Movie Review: "Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo" ("The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly")

Have you seen this movie?  Have you seen it in the last 40 years?  Watch it again.  Seriously.

Seeing the Ennio Morricone concert a few weeks ago inspired me to "revisit" the famous spaghetti westerns on which Morricone collaborated with famed director Sergio Leone.  I put "revisit" in quotes because I thought I'd seen these movies when I was a young boy.  After watching "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" earlier this week, I'm not so sure.  Perhaps I did watch one or two of the others in this renowned Leone trilogy, but I definitely had not seen this one.  No way.  In any event, I loved it.

For those of you who don't know, the "spaghetti westerns" are a genre of films from the 1960s that were set in the American West, but were typically produced and directed by Italians -- and shot in Europe.  The Hollywood westerns had by this time pretty much died out.  But Italian filmmakers reinvigorated the genre with stylized versions of their own.  The movies often starred faded American stars who were on the way down, or an up-and-coming star, i.e., Clint Eastwood.  The best known and most highly regarded of the spaghetti westerns were directed by Sergio Leone, and scored by Ennio Morricone.  These movies in particular have become iconic, and the best known are the "Dollars trilogy" of "A Fistful of Dollars," "For A Few Dollars More," and "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly," along with "Once Upon a Time in The West."

The spaghetti westerns generally garnered poor critical reviews when they were released, and Leone's movies are no exception.  Most American film critics looked down on them.  How can foreigners dare tread on the westerns, our most revered film genre?!?!?  That has changed over time, and Leone's spaghetti westerns have been reevaluated.  Many of them are now considered film classics.  "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" in particular shows up on many lists of the best movies ever, and Quentin Tarantino has called it  "the best-directed film of all time" and "the greatest achievement in the history of cinema."  I agree that it's up there.  

"The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" is almost 3 hours long.  But it goes fast.  Although the movie is shot in a very spare manner (which reminded me of the style Clint uses in his movies decades later), although there are long stretches with little dialogue or action, and although the plot is as simple as can be, the film is riveting.  I was amazed at how gripping the drama felt and at how Leone created such a suspenseful effect with such a simple plot device.  Without giving too much away, the 3 leads are rivals looking for a buried treasure in the Civil War-torn West.  They don't trust each other -- for good reason -- but they also all need each other.  To me, the strategic interplay between Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Lee Van Cleef felt like watching a litigation or a chess match unfold.  I loved that aspect of it.

I was surprised too by the movie's humor.  Indeed, while I never would have believed the following sentence if I'd read it before yesterday, I maintain it is true:  as great as Clint is as the uber-masculine hero in "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly," it is Eli Wallach who steals the show.  You'll have to watch the movie to see if you agree.

What can I say about Morricone's score?  It's unbelievable.  The music in this film is most famous for the quirky unique tune that accompanies the main players -- primarily Clint -- and the dramatic high points of the movie.  That music is in fact both wonderful and effective.  (I say "effective" because it's hard to think of any movie in which the music plays such a prominent role in the story-telling.)  What surprised me most, however, was that, in addition to that famous part of the score, there are also some musical pieces in the movie that are more traditionally beautiful.  I think you hear echoes of the soaring and moving melodies that Morricone would later use in movies like Leone's 1984 mob classic "Once Upon a Time in America" (which is as good as "The Godfather," "The Godfather 2," and "Goodfellas"), "Cinema Paradiso," and "The Mission."

It is also just interesting to watch how Leone in the mid-1960s portrayed the American Civil War.  There are a couple of scenes with both Confederate and Union troops, and I was intrigued by what some of the characters say about war.

And I won't tell you the ending.  But when you see the fantastic conclusion to "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly," you will instantly know that Tarantino wasn't kidding when he calls this film his favorite of all-time.

I give the movie 4 scoops of gelato.  If you haven't seen it, watch it.  If you've seen it but it's been 40 years, think about watching it again.  (Dad, you need to make Sam and Jack -- and Tori and Molly -- watch it!!)  I know I will be moving on to Leone's other spaghetti westerns now.  I'll let you know what I think.

Here's a great review by Roger Ebert.  This is not his original review from back in the day.  It's his revisiting of it in 2003:  www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-1968.  Here's also the wikipedia entry on spaghetti westerns (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_western), and on "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good,_the_Bad_and_the_Ugly).