The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Introduced by filmmaker and Leone-aficionado Devan Scott, this is the nearest you will get to the definitive director’s cut of the Italian’s 1966 masterpiece.

The third and the best of the so-called ’Dollars’ trilogy Leone made with Clint Eastwood expands on and amplifies character-types, themes and situations from the earlier pictures. The civil war setting throws the mercenaries’ self-interest into sharp relief; the film’s rambunctious black comedy notwithstanding. Structured as a series of sly reversals, it raises one-upmanship to an art-form, culminating in the stunning ten minute three-way duel in the middle of a huge cemetery designed to look like a Greek amphitheatre.

By now the flamboyant Leone style was exerting itself, ramping up in ambition and scale even as the pace becomes more stately… A master of Cinemascope composition, Leone brought depth and movement to his landscapes with elegant crane shots and brazen pans; he also evinced a startling propensity for juxtaposing wide shots with ultra-tight close-ups. Morricone’s eclectic and innovative score is also integral to the film’s impact; flippant and ironic, but with an undertow of nostalgia and regret.

Disdained by many US critics at the time (Pauline Kael branded him a fascist), Leone’s version of the Western betrayed no love for the land (mostly desert scrub) and no respect for human dignity. His conception of the laconic and all but invulnerable anti-hero propagated legions of action supermen from Dirty Harry through to the Terminator. Yet for all that Leone’s cynicism is clearly meant as a corrective to the naïve pioneer romanticism espoused by Hollywood; his frontiersmen may be grubby mercenaries, but they are not without moral shading, and there is a bon viveur’s delight in Eli Wallach’s resourceful rogue Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the film’s underdog and true hero.

The best directed movie of all time.

Quentin Tarantino

A masterclass in movie storytelling, a dynamic testament to the sheer, invigorating uniqueness of cinema.

Tom Huddlestone, Time Out

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