On occasion I plan on posting a review of one of my favorite movies of all time. My criteria for choosing films to review will be based entirely upon my own personal taste. I plan on picking films which I simply cannot imagine living without. Some will be critically-acclaimed “masterpieces,” whereas others will be underground films that very few people have heard of. Some will be acknowledged classics, whereas others will be generally derided films which I nevertheless have a soft spot in my heart for (I’m talking to you “Elizabethtown”). My comments on these films will hopefully provide some insight into my taste as a cinemaphile (for what it’s worth).
I don’t have a favorite movie of all time. There are way too many great films out there to narrow them all down to one artificial “Holy Grail” of the screen. Nevertheless, when people ask me what my favorite film is, I typically give one of about ten stock answers, depending upon my mood. On certain days (including today), The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is at the top of my list. When I consider why this film resonates with me on such a profound level, I’m reminded of the old adage in film criticism “it’s not important what a film is about, but rather how it’s about what it’s about.”
The plot of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is ridiculously simplistic for its three hour running time. Nevertheless, a simple plot summary doesn’t get at the reasons I love Leone’s spaghetti Western so much. Yes, it’s about three greedy men seeking a lost Confederate treasure following a Yankee raid. But, it’s really about Ennio Morricone’s electrifying score. It’s about Clint Eastwood’s stoic posture and subtle changes of facial expressions at key emotionally-charged moments. It’s about Eli Wallach’s Tuco, part Mexican clown, part maniacal monster. It’s about the opening shot, a simple image of a desolate ghost town energized by the sudden appearance in the frame of a blood thirsty bounty hunter. It’s about the film’s magical ending, featuring a Mexican standoff so long and elaborately-shot that even Quentin Tarantino starts to look at his watch.
One of Leone’s great accomplishments is the way he breathes new life into the hackneyed stereotypes of American Westerns. Leone reached the apotheosis of “Western deconstruction” in his other masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West. Nevertheless, I have always found the latter film too cold for my taste. Perhaps it would make a great doctoral thesis on the images and character types from the American Western, but it lacks the primal energy and emotional gestures of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. When watching a Leone film for the first time, I sense that I have seen every image in the film before, but not in the exact same configuration. Something just feels a little “off.” This simultaneous feeling of familiarity and originality is, of course, one of the great pleasures of Leone’s work.
I’ve talked a lot about the style of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but not much about the substance. I’m not sure that Leone is trying to say anything particularly profound in his Italian Western. Sure, some contemporary critics have insisted upon reading the film as a peculiar parable for the turbulent political and military happenings of the 1960s. I have a hard time buying into the notion that The Good ultimately presents an anti-violence message, especially considering the ways in which the film seems to glory in its more sadistic moments (for example, Angel Eyes’s cruel torture of Tuco, trying to get information from his regarding the location of the treasure). Leone’s film, though, is a predecessor of such later “style-over-substance” films as Kill Bill. I am fine with this approach, as long as the substance is interesting enough to hold my attention for three hours, as is the case with Leone’s film.
If Leone is trying to say anything, though, he might be hinting at the folly of Hollywood’s simplistic approach to good and evil. Leone not only titles the movie The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but audaciously uses intertitles to unambiguously label each of the characters according to one of the above personal traits. Perhaps we can all agree that Tuco is “ugly,” but is Eastwood’s Blondie really “good”? Leone’s exaggerated reduction of complex characters to one simplistic defining characteristic calls attention to the fact that that Hollywood had participated in such dehumanizing simplification for years (“oh look, there’s the bad guy”). In fact, are we not still participating in this totalizing reduction (see “Joe, the Plumber”)?
Leone’s film, then, retains its relevance both in style and substance today. The quest for ill-gotten gold is as old as Beowulf and as new as the latest thriller in your local multiplex. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly has entered our cultural lexicon to a degree that few other films have. Who can hear the opening strains of Merricone’s score (oh ah oh ah oh … wah wah wah) without the accompanying flood of spaghetti Western images inundating one’s mind?
I don’t have a favorite movie of all time. There are way too many great films out there to narrow them all down to one artificial “Holy Grail” of the screen. Nevertheless, when people ask me what my favorite film is, I typically give one of about ten stock answers, depending upon my mood. On certain days (including today), The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is at the top of my list. When I consider why this film resonates with me on such a profound level, I’m reminded of the old adage in film criticism “it’s not important what a film is about, but rather how it’s about what it’s about.”
The plot of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is ridiculously simplistic for its three hour running time. Nevertheless, a simple plot summary doesn’t get at the reasons I love Leone’s spaghetti Western so much. Yes, it’s about three greedy men seeking a lost Confederate treasure following a Yankee raid. But, it’s really about Ennio Morricone’s electrifying score. It’s about Clint Eastwood’s stoic posture and subtle changes of facial expressions at key emotionally-charged moments. It’s about Eli Wallach’s Tuco, part Mexican clown, part maniacal monster. It’s about the opening shot, a simple image of a desolate ghost town energized by the sudden appearance in the frame of a blood thirsty bounty hunter. It’s about the film’s magical ending, featuring a Mexican standoff so long and elaborately-shot that even Quentin Tarantino starts to look at his watch.
One of Leone’s great accomplishments is the way he breathes new life into the hackneyed stereotypes of American Westerns. Leone reached the apotheosis of “Western deconstruction” in his other masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West. Nevertheless, I have always found the latter film too cold for my taste. Perhaps it would make a great doctoral thesis on the images and character types from the American Western, but it lacks the primal energy and emotional gestures of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. When watching a Leone film for the first time, I sense that I have seen every image in the film before, but not in the exact same configuration. Something just feels a little “off.” This simultaneous feeling of familiarity and originality is, of course, one of the great pleasures of Leone’s work.
I’ve talked a lot about the style of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but not much about the substance. I’m not sure that Leone is trying to say anything particularly profound in his Italian Western. Sure, some contemporary critics have insisted upon reading the film as a peculiar parable for the turbulent political and military happenings of the 1960s. I have a hard time buying into the notion that The Good ultimately presents an anti-violence message, especially considering the ways in which the film seems to glory in its more sadistic moments (for example, Angel Eyes’s cruel torture of Tuco, trying to get information from his regarding the location of the treasure). Leone’s film, though, is a predecessor of such later “style-over-substance” films as Kill Bill. I am fine with this approach, as long as the substance is interesting enough to hold my attention for three hours, as is the case with Leone’s film.
If Leone is trying to say anything, though, he might be hinting at the folly of Hollywood’s simplistic approach to good and evil. Leone not only titles the movie The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but audaciously uses intertitles to unambiguously label each of the characters according to one of the above personal traits. Perhaps we can all agree that Tuco is “ugly,” but is Eastwood’s Blondie really “good”? Leone’s exaggerated reduction of complex characters to one simplistic defining characteristic calls attention to the fact that that Hollywood had participated in such dehumanizing simplification for years (“oh look, there’s the bad guy”). In fact, are we not still participating in this totalizing reduction (see “Joe, the Plumber”)?
Leone’s film, then, retains its relevance both in style and substance today. The quest for ill-gotten gold is as old as Beowulf and as new as the latest thriller in your local multiplex. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly has entered our cultural lexicon to a degree that few other films have. Who can hear the opening strains of Merricone’s score (oh ah oh ah oh … wah wah wah) without the accompanying flood of spaghetti Western images inundating one’s mind?
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