A “Spaghetti Western” is a strange concept on paper,
but if well-executed it makes for one epic movie. Somehow an Italian director
managed to get American actors to travel all the way to Italy, shoot in some of
the warmest areas in Europe to stage the Old West, and reinvented an American
movie genre. Sergio Leone is the director best known for this international
collaboration, and Clint Eastwood is the American actor who became an icon for
his roles in his movies. Their best collaboration is undoubtedly The Good,
the Bad, and the Ugly (1967) which boasts one of the best duels of all
times.
As the title indicates, this is the tale of three
characters. The “Good” is Blondie (Eastwood), who is not that good considering
he is a bounty hunter scamming the law during the American Civil War. His
scheme is to capture the “Ugly”, a vicious criminal named Tuco (Eli Wallach),
collect the bounty, release him right before his hanging, then start all over
in a different town. “The Ugly” of the three is a colonel in the Union army
nicknamed Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) who moonlights as a hired gun. As the
United States is busy tearing itself apart during a bloody conflict, these
three men clash together and occasionally work together after learning about a
hidden loot of cash.
Each character has a part of the puzzle that will lead
to the treasure, such as the location of the cemetery where the money is buried
and the name of the grave where to start digging. Since none of them have all
the details it means they can’t kill each other, at least not until they each
know where to bring their shovels. This makes for a pretty standard treasure
hunt story, with a few comments on how greed is bad. Where the movie stands out
though is in its masterful execution.
If you are just a casual movie goer with no idea of
how movies are made, the concept of editing is probably vague to you at best. To
see a perfect example of how editing can heighten a story, look no further than
the work of Leone and his editors. A duel is an essential scene of the Western
genre, however it can be a rather boring action. It is after all just two
people staring at each other until they reach for their guns and shoot, a final
action that takes just a few seconds. The final duel in The Good, the Bad
and the Ugly is the gold standard of how to edit such a sequence.
You do have your three characters staring at each
other until someone draws. That is the action that has been recorded by Leone’s
cameras. The way the scenes are cut by the editors though, exponentially
increase the tension as they cut from the characters’ thighs with their guns
still in their belts, then to their sweat-filled face, and finally to their eyes
as they analyze their opponents. The cuts are become faster and tighter as the
tension builds, with occasional quit cuts to the character’s hands showing them
gradually reaching for the guns.
That sequence, and many others throughout the film,
get a lot of help from composer Ennio Morricone. He has composed many great
scores for many other great films, but for better or worse thanks to his work
with Leone he is most often associated with the Western. The score he composed
for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is some of his most iconic work. The
minute you hear the score, a mixture of whistling, yodeling, and gunfire, you
immediately conjure up images of a Western.
Leone was also wise in the choosing of his actors for
the three main characters, each making them their own. As The Good, Eastwood
perfects the kind of a character he would play in many other Westerns: a
gunslinger with his own moral code. Even though Blondie commits crimes for
money he has enough humanity in him to be shocked by the violence of war and to
give one last smoke to a dying soldier. Lee Van Cleef on the other hand is
truly the movie’s Bad, and not just because he wears a black hat. With his hawk-like
features he instills fear into a man just by staring at him while eating soup, and
then proceeds to mercilessly kill him and his family.
As the Ugly, Eli Wallach has the juiciest and most
developed role. His Tuco, also known as the Rat, is a manipulative and funny schemer
with a long list of crimes and a filthy mouth. He is also surprisingly resourceful
and not to be underestimated. A contentious meeting with his brother (Luigi
Pistilli), a priest, sheds information on his past and the choices that led him
to a life of crime. It earns the character some sympathy, but he’s still Ugly
inside.
One thing these three characters, and the rest of the
supporting cast, have in common is that none of them look like they are on a
movie set. Everyone is in need of a shave, covered in dust, sweating from the
baking sun, and probably in need of a bath. This was not a film shot on a
comfortable Hollywood set, but in the heat of southern Spain. You can practically
feel the heat when Clint Eastwood is walking in the desert with no hat.
The European shooting location, as well as the use of
many Italian extras, probably does not make The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
the most accurate depiction of the Civil War. For one thing, I’m not sure that
war went that far West or had so many battles near deserts. Also for a war that
started because of slavery, there is a notable lack of African-American
characters in this movie. Still, you don’t watch a Western for a history
lesson. You watch a Western to see cool gunfights and tense duels. By that
standard Leone’s third entry in his Man with No Name trilogy with Clint
Eastwood is the very best of the genre.
It is one of those movies whose influence can be seen
in many aspects of pop culture: the music of Metallica, Marty McFly’s choice of
pseudonym in Back to the Future III, and many Quentin Tarantino movies.
Hollywood never made a direct remake, however South Korea gave it a good go in
2008 with The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, which transposes the action
from the American Civil War to the desert of Manchuria right before the Second
World War. It is definitely worth checking out, if only to see an alternate
take on that iconic final three-men duel.
Comments
Post a Comment