Title for us English-speaking types: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Director: Sergio Leone
Initial Release Country: Italy
Times Previously Seen: approximately 7 or 8
Teaser Summary (No spoilers)
Three tough hombres seek out a hidden fortune in the Wild West. During the search, they try to avoid becoming casualties of the Civil War and each other.
Extended Summary (A more complete plot synopsis, spoilers included. Fair warning)
The American West. Early 1860s and the States are far from United. The Civil War is in full swing, though in the deserts and plains of the West, it is only a peripheral presence. In a remote town, three gunmen storm into a barber shop, only to be rapidly gunned down by a rough-looking character named Tuco. Tuco jumps on a nearby horse and flees the town.
Elsewhere, a man in black drifts into a small hacienda. The man has been paid by another to find the current alias about another missing man, one called Jackson. The owner of the hacienda fearfully tells the man in black that Jackson now goes by the name Bill Carson, and also mentions a stolen cash box filled with $200,000 that Carson has in his possession. The frightened man assumes that the man in black has been paid to kill him, and he offers him double his fee to desist. The man in black responds to the offer by killing the man and his son and taking the money anyway. He returns to the man who hired him. He learns that Bill Carson was part of a small group of Confederate renegades who stole the gold from a Union convoy. Upon learning this, the man in black, who goes by the name “Angel Eyes” kills his original patron in cold blood.
Angel Eyes, "The Bad", begins his blood-soaked path towards the treasure.
Back on the plains, Tuco is riding along on his stolen horse, but the horse is shot out from underneath him. He is surrounded by three bounty hunters who seem intent on taking him in the for the $2,000 reward being offered for the capture of this inveterate criminal. Just as the three hunters close in on Tuco, a quiet stranger emerges and tells the three bounty hunters to back off and allow him to take Tuco. The three men try to shoot the brazen newcomer, but the man kills all three of them with lightning quickness. Tuco, believing the man to be his savior, tries to thank him and be on his way, but the stranger merely straps him onto the back of his horse, brings him into the nearest town, and collects the reward for himself.
Shortly after he spews and endless litany of insults at the lone bounty hunter, whom he calls “Blondie” for his light-colored hair, Tuco is placed into a noose, with only a horse between him, the ground, and oblivion. When sentence is passed and Tuco is about to he hanged, Blondie, who is hidden in a nearby barn hayloft, shoots the rope apart, freeing Tuco. He also shoots the hats off of several citizens, to ward off any chance of pursuit. It turns out that Blondie has struck a deal with Tuco – Tuco gets turned in, Blondie takes the reward and then saves Tuco. Tuco's bounty goes up, and they repeat the process, splitting all the reward money. Tuco complains about wanting more than a 50-50 share, but Blondie suggests that his “aim might be affected” if his share drops. Tuco drops his complaint, but assures Blondie that double crossing him would be a grave mistake.
In a new town, Tuco sits atop another horse, his neck in another noose. On the edge of the town, Blondie, already with the reward money for Tuco, waits to free him with another rifle blast. Casually looking over the scene is Angel Eyes, who happens to be in town to follow the lead of Bill Carson. He learns of a prostitute who Carson frequents in another town. Angel Eyes makes note of Blondie and Tuco, but leaves town in pursuit of the prostitute. Just as before, when Tuco is about to be hanged, Blondie fires his shot, but slightly misses. Tuco dangles from the neck for a few seconds from the half-cut rope. Blondie fires another shot that cuts the rope completely and frees Tuco again. The two hop onto Blondie's horse and head out of town.
Blondie and Tuco, the "Good" and "Ugly", respectively, discuss their business deal.
Once they are many miles from the town, Tuco rails at Blondie for nearly missing the rope. Blondie quietly lowers Tuco onto the ground and explains that he thinks they have milked their little scam for all its worth. Leaving Tuco stranded and tied in the middle of nowhere, Blondie rides off with all of their ill-gotten gains.
On a subsequent evening in yet another town, Angel Eyes tracks down the prostitute who knows Bill Carson. After a mild beating at Angel Eyes' hands, the girl tells him which regiment Bill Carson is in. Angel Eyes is getting closer to the money.
On a following day, Tuco staggers into a tiny village. He has somehow survived the miles-long exodus that Blondie forced upon him, and he now has two things on his mind – getting water and getting revenge. He makes a good start of it by pilfering some water from a well and then robbing the shop owner of his best revolver and all of his cash. He even tracks down Blondie to a hotel and almost exacts his revenge then and there. At gunpoint, he forces Blondie onto a stool and gets a rope around his neck. Just as TucoTuco through the floor and allowing Blondie to escape.
After several days of tracking him across the plains, Tuco finds that Blondie is in the middle of the same old scam. He lays behind the cover of a low hill, his rifle cross-hairs on another hanging rope around the neck of another criminal. However, just before he is meant to fire his life-saving shot, Tuco sneaks up behind him and takes him prisoner. Blondie's new “partner” is left to die and Blondie is now the captive of the last man in the world he would want to be captive of.
Echoing their last parting, Tuco leads Blondie to desert. As Tuco rides atop a horse, he forces Blondie to try and keep up with him along a 100-mile trek across the scorching hot sands. With the comforting shade of a parasol and ample water, Tuco delights in the slow death of Blondie, even teasing and taunting him along the way. Blondie remains stoic, but eventually his endurance is baked away by the relentlessly brutal desert sun. After walking for many hours without water or shade, he finally collapses. Tuco, having appeased his desire for retribution, slowly moves in for the kill.
Tuco now has his man, Blondie, right where he wants him.
Just as Tuco cocks his gun, though, a riderless wagon comes barreling out of the desert. The distracted Tuco leaves the nearly-dead Blondie and heads off the wagon. In it, he finds several dead Confederate soldiers. One soldier, however, still clings to a small shred of life. It is Bill Carson, and he explains that his group was attacked out in the desert. He promises Tuco that he will reveal the location of his stolen gold coins if only he can get some life-saving water. Tuco tries to pry the information from him, and manages to get the name of the cemetery, but not the specific name on the grave where the gold is hidden. Carson loses consciousness, and Tuco scrambles to find some water in order to revive him. When he returns with the water, though, Tuco sees that Blondie has dragged himself to Carson. Carson has died, but not before he whispered the name of the grave to Blondie. Tuco, who moments before was joyfully going to kill him, now has 200,000 golden reasons to ensure Blondie's safety.
Tuco brings Blondie to a mission where the monks start to nurse him back to health. Tuco tries to weasel the location of the grave out of Blondie early on, but to no avail. Once Blondie's health is returned, the two men prepare to set out after the gold. Before leaving, Tuco seeks out his brother, who is the head Brother at the mission. Tuco and his brother, Pablo, recount their very different paths through life, each one casting aspersions and disgust at the other. The two part, regretting that they cannot reconcile, but they part all the same.
Out on the plains again, in their found wagon and Confederate uniforms, Blondie and Tuco make toward the gold. Tuco knows the general location, and Blondie the specific grave, so neither can find the treasure without the other. It isn't long before they are found and captured by a traveling Union army. They are presumed to be rebels, thanks to their uniforms, and are sent to a P.O.W. camp.
At the camp, Blondie and Tuco are surprised to see Angel Eyes there, somehow in the position of a Union sergeant. Angel Eyes has positioned himself here in order to best come across any word of Bill Carson. During the prisoner role call, when Bill Carson's name is sounded, Blondie convinces Tuco to assume the role. Angel Eyes promptly has Tuco brought into his office and brutally tortured in order to find out what he knows about the real Bill Carson and his stash of gold. Tuco parts with his half of the information and is sent off on a prison train with a massive and violent man as an escort. Angel Eyes next brings Blondie into his office. Realizing that torture will not work with Blondie, Angel Eyes forms a partnership with him instead, now that Angel Eyes has the name of the cemetery. Blondie cautiously accepts, for he has no other choice.
Angel Eyes, posing as a Union officer, as he prepares to squeeze information about the gold out of Tuco.
On a cargo train with his ogre-like guard, Tuco makes his move. Feigning the call of nature, Tuco hurls himself and the guard to whom he is handcuffed off of the moving train. He promptly kills the guard, and soon after manages to get the handcuffs off by laying them (and his guard) across the railroad tracks. Another train comes along, severs the chain, and frees Tuco.
A little time after, a little farther along, and a little closer to the cemetery, in a town decimated by the War, Blondie takes a breather with Angel Eyes and the five mercenaries who Angel Eyes has brought along. Tuco has also found his way into the town, but he has been spotted by one of the men he shot in the barber shop at the beginning of the story. Tuco shoots the man in self defense. A short way off, Blondie recognizes the report of Tuco's gun, and strolls away from his companions. Angel Eyes gestures for one of the guns for hire to tail Blondie.
A few buildings away, Blondie rounds on the mercenary and kills him. He then finds Tuco and reinstates his deal with him, assuring the never-say-die bandit that Angel Eyes still does not know the name on the grave where the treasure is hidden. Tuco and Blondie then kill their way towards Angel Eyes, gunning down all of the remaining four hired guns in Angel Eyes' employ. When they get to his hiding place, though, they find Angel Eyes himself gone. Blondie and Tuco strike out again.
Eventually, the two men come to a bridge that will lead them to the cemetery. The only problem is that it is the setting of a current stalemate between two large forces – one Union Army and one Confederate. The two sides are locked in war of attrition, with neither side willing to give up on the bridge. Tuco and Blondie remedy this problem by sneaking out to the bridge and using dynamite to blow it to pieces. Just before they do, however, Tuco and Blondie agree to swap their pieces of the information – the cemetery is named Sand Hill and the grave is that of Arch Stanton. Once the bridge is removed, Tuco and Blondie cross the river.
Across the river, Tuco breaks away from Blondie and dashes towards the cemetery. He gets to Sand Hill and races through the hundreds of gravestones until he finds that of Arch Stanton. He starts to dig when Blondie arrives with a shovel for him to use. Just as they are about to open the grave, Angel Eyes sneaks in and holds the two men at gunpoint. Just as he thinks he has the upper hand, however, Blondie surprises both other men by kicking open Arch Stanton's grave to reveal nothing but a pile of bones. He explains that he never told Tuco the right grave, not trusting him with it.
To settle it all, Blondie proposes to write the name of the real grave on the bottom of a stone, which he will place in the middle of all three men and they will simply have a three-way showdown for it. The name is written, the rock is placed face-down, and the three men slowly back away from each other. After several minutes of carefully measuring each other, the men make their moves. Angel Eyes draws first, aiming for Blondie, but Blondie is quicker and kills him. Tuco, meanwhile, has been firing his weapon in Angel Eyes' direction, but to no effect. He apparently has no bullets in his gun.
The middle of Sand Hill Cemetery - scene of the grande finale, three-way standoff.
After the tension has eased, Blondie explains that he had unloaded Tuco's gun the night before, as they were waiting out the aftermath of their sabotage of the bridge, and Tuco was asleep. He also shows Tuco the “name” rock, which has no writing on it, whatsoever. It turns out that Bill Carson had told Blondie that the gold was stashed in the grave marked “unknown” next to Arch Stanton's. This is where Blondie urges Tuco to dig, and where they do indeed find the sacks heavy with the gold.
Blondie plays one final trick on Tuco. At gunpoint, Tuco is forced to stand atop a wooden grave marker and place his head in a noose hung from a tree. Blondie leaves Tuco's half of the money on the ground and rides away. Just as Tuco is about to slip and hang, however, Blondie emerges from behind a distant tree and, recalling their early scams together, shoots the rope. Tuco is freed to take his money, but not before he screams a few parting insults at his “business partner”.
Take 1: My Gut Reaction (Done after this most recent viewing, before any further research.)
A movie like this may never be made again. I've seen it many times now and I still love it. Yet, despite my undying enjoyment at watching The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, it is a film that I would hesitate to recommend to everyone.
I recall a conversation I had with one of my anthropology professors around 1999. I had learned that he enjoyed Western movies, so we got to talking about them one day, touching on the John Wayne/John Ford Monument Valley films and others. When I brought up Sergio Leone and his “Man With No Name” series, I was crestfallen to hear this professor poo-poo them as “silly.” I was a bit thrown.
And yet, when I watch any of the Leone westerns now, I can see why he said it. Compared to a typical American western, there is something quirky and blatantly stylish about a movie like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Still, it's these offbeat elements that are part of their indelible magic.
Tuco Ramirez. Never has such an entertaining bag of scum been filmed so skillfully.
Before getting into the more peculiar aspects of the Leone westerns, one needs to look at the more traditional standards. The clearest of them all is the visual element. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly can easily be placed right next to any of the titans of western movies in terms of visuals. The composition and framing of every shot, be it the vast sweep of the plains or the extreme close-ups of the gnarled and lined faces of the characters, is the height of film aesthetic. Even when compared to Leone's previous “Man With No Name” films, this one excels.
Closely related to this is one of my favorite aspects – the visual storytelling. As I've mentioned in my reviews of several silent films like The Last Command and others, visual storytelling is, oddly, a nearly lost skill in films. It's odd since it is arguably one of the very few things that can set film apart from any other storytelling medium. Far too many films rely on excessive dialogue or exposition. Sergio Leone was quite the opposite – he seemed to relish the chances to tell a tale without a character saying a single word, and his movies are replete with examples. One of my favorites in this movie is when Tuco emerges from his death-defying escape from the desert. As he bursts into the shop, silently disassembles and reassembles various revolvers, and robs the shopkeeper, the man's entire character is laid bare: He's driven. He's skilled. He's ruthless. He's even oddly funny. This is all clear in a roughly five-minute sequence in which barely ten words are spoken. So few directors have the imagination or technique to do such a sequence, and Leone made a habit of it.
One of the nearly countless clever shots of Leone's. When the camera pans up to this perspective, you get several seconds to dwell on what it means for Tuco.
Speaking of Tuco, the character has a special place in my heart. Thanks to good writing and a phenomenal acting job by Eli Wallach, Tuco Ramirez is one of my all-time favorites. It's hard to even think of another character like him in movies. He's clearly scum of the lowest order, but I can't help but like and almost admire him. His exploits in the movie make it all clear – while he possesses some of the basest of human qualities (greed, selfishness and violence), he also possesses several admirable, if somewhat twisted, qualities. He's as tough as they come (how else does one survive hangings, being marooned in a desert, severe beatings, and countless shootouts?) and he absolutely never backs down. Most importantly, he's as capable as anyone in the movie, and this is my favorite bit. While Tuco already serves the most humorous role in the film, Leone could have written him to be a total clown, yet didn't. As lethal as Blondie and Angel Eyes are, Tuco is just as deadly. The former two may be more intelligent and collected, but Tuco is easily as dangerous. By not relegating Tuco to the role of some goofball bandit, the story is granted much greater balance.
In addition to my fondness for Tuco, a few things need be pointed out about the other title roles. Of the three, Lee Van Cleef as “The Bad” is clearly the most two-dimensional. He's simply a cold-blooded killer out for himself. No more. Blondie and Tuco, though, are different cases. In some ways, they embody abstract, mythological archetypes of the western tale: the calm, cool, unflappable drifter with impossibly perfect aim; and the dirt-encrusted, blood-drenched bandit. Yet, there are scenes in the movie in which they are made more endearing. With Tuco, it is through his touching interactions with his missionary brother. With Blondie, his quiet observations and kindnesses to the downtrodden and dying he comes across. These scenes show the two men to possess a humanity that their harsh exteriors belie. It's this unusual blending of mythical and humane that set Leone's films apart from their cruder ilk.
I can't let a review of this movie pass without mentioning the music. Even if you've never seen these movies, you know some of the tunes. Scored by the absolute master, Ennio Morricone, Leone's spaghetti westerns all had a sound of their own, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was the best of them. The driving bass drums, human grunts, Jew's harp, discordant piano notes, and lonely guitar picks all add to the tone of the movie. The music echoes the odd blend of funny, cool, serious, and tense, and does it like no other soundtrack ever has or perhaps will.
So back to my former professor's judgment of Leone's movies as “silly”. I think he was put off by the lack of authenticity when it came to the action elements of the movie. There is certainly some contrivance in the name of style. Leone had a knack for coming up with cool and clever visual tricks. Blondie's serape and ever-present cigars. Tuco's over-the-shoulder gun sling. The wacko music. Lee Van Cleef's cartoonishly evil sneering and laughing. Sure, these are not things that were part of “the Real Wild West”. But that's not what Leone's movies were about. They were about telling a tale of adventure, featuring interesting characters in a setting only somewhat based on history. That dusty, wide-open setting is the perfect crucible in which to crush three hard cases, forming a flashy and volatile compound.
The tragi-comic, drunken Union colonel. One of the many elements of the movie that has just enough reality to avoid being dismissed as mere camp.
If you haven't seen this movie, you may ask, “Should I watch it?” As alluded to earlier, this is hard to say. Leone's films are for lovers of epic adventure movies, sure, but they also require a true love of cinema. I've read plenty of reviews on Netflix and other places in which viewers trash his movies for being way too slow. I know they refer to the extended close-up shots and the long periods without dialogue. Personally, I love these moments. They force you to pay attention and always provide a payoff – either a tale is told or tension is built. If you're OK with westerns and want to see a classic like none other, give this one your time. A good approach is to watch Leone's first, A Fistful of Dollars. Not only is it a solid remake of the Kurosawa samurai great, Yojimbo, but it's a much more accessible 90 minutes.
NOTE: I watched, for the first time, the 40th Anniversary Special Edition of this movie. It includes an extra 15-or-so minutes that were cut out of the original. Word of warning – get the original, theatrical release. The added scenes are not only superfluous and a bit choppy, but they are voiced over by 70-year old Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach, who had to go back and re-dubbed the sound. All of the added material detracts from the flow of Leone's original cut.
Take 2: Why Film Geeks Love This Movie (Done after some further research on the film)
There are plenty of interesting, puzzling, and downright hilarious factoids to dig up about this movie.
There are a few short, strong documentaries on the film, including plenty of modern interviews with Eastwood and Wallach. They recount just how “cheap” spaghetti westerns were, in almost every respect. The film they made with Leone was not much of an exception, as they had to act through complete language barriers and loosey-goosey attitudes towards the filming process. Eastwood having been a Hollywood reject, he began working with Leone because he didn't have too many options. He and Wallach tell many a tale about how they narrowly avoided serious maiming and death on the sets several times. Funny in hindsight, I guess.
Going through some other commentary, such as the film doc “The Leone Style” with Richard Schickel or Roger Ebert's revisiting of the movie, it's interesting to see how the recognition of Leone's true mastery of the form took time to coalesce. This original TIME magazine review was apparently a rather typical mixed bag, and clearly has no use for Eastwood's acting, calling his to-date film works “consistently awful”. But even such a lukewarm critic was not blind to the visual genius of the movie.
Arguably one of the most iconic western movie shots of all time. Eastwood may not have had much acting range, but he damn sure knew how to strike a stoic pose.
It was curious to find that, to my surprise, the historical Civil War events portrayed in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly were rooted far more deeply in fact that I had suspected. While I, and I suppose many other people, assume that there was little to no large-scale fighting in the Southwest, apparently there was. As referenced in the movie, there really was a General Sibley, who really did make a desperate gambit to storm through Union forces, up the Rio Grande and into Colorado, in an effort to take charge of that state's silver and gold supplies. He failed rather miserably, but not before several thousand of his men were killed along the way. This is not so different from the backdrop of the wild quest of Angel Eyes, Tuco and Blondie.
I also discovered something about the “added” scenes that I disliked so much. These extra 16 minutes were actually part of Leone's original cut, released in Rome. He unwillingly cut them out at the behest of United Artists, who claimed American audiences would find his original 177-minute version too taxing. Regardless, I still found most of these edited scenes unnecessary. Maybe it's just because I had always seen the 161-minute version, and any change to it feels unnatural. Whatever the case, I'll go back to the shorter version for future viewings.
Whether the editing helped or not, the reception was fairly clear. When released in 1967, the movie was a hit. American audiences were enamored of the odd little tweaks to the all-too familiar western genre. They had already been able to adapt to them with Leone's first two westerns featuring the stone-faced Eastwood, A Fistful of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly kept all of the idiosyncratic flourishes of style and polished the aesthetics to a high finish.
Looking slightly ahead on my list, I see the later Leone western, Once Upon A Time in the West. I have seen this one a few times before, and it is good. However, I'm left to wonder exactly why it is considered a separately “great” film. I suppose I'll find out in another few weeks.
That's a wrap. 63 shows down. 42 to go.
Coming Soon: Mouchette (1967)
This one looks like a serious change of pace. I'm going from a raucous shoot-em-up to a dreary-looking French film about a teenage girl's suffering an misery. I may have to whack back a fifth of Scotch to get into the right mindset for this one. Come on back and see if I can stay lucid enough to figure out what make Mouchette “great”.
Please be sure to pick up all empties on the way out.
