaign took place. In both the battle for the bridge and the prison camp scenes, of course, Leone was taking literary license to make artistic comments about war in general.

There are numerous gaffs in the film. There are anachronistic references to persons as when General Ullyses S. Grant is described as the leading Union commander, when, actually, he was relatively obscure until later in the war. There are baffling geographical errors, as when Tuco and Blondie, in discussing their proximity to mountain ranges in northern New Mexico, suggest that by travelling west they might reach Texas. Any glance at a map will show that Texas is east of New Mexico.

DVD

File:GoodBadUglydvd.jpg

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly home video / DVD cover art.

In 2004, MGM released a special edition DVD of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", which contained 18 minutes of rarely seen footage edited into the film, including a scene which explains how Angel Eyes came to be waiting for Blondie and Tuco at the Union prison camp. As no audio was recorded during production, and the scenes had never been dubbed (having been cut by the US distributor), Eastwood and Wallach dubbed their dialogue more than 35 years after the rest of the film. (Van Cleef was dead, so his lines were done by another actor.)

Disc 1 contains an audio commentary with writer and critic Richard Schickel. Disc 2 contains two documentaries, "Leone's West" and "The Man Who Lost The Civil War", followed by the featurette, "Restoring 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly'"; an animated gallery of missing sequences entitled, "The Socorro Sequence: A Reconstruction"; an extended Tuco torture scene; a featurette called "Il Maestro"; an audio featurette named, "Il Maestro, Part 2"; a French trailer; and a poster gallery.

This DVD was generally well received, though some purists complained about the re-mixed stereo soundtrack with many completely new sound effects (notably, all the gunshots were replaced), with no option for the original soundtrack. At least one scene which was edited back in had been cut by Leone prior to the film's release in Italy, but had shown once at the Italian premiere. It is generally believed that Leone willingly cut the scene for pacing reasons and, thus, restoring it was contrary to the director's wishes. The original US cut with the original mono soundtrack is still available in stores, although the transfer is vastly inferior to that on the restored DVD. (However, unlike the original DVD releases of the other two "Dollars" films, the transfer is anamorphically enhanced for 16:9 televisions.)

In 2007 MGM re-released the 2004 DVD edition in their "Sergio Leone Anthology" box set.

Music

See also: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (soundtrack)

The score is composed by frequent Leone collaborator Ennio Morricone, whose distinctive original compositions, containing gunfire, whistling (by Alessandro Alessandroni), and yodeling permeate the film. The main theme, resembling the howling of a coyote, is a two-note melody that is a frequent motif, and is used for the three main characters, with a different instrument used for each one: flute for Blondie, arghilofono for Angel Eyes and human voices for Tuco.

The score complements the film's American Civil War setting, containing the mournful ballad, "The Story of a Soldier", which is sung by prisoners as Tuco is being tortured by Angel Eyes. The film's famous climax, a three-way Mexican standoff, begins with the melody of "The Ecstasy of Gold" and is followed by "The Triple Duel".

The main theme was a hit in 1968, alongside the Rolling Stones song, "Jumpin' Jack Flash". The soundtrack album was on the charts for more than a year, reaching No. 4 on the Billboard pop album chart and No. 10 on the black album chart. The main theme was also a hit for Hugo Montenegro, whose rendition was a No. 2 Billboard pop single in 1968.

See also

• A Fistful of Dollars
• For a Few Dollars More
• Man with No Name
• Spaghetti Western
• Films that have been considered the greatest ever

External links

• Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo at IMDb
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at AllMovie
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at Metacritic
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at the Movie Review Query Engine
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at SoundtrackNet
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at The Spaghetti Western Database
• Fistful-of-Leone.com
• Clint Eastwood.net
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Book

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