Ace's belated initial comments on The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:
Sergio Leone was the son of silent film director Vincenzo Leone.
After making several sword and sandal epics, Leone decided to
adapt Kurosawa's Yojimbo (itself based on the Dashiell Hammett
novels The Glass Key and Red Harvest), and set it in the American
Old West. He called his script A Fistful of Dollars (Per un Pugno
di Dollari, which I think actually translates as “FOR a
Fistful of Dollars”).
Leone's first choice to play The Man with No Name was Henry Fonda.
But of course Henry Fonda was too expensive for an Italian
western filmed in Spain on a budget of $200,000. His next choice,
James Coburn, was also too expensive. He then offered the role to
Charles Bronson – but Bronson passed, calling it the worst
script he'd ever read.
Bronson would later note that Leone knew more about Westerns than
most American directors.
He then offered the role to an American actor working in Europe—Richard
Harrison—who instead recommended that Leone try watching a
tv Western series called Rawhide, and consider giving the part to
the series co-star, thirty-four year old Clint Eastwood.
Leone's thoughts on Eastwood: “Clint Eastwood did not say a
word [in the episode of Rawhide], but, he was good at getting on
a horse, and he had a way of walking with a tired, resigned air…However,
he was a little sophisticated, a little ‘light', and, I
wanted make him look more virile, to harden him, to ‘age'
him for the part as well - with that beard, that pancho which
made him look broader, those cigars. When I went to find him, in
order to offer him the part, he had never smoked in his life;
this posed problems, for, to have cigar constantly in one's mouth
when one does not know how to smoke….! Before the second
film, he said to me ‘Listen Sergio, I'll do everthing you
want, except smoke!' - but that was impossible, since the
protagonist was the same.”
The story concerned of an amoral drifter—The Man with No
Name-- wandering into a town controlled by gangsters, and playing
both sides against the other for his own benefit.
Leone borrowed much of Kurosawa's style from Yojimbo, and also
Ennio Morricone's score from the same film. And Eastwood made a
huge impression as the laconic, seemingly laid-back, but forever
deadly Man with No Name—an Icon was born.
Many thought Eastwood was pretty foolish for agreeing to take the
role. Eastwood's salary for Fistful of Dollars-- $15,000. But the
film was a hit, and soon Eastwood was an enormous star, even if
moreso in Europe than in America. The following year Leone and
Eastwood re-teamed to make the sequel, For a Few Dollars More.
The sequel featured a similar “playing two bad sides against
the other” plot, and this time featured another American
actor named Lee Van Cleef as “The Colonel,” an anti-hero
similar to Eastwood's.
Which brings us to the third of the trilogy, The Good, The Bad,
and the Ugly (1966). Once again, Eastwood as The Man with No Name
(though Tuco calls him “Blondie”). And once again, The
Man with No Name is playing rivals against each other in order to
get his hands on a sizeable sum of money. Lee Van Cleef returns—although
it's very unclear to me if Van Cleef is supposed to be reprising
his role from For a Few Dollars More or if he's playing a
different character.
And, of course, another Morricone score—this time, one of
the most distinctive and memorable scores in the history of
cinema. From the start of the distinctive credit sequence and
bizarre, alien-sounding score, you know you're not going to be
watching the typical western. (Fun fact: The score's signature,
modulated scream—“Aaa-aaa – aaa- aaaaahh”—is
supposed to sound like a hyena's cry. But it doesn't. It sounds
like a maniac screaming in hell. All to the better, I think.)
The credits tell the story: Blondie is The Good (“Il Buono”).
Lee Van Cleef plays Angeleyes, The Bad (“Il Cattivo”).
And Eli Wallach, who turns in the film's best performance, plays
Tuco the Rat, The Ugly (“Il Brutto”). (Note that the
Italian name is Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo, which translates
as The Good, The Ugly, The Evil(Bad). The American title switches
around “The Bad” and “The Ugly” because it
sounds better. If you're watching a version of the videotape with
title credits in Italian, you might notice that The Ugly and The
Bad are switched around).
The plot: Blondie and Mexican bandit Tuco “The Rat”
have a racket going-- Blondie turns Tuco in at various towns,
collects the sizable bounty on his head, then rescues him before
he can be hanged. Then they go to the next town and repeat the
scam. Eventually Blondie tires of this arrangement and strands
Tuco in the middle of a desert, telling him their partnership is
over. Tuco survives his ordeal in the desert and eventually finds
Blondie again. And now Tuco subjects Blondie to a forcible march
through the baking desert, until his skin blisters horribly and
he nearly dies.
In the midst of this torture, an out of control stage-coach
happens by. One soldier is alive—barely. He tells Tuco that
a fortune ($200,000 in gold) is buried in a cemetery somewhere,
and he'll tell him where if he can only have some water. Before
he dies, the soldier manages to tell Tuco which cemetery the gold's
in, but he tells Blondie which grave it's buried in. And thus
begins Tuco's and Blondie's uneasy alliance, both needing the
other to find the gold, and both planning on killing the other
when it's found.
Of course, it turns out that a sadistic soldier and hired killer
named Angeleyes is simultaneously trying to locate this fortune.
Ultimately Angeleyes tortures Tuco until he tells him his part of
the secret. And thus a new uneasy alliance is forged—this
time between Angeleyes and Blondie, while Angeleyes sends Tuco
the Rat off to be killed. While Blondie sheds no tears at the
thought of a world without Tuco, he also knows that it's very
hard to kill a rat...
A simple plot: Three greedy sociopaths who'd like to kill each
other. Lots of guns. $200,000 in gold buried in a cemetery. A
desolate, lawless wasteland (the Civil War still rages in
background). Let the mayhem and double-dealing begin.
GB&U contains lots of trademark Leone—extreme close ups
on faces, especially shifting eyes. Leone takes his sweet old
time in setting up his violence— men take long minutes
slowly crossing dusty roads, spurs clinking all the way. It's a
decidedly European technique—American films, especially
modern ones, never seem to “waste time” on such
business. But, of course, Leone uses such long takes to good
effect—you know goddamned well that something is going to
happen, and Leone's confidence in making you wait for it to
happen is effective.
Then there's the brutality and cynicism of the picture. Leone's
take: “ ‘The Americans' have always depicted the West
in extremely romantic terms - with horse that runs to his master's
whistle. They have never treated the West seriously, just as we
have never treated the ancient Rome seriously … Perhaps the
most serious debate on the subject was made by Kubrick in the
film Spartacus: the other films have always been cardboard fables.
It was this superficiality that struck and interested me.”
Speaking of the difference between himself and John Ford, Leone
said: “As Romans, we have a strong sense of the fragility of
empires. It is enough to look around us. I admire very much that
great optimist, John Ford. His naivete permitted him to make
Cinderella - I mean, The Quiet Man. But, as Italians, we see
things differently. That is what I have tried to show in my films.
The great plains - they are very beautiful, but, when the storm
comes, should people bury their heads in the sand of the desert?
I believe that people like to be treated as adults from time to
time. Because a man is wearing sombrero and because he rides a
horse, does not necessarily mean that he is imbecile…Ford,
because of his European origins - as a good Irishman - has always
seen the problem from a Christian point of view … his
characters and protagonists always looks forward to a rosy,
fruitful future. Whereas I see the history of the West as really
the reign of violence by violence”
Despite the casual cynicism, the film actually has a bit of heart.
The ending—after the famous three-way shootout, I mean
– is just perfect. A happy ending where none seemed possible,
all because “The Good” turned out to be, well, rather
more “Good” than Tuco really could have been expected.
This is *realistic* cynicism, credible cynicism, not absurdly
exaggerated cynicism for cynicism's sake, a disease sadly presen
a disease sadly present in many American movies which try to be
“gritty” or “dark.” (Compare the execrable
“Cruel Intentions,” which I had the great misfortune of
watching this past week. But that's a whole different discussion.)
Well, I guess I could dodder on a bit more and comment on how
extraodinary Tuco is—both his character and Wallach's
performance (note that Wallach actually has more screen time than
Eastwood; in several ways, he's the real central character of the
film). Or how fucking incredibly COOL Clint Eastwood is, or how
perfect the final shootout is, or how the actual ending is just
too perfect for words—but I suppose I'll have a chance to
say that later.
By the way: Most of the information here comes from The Sergio
Leone Homepage, a nice page with lots of good info. I cribbed all
of my quotes and dates and “fun-facts” and such from
the page. If you want to read more, go here:
http://film.tierranet.com/directors/s.leone/sergioleone.html
The page also features Real Audio clips of Morricone's score (sadly
brief; cutting off the music before the aaaa-aaa-aaaah, wah wah
wah) and Real Audio clips from the movie.
One fun-fact I *didn't* crib from the webpage: Eastwood or Leone
(I forget who) pointed out that The Man with No Name almost
always uses his left hand for mundane tasks like turning a door
knob, holding a fork, etc. Why? Because he always keeps his gun
hand free.
A fun-fact I *did* crib from the webpage: In the opening of Leone's
Once upon a Time in the West (which will be the next movie I rent),
the character “Harmonica” kills three gunslingers at a
train station. He intended that the three gunslingers would be
played by Wallach, Van Cleef, and Eastwood, as a way of closing
the Fistful trilogy. Although Wallach and Van Cleef agreed,
Eastwood refused, and Leone cast other people in the roles.
Personally, I'm happy Eastwood refused. You can't kill The Man
with No Name. He's above death, beyond it.
Oh:
And you can't talk about GBU without discussing its flaws. It's a
masterpiece, all right, but a flawed one.
The first flaw has to do with budget. Leone had a big one for GBU,
and apparently his little three-player script wasn't spending
enough money. So he chose to pad the movie with a boring segment
in a prisoner of war camp, and a boring segment about blowing up
a bridge for the Union. He decided he'd be ambitious. He decided
he'd show how terrible a prisoner of war camp could be (he says
he was trying to give the impression of a concentration camp);
and he wanted to show how futile war was, so he subjected us to a
drunk, dying Union captain yammering on for ten minutes about how
futile war is.
Thanks for the info, Sergio.
These two sequences are horrifically out of place here. We have
three compelling characters engaged in a cynical race for gold.
And yet Leone decides to interrupt the story twice to insert anti-war
"messages." Personally, I like my cynicism and
brutality without PC messages, but that's just me. The movie isn't
ABOUT war-- it's about greed-- and yet he chooses to make his
thematic points about war. This is akin to Saving Private Ryan
pausing twice to give us screeds about the dangers of selfishness
and greed.
The bridge sequence is a horrible piece of plotting-- Tuco and
Blondie "just stumble" upon the camp of thousands of
men without hearing them previously. And the prisoner of war camp
is almost worse, because we're asked to accept the heretofore
undisclosed fact that Angeleyes oversees the camp, at least when
he's not moonlighting as a gunfigter, hired killer, and bounty
hunter. Precisely how Angeleyes manages to go AWOL for weeks at a
time without being hanged for desertion is never explained.
But...
Flaws excepted, it's a great flick. What's funny about the two
scenes is that not only are they BAD, but they also are almost
entirely responsible for the film's unnacceptable 2 hr 42 min
running time. Cut these two stinker scenes out and you've got
yourself a leaner, meaner, and tighter 2 hr 15 min classic.
But that's just my opinion.
Further Discussion
