The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Director: Sergio Leone                                 Writers: Luciano Vincenzoni & Sergio Leone
Film Score: Ennio Morricone                        Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach and Rada Rassimov

This is the third of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns starring Clint Eastwood. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the iconic civil war story of bandit Eli Wallach, mercenary Lee Van Cleef, and bounty hunter Clint Eastwood. The most interesting thing about the story is how little difference there is between the three characters. Their personalities are definitely different. Wallach is wild and unpredictable, Van Cleef is very tightly wound, and Eastwood is emotionless. But Leone’s point is ultimately the lack of distinction in the west and how the attempt to make those distinctions can lead to unfortunate results for those who attempt to find some order in a place where the man with the gun makes the rules. The demonstration of this concept is writ large, however, emphasized by the backdrop of the Civil War and the futility and carnage that resulted.

Wallach is a professional criminal, but more of a crazy, wild man who refuses to conform to society’s laws. Eastwood captures him in the desert, killing three men and turning Wallach in to the law to be hanged. But before the sentence can be carried out, suddenly Eastwood shoots him down and they both escape. After splitting the reward money the two do the same thing again in a different town. Meanwhile, Lee Van Cleef is searching for a man who has stolen a money box with two hundred thousand dollars in it from a robbery. He accepts payment from men who want him to find it, kills the men, then continues on his search. After Eastwood has had enough of Wallach, he turns him loose in the desert but Wallach makes it out alive and seeks revenge on Eastwood. It’s not until Wallach and Eastwood discover where the money is that all three men converge in the climax of the picture.

Leone’s westerns have absolutely nothing to do with genre conventions. They are stripped down character studies. Wallach is the evil man with nine lives, if not more. It seems as if he can never be killed, and always manages to escape. Van Cleef is just as amoral, but far more practical, calculating, making long range plans and being patient until the information he needs comes to him. As always, Eastwood’s character inhabits a sort of ethical no-man’s land. He kills the three other bounty hunters without a thought, and yet when he’s assisting in Wallach’s escapes he only shoots the hats off the townspeople. The three of them are ostensibly working together to get the money, but there seems to be little pretense about that and, much like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, we know that none of them will he happy sharing.

While Ennio Morricone’s music for Leone’s previous westerns was distinctive, his score for this film has passed into cultural memory it has become so recognizable. Leone himself takes his time with the story, as the restored version clocks in at three hours long. While the film is the last of the three he would make with Eastwood, it occupies the earliest place chronologically, and we see toward the end when Eastwood puts his coat over a dying soldier that he picks up the poncho that will be his trademark in the other two films. Some people have a difficult time with this because Lee Van Cleef was in For A Few Dollars More. But he was a completely different character in that film, and in fact was a last minute substitute for Charles Bronson. Is it the greatest western ever, as many claim? Not really, but it is a very well-made film. It has a bigger budget than the previous two, and has a more sprawling scope. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is without a doubt a milestone in cinema and has not only stood the test of time, but grows in distinction with every passing generation. And that’s what classics do.