Production Year: 1966 - Westerns - Director: Sergio Leone - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Mario Brega, Aldo Giuffre, Luigi Pistilli, Chelo Alonso, Enzo Petito, Rada Rassimov, Claudio Scarchilli more
The culmination of Leone's renowned Dollars series of spaghetti westerns that includes A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964) and FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965). Set during the Civil War, this... more
here) is bad, and Eli Wallach (Tuco Benedito Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez) is ugly in the final chapter of Sergio Leone's trilogy of spaghetti Westerns (the first ...
here) is bad, and Eli Wallach (Tuco Benedito Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez) is ugly in the final chapter of Sergio Leone's trilogy of spaghetti Westerns (the first ...
Leone is the third and last western in Clint Eastwood's spaghetti trilogy. Director Sergio Leone substitutes for the upright puritan Protestant ethos so familiar i...
All our items are despatched from the United Kingdom. Starring - Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach, Aldo Giuffre, Luigi Pistilli We offer *** WORLDWIDE *** Delivery!, Manufacturer: MoviePostersDirect
Production Year: 1965 - Westerns - Director: Sergio Leone - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Klaus Kinski, Mario Brega, Gian Maria Volonte, Mara Krup, Luigi Pistilli
Production Year: 1959 - Westerns - Director: Howard Hawks - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, Ward Bond, Claude Akins, Walter Brennan, John Russell
A review by Mauri on The Good Bad And The Ugly (DVD) July 26th, 2000
Author's product rating:
Did you enjoy it?
Loved it
Story
Good
Characters / Performances
Outstanding
Special Effects
Good
How does it compare to similar films?
Outstanding
Advantages:
Direction, music, story
Disadvantages:
Not suitable for very young
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
This is the third and the best of the Sergio Leone's 'Dollar' trilogy, and possibly the best of the 'spaghetti western' genre. The previous films, 'A Fistful of Dollars' (1964) and 'For A Few Dollars More' (1965) were groundbreaking as part of the spaghetti western genre that reacted against the traditional Hollywood representation of the west and led to a regeneration in the western until the late 70's. Originally these movies were low-budget westerns filmed in Europe featuring mainly European actors. The Spaghetti westerns often adopted a very theatrical even operatic style and contained graphic violence leading to criticism that they were simply a cheap tawdry imitation of the classic western film genre.
The history and development of Spaghetti westerns is a fascinating subject and if you are interested in a slightly more in depth study of it do include more information in my previous reviews on 'A Fistful of Dollars' and 'For A Few Dollars More' .
By the time ‘The Good the Bad and the Ugly’ was made Leone had achieved worldwide success and he could afford to increase his budget for filmmaking.
THE STORY
This film deals with three men hunting for a dead man's gold, a simple treasure hunt set against a western backdrop.
Blondie (the Good) and Tuco (the Ugly) have a nice racket going. Tuco is a wanted criminal and Blondie will hand him over to the Law for a reward, except that just before Tuco is hanged Blondie helps him to escape so that they can collect the reward in another place. Eventually after an argument Blondie abandons Tuco in the middle of the desert and Tuco swears to get revenge. He soon gets the opportunity and after capturing Blondie he leads trough the desert denying him water and watching him slowly die. Fortuitously for Blondie they come across an ambushed carriage with only one dying survivor before passing out the dying man tell Blondie the location of a hidden treasure of gold. Now Tuco has to keep Blondie alive and resume their partnership in order to get to the treasure. On their travels they end up being captured as confederate prisoners where they meat Angel Eyes (the Bad) who finds out about the treasure and so begins a desperate race for gold.
CAST, PERFORMANCES AND OPINION
Clint Eastwood .... Blondie, The Man With No Name (The Good) Lee Van Cleef .... Angel Eyes, aka Senteza (The Bad) Eli Wallach .... Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez (The Ugly) Aldo Giuffrè .... Alcoholic Union captain Luigi Pistilli .... Father Pablo Ramirez Rada Rassimov .... Maria
Directed by Sergio Leone Writers Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Leone
The themes in the ‘Dollar’ trilogy of films, especially in 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' (GBU), are not those encountered in the classic American westerns. We don't have the lone hero upholding law and order against the marauding Indians/ outlaw gangs, nor do we find settlers struggling to conquer the wild frontier. In GBU as in the previous Leone westerns greed rules the day. The West is shown as a violent lawless place, those who are meant to uphold the law are always corrupt.
In GBU Leone as the scope to explore other issues close to his heart. The title GBU asks us to question the nature of good and bad, certainly all the characters have aspects of both. Leone also uses one of the most important events in the western history, the American civil war, to make a very powerful anti-war statement. He also questions the idea that the northern states were fighting a righteous war against the slave owning south. Leone says that there were no good guys and bad guys they were all as bad as each other. He makes this point visually in the scene showing northern cavalry troops, covered in dust, and mistaken for the confederates by Tuco and Blondie. Later when they a put into the prison camp we see confederate prisoners being forced to play instruments a direct reference to the Jewish prisoner orchestras in the Nazi death camps.
In more general terms to coincide with an increasing anti Vietnam War feeling that existed in the late 60’s the movie starkly portrays the effects of war with many uncompromising scenes of tragic violence in the name of a deeply believed cause.
Despite this overall moral dimension to the film, we find very little morality in the characters. Once again Clint Eastwood is cast as ‘the man with no name’ by now an iconic sixties figure. He does not conform to the traditional western hero his lack of moral perspective is visible throughout and in the final analysis he is not very much better than any of the other characters in the film although Leone does allow him a certain of introspection when he comes face to face with the horrors of the civil war. Eastwood by now had grown in the role and although the acting could at best be described as minimalist it perfectly suits the tone and atmosphere of the film where men allowed their guns to do the talking for them. The musical score of Ennio Morricone a long-standing friend and contributor to Leone’s films superbly compensate for the relative lack of dialogue. Once again Morricone manages to produce a soundtrack that was unique, blending traditional western musical motifs with some more innovative and almost surreal sound effect including choral accompaniment. The theme itself has become a classic.
Technically Leone once again proved what a great innovator he was. The use of the panoramic wide-angle shots perfectly conjures up the expanse of the old west and at the same time the quick cutting and close up zoom shots give the film a very personal quality and add vibrancy to the action keeping the audience on its toes. On one level the films can be accurately described as very stylised views of the frontier west but Leone also wanted to be realistic in his portrayal of the details of the story. An elevated budget when compared to his previous films allowed him to ensure that the scenery weapons and general props were accurate representations of the time
Leone's excellence as an epic director really shines in many key scenes in the film; the prison camp, the battle scenes and of course the final three way shoot out with its swirling camerawork and musical crescendo all serve to illustrate his skill.
Of the other performance in the film only Tuco and Angel Eyes are of importance. Eli Wallach manages to inject a lot of humour into Tuco and although we know he is a murderer and thief we warm to him and by the end of the film he is established as the most sympathetic of the there main character. Lee van Cleef plays the role of the Sadistic Angel eyes to perfection his trademark reptilian looks and beady eye stare make you believe in the evil of his character once again the dialogue is of secondary importance, characterisation in these film a is more about lingering malevolent stare, grimaces and twisted lips usually foretelling a violent reaction. This reliance on body language and evocative music is one reason the films achieved such a worldwide success even in countries where they were badly dubbed or subtitled. Similar in many ways to the martial arts films that followed in the 70’s.
The Good the Bad and the Ugly is a very important film and a true classic. It showed the world that the Spaghetti western had evolved from the innovative but still provincial niche of Leone’s previous films into a truly grand, epic genre. Later films such as ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’, ‘The Quick and the Dead’ and ‘Unforgiven’ all owe a massive debt to this Leone masterpiece and I don’t think it is to much to say that other classic of recent years such as The Wild Bunch, The Godfather or Bonnie And Clyde might not have been possible without Leone’s groundbreaking work.
‘The Good the Bad and the Ugly’ is available on DVD from Play.com for £11.99 (delivered) and on VHS from Amazon.co.uk for £7.19 (+ p&p).
Advantages: Performances, Rich visual imagery, Top class Editing Disadvantages: Quite slow at times
...had a straightforward narrative structure, the straight as arrow hero, usually the town sheriff, the bad guy, an outlaw, and a lovely heroine. Of course Injuns were always shown as nasty savages, Mexicans were bumbling idiots and Black guys who were they?. John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, Henry Fonda , Gary Cooper were some of the biggest stars of the Westerns. Until in 1966 an Italian director called Segio Leone turned the Western on it's head, to create ... ..."Spaghetti Westerns". To be honest The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was not Sergio Leone's first work, it was in fact the last of a trilogy starting with a Western version of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, followed by For a Few Dollars More. But The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly would remain the most defining movie in Leone's career. The movie is about The Good( Clint Eastwood) , who actually has no name as such. He is a bounty hunter and ...
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Advantages: breathtaking film Disadvantages: deaf people may find long silences and stares a bit boring, and slightly baffling.
...Leone, who created this as the third in the trilogy of ‘spaghetti westerns’ (because of the largely Italian cast, crew and locations), after the inferior ‘Fistful of dollars’ and ‘For a few dollars more’. I see this as Leone’s greatest film, and certainly one of the greatest westerns ever made. The western genre was, by 1966, becoming tired and much less popular than in its 1950s heyday. In this previous ... ...and who is bad. By the late 1960s, westerns were losing their stringent messages and much more complex ideas were filtering in to them. The irony in the title of ‘The good, the bad, and the ugly’ is that although these roles are defined at the beginning, Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach, respectively, the ambiguity of the titles makes the journey depicted within much more intriguing.
But this is not a film mainly about ...
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Advantages: Has all the ingredients of a great western Disadvantages: Slightly long in duration
...to be probably one of the finest movies ever made in its genre, here is a rare combination of a good casting which delivers great performances, excellent technical glitz and a strange deficiency of glamour. Made as the final component of the now-famous trilogy by Sergio Leone (“A fistful of Dollars” and “For a Few Dollars More” were the other two), this movie is certainly the best of them all in terms of overall cinematic excellence.
Set against ... ...Name” (“The Good”, played by the man born to act that role, Clint Eastwood) with his rugged looks and street-smart manners. He is paired with a buffoon of a companion, Tuco – The Ugly (Eli Wallach in a delightful role) who, together are on the lookout for some easy money. They even resort to making a mockery of the law making authority of those days, Tuco is handed over to the sheriff by Clintie for which he gets a reward and he later helps Tuco ...
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Advantages: Amazing Film Disadvantages: I don't know
...up his cowboy gear with the Colt 45 and travelled to Europe to take part in yet another western but this time with the presence of the gifted director Sergio Leone. The final result was the "Dollars Trilogy" of which 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly' is the final and most probably the finest episode. This was the movie that put Clint on the map and notorious as the fastest draw in the West.
There have been many, if not too many, spagetti westerns ... ...such quality as 'The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly', it is all worth it.
The story is simple. It's all about money. The three characters are set on making as much money as they can in the easiest possible way, either fake claiming rewards or being a bounty hunter. Tuco and Blondie are teamed up right from the start collecting the ever increasing rewards for Tuco's arrest and hanging. Blondie always cuts the noose before Tuco pays the ultimate price ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: Great Film, Good Story, Excellent Music, Excellent Directory, Disadvantages: NONE - Maybe for some too long
...minutes (approx) About the Film
The Good, the Bad and The Ugly, written by Age-Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni and Sergio Leone is the third and last western in Clint Eastwood's spaghetti trilogy.
Director Sergio Leone substitutes for the upright puritan Protestant Ethos, so familiar in Hollywood westerns, with a seedy cynical standpoint towards death and morality, as a team of brutal bandits battle to unearth a fortune buried beneath an unmarked ... ...by the Ugly "Eli Wallach" and the Bad "Lee Van Cleef". This film is a complex plot of bloodshed and betrayel as it winds its way through the American Civil War to end in the climatic Dance of Death.
This film also boasts a fine Enio Morricone score as a main theme that reached No. 1 in the world's pop charts.
The basic story is set in Western Times with Clint Eastwood playing the Good, Eli Wallach The Ugly and Lee van Cleef The Bad. The three main ...
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Advantages: Beautifully made, good performances Disadvantages: Actors speak their own languages, so lip synching poor
...During America's Civil War, three men are making their living by any means possible. Blondie (The Good) is a gunman who likes to keep on the straight and narrow as much as possible. Angel Eyes (The Bad) is a professional hitman will kill anyone so long as he receives payment. Tuco (The Ugly) is an outlaw who just wants to make a fortune. Then Blondie and Tuco come across news that there is a large sum of money buried in a graveyard. Blondie knows the name of the grave; Tuco knows the name of the cemetery - so both are determined to keep the other alive in order to get to the money. Then Angel Eyes finds out about the money - and decides to follow the other two in order to find the fortune for himself. Will they find a way to share? Or are two of the three destined to die?
Westerns are very far from being the type of film that I enjoy...
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Advantages: Well written, well acted, incredible finale Disadvantages: May be a bit long for some people
...The Good, the Bad and the Ugly stars Clint Eastwood as Blondie, a professional gunslinger out trying to make a few bucks. Angel Eyes is a hit man who always sees his job through, as long as he is paid. And Tuco, a wanted outlaw only out for himself. These three find out about a stash of gold buried in a cemetery, and must battle it out with each other to see who gets it.
This is truly an epic film in every sense of the word. Fantastic sprawling shots show the isolation that a lot of these people were in, and the music reflects that. Aside from the classic opening tune, it's very minimalistic, sometimes only the wind howling being the only thing on the soundtrack. Occasionally you get a gentle strum on the guitar, and a lone trumpet, which really reflects the loneliness and the vastness between neighboring towns, where people traveling...
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Advantages: fantastic plot, great acting and a brilliant soundtrack Disadvantages: noticeable dubbing in some places
..."The Good , The Bad and The Ugly" has got to be one of the most recognisable films of all time. This classic Spaghetti Western, directed by Sergio Leone, is packed full of action and drama and features one of the finest soundtracks courtesy of Ennio Morricone.
The film focuses around three main protagonists (the good, the bad and the ugly) and their search for treasure. Firstly we are introduced to The Ugly, also known as Tuco (Eli Wallach) who represents greed. We then meet The Bad, known as Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef). Angel Eyes is their representing the villain and darker character. Finally we are introduced to The Good aka Blondie (Clint Eastwood) although he does not represent 'good' as such as he tends to do as he pleases. He is however the hero of this film.
The characters, although independent when we first see them...
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Plot: The culmination of Leone's renowned Dollars series of spaghetti westerns that includes A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964) and FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965). Set during the Civil War, this wagonload of grit carries three desperados whose squinting eyes are fixed on a Confederate treasure. While dodging authorities, the Good (Eastwood) the Bad (Van Kleef) and the Ugly (Wallach) keep busy by stabbing each other firmly in the back hoping to beat the others to the gold. The climax comes with the gripping stand-off at the cemetery. A typical Leone picture with brooding vistas, leisurely langorous pacing, operatic violence and a haunting score from Morricone.
DVD Description
The culmination of Leone's renowned Dollars series of spaghetti westerns that includes A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964) and FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965). Set during the Civil War, this wagonload of grit carries three desperados whose squinting eyes are fixed on a Confederate treasure. While dodging authorities, the Good (Eastwood) the Bad (Van Kleef) and the Ugly (Wallach) keep busy by stabbing each other firmly in the back hoping to beat the others to the gold. The climax comes with the gripping stand-off at the cemetery. A typical Leone picture with brooding vistas, leisurely langorous pacing, operatic violence and a haunting score from Morricone.
Special Features: 14 Minutes Never Before Seen Footage, Interactive Menu Screens, Chapter Search, Original Theatrical Trailer, 8 Page Film Guide, Digitally Remastered
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 Wide Screen, 16:9 Wide Screen
Sound: Mono
Dubbing Sound: Mono English
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Listed on Ciao since : 09/07/2000
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