Year of Eastwood #10

il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966)

Starring: Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef,
Eli Wallach
Directed by Sergio Leone

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is the classic Spaghetti western that made Clint a movie star. Produced by an Italian film-maker and filmed in Spain, the film was an unlikely follow-up to the success of the TV series Rawhide, but Clint wasn’t offered many other roles. Unsure at the time whether to accept the part - the Man with No Name has become iconic with the image that is Clint Eastwood.

Clint is the Good … squinty-eyed bounty hunter in pursuit of money above all else. Van Cleef is the Bad … fellow bounty hunter competing with Clint at every turn. Wallach is the Ugly … Tuco Benedito Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez, a comical, fast talking bandit who is wanted by the authorities. Good and Ugly form an unusual bond - Clint turns in Wallach (wanted for murder, armed robbery of citizens, state banks, and post offices, theft of sacred objects, arson in a state prison, perjury, bigamy, deserting his wife and children, inciting prostitution, kidnapping, extortion, receiving stolen goods, selling stolen goods, passing counterfeit money, using marked cards and loaded dice, assaulting a justice of the peace, and derailing a train in order to rob the passengers) to collect the reward - only to stick around to save him from hanging by shooting the noose and then shoots off a few hats for fun.

Meanwhile, Bad is trying to find a fortune in Confederate gold buried in an army cemetery amid the chaos of the Civil War. Ugly learns the location of the cemetery and Good finds out the name of the grave where it’s buried. The climax finds the three gunslingers face to face to face for a final showdown for the buried treasure.

Spaghetti Western is a nickname for a sub-genre of Western film that emerged in the mid-1960's, so named because most were produced by Italian studios. Dismissed by critics at the time for its ultra-violent nature and cheap production values, these European Westerns developed a cult following and reached mainstream audiences with director Leone’s trio of “Dollar” films released in the late 60’s. Leone’s gritty style and use of sweeping widescreen cinematography and extreme close ups presented a skewed view of the West, making his films different from any Western that had come before. Spaghetti Westerns demythologized the conventions of American Westerns. The U.S. frontier was dirty and bloody, even the heroes were flawed, and justice didn’t always prevail in the end. The films redefined the entire idea of the Western up to that point.

Spaghetti westerns are known as Macaroni Westerns in Japan and have led to other Western sub-genres such as Burrito Westerns, Pad Thai Westerns, and Sake Westerns.

The film has a hip, cool style and the humor creates a good balance with the serious, intense gunbattles. Perhaps what best defines this film is the outstanding musical score by legend Ennio Morricone. His hoofbeat rhythms, whistling themes, and the use of the human voice as an instrument became the standard for the scores to follow. 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 Good, ocarina for Bad, and human voices for Ugly. Morricone's theme is so recognizable, it has been used numerous times to underscore showdowns of one kind or another on many TV shows, with those scenes mimicking Leone's visual style.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is the quintessential Spaghetti Western. The combination of a cutting edge director, distinctive score, and the image of Clint Eastwood mixed together perfectly to create film history. Quentin Tarantino has called it "the best-directed film of all time.”