I don’t know Italian, but it seems that both Brutto and Cattivo are translatable to “bad”. Wonder what that scene where the words flash on the screen looks like in Italian (if it even has a version in Italian?).
It definitely does. My DVD is in English but the VHS recording I had was Italian, as was the print I saw at the NFT.
The order is the same as in Italian in French “The Good, The [Ugly] and The [Bad]”.
It seems to me they tried to be smarter than the original title in the English chosen adaptation but made things more complex than they needed to be, and if the guy doing the commentary is familiar with the original poster on which the order was different depending on the language (I just looked it up), it may lead to all sort of confusion.
Fuck I love this film so much
I just quoted it the other day in a martial arts class: “When you have to shoot, shoot, don’t talk.”
I’ll write more when I get time, but it’s always cool when a movie you’ve heard about for years actually turns out to meet your high expectations. I loved it.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly opens on a very in-your-face opening credits. A big cannon fires at the words that make up the title of the movie. We hear gunshots as we see the faces of our 3 characters: Blondie, Tuco and Angel Eyes. But the more important part is that this is where we’re introduced to the iconic music we’ll be hearing over the next three hours. The music that never lets this production feel like a low budget film it probably is. This music is not just iconic, it has a cinematic quality and melody that’s immediately catchy and grabs you by the ears and says I’m mischievous, I’m the Old West, and I’m going to entertain the pants off you. Over the next three hours, I find that this music is not writing checks that it can’t cash.
And then the movie opens on the mug of a different man who is so close to the camera we can see the hair in his nostrils. This is a misdirection. We’re actually being introduced to the main protagonist of the movie: Tuco. But he’s in the shot for such a short moment that the director has to literally pause the film so that we can get a look at him. And he puts it out there in big bold letters: The Ugly. That’s who this guy is.
We’re next introduced to the antagonist of the movie: Angel Eyes. This is such a great sequence. Angel eyes is shown to be careful, calculating, and ruthless. But he’s also shown to be somewhat compassionate, and good for his word, even if that means ruin for this family. The movie flashes the words “The Bad” on the screen, just so that we know this is the bad guy. Honestly, this combination of over the top signaling to the audience, even though it’s unnecessary, I kind of loved it. It fits right in with the flagrant over-the-top nature of the music that’s so wonderful throughout the movie. I’m sure a film historian will point out, perhaps, that this was an adaptation of the spaghetti Westerns that the director was satirizing. But I’ve never seen a spaghetti Western, so I can’t be sure on that score.
The final introduction is made for Clint Eastwood’s character in a scene where Tuco is surrounded and almost captured for the reward money by some bounty hunters. But Blondie comes to the rescue. He wants the bounty to himself right? Well, not quite. Him and Tuco obviously make a deal. After he’s turned over to the authorities for a reward, Blondie sticks around and actually rescues Tuco from the noose, and they share the reward money.
So there’s our three characters: Angel Eyes is on the trail of stolen money that he wants for himself. Tuco is an outlaw who later finds out about the stash, and Blondie is his accomplice for a short period before he betrays him. So why is Blondie “The Good”? Even when he betrays Tuco, he still rescues him from the noose first. He could have just let him hang and keep the reward. But he doesn’t. He rescues him and then leaves him within walking distance of a town.
I really loved the adventure that unfolded. Tuco is obviously a bad guy, but he’s almost a lovable rogue, an outlaw with a mischievous and sometimes goofy look on his face at every moment. And he’s the center of the movie, and he anchors it so well. I haven’t often seen movies in which I’m fine laughing at a character, I’m fine rooting for a character, and I’m totally fine seeing that character possibly die or see their comeuppance in a dramatic way. Actually, right now I can’t think of any characters in fiction that pull that off. And that’s the core of why this movie is so enjoyable I think.
Despite what I said about the movie perhaps being low budget, there’s a sequence late in the movie where we see hundreds if not thousands of extras in a civil war battle with cannons and explosions, so I was obviously wrong about that. Still, even without the big expensive production at the end, the soundtrack makes this movie feel like a big huge production all the way through.
In the final confrontation between the three characters, I have to admit I started getting a bit impatient. We saw the eyes of the characters so many times as they stared at each other, waiting for someone to make the first move. It’s the only time in the movie where I went from riveted to irritated. But hey, who knows. Maybe that’s one of those spaghetti Western spoofs I don’t know anything about. So I’ll let it slide. It’s wonderful when a movie that’s famous lives up to its reputation, and I’m definitely going to watching this movie again and again given the opportunity. Bravo.
Point of order, the director is not satirizing spaghetti westerns, Sergio Leone practically is spaghetti western, and this film is the quintessential example of the form.
It is, however, somewhat pf a response to the traditional John Wayne style western. But that staring contest at the end? That is all Leone.
Reminder: 3 days left this month, including today. I would love to hear from others on their thoughts about this movie. Apparently I was driving my co-workers crazy last week because I kept humming the main theme of this movie.
If there’s one complaint I have for this movie, it would be that I wish it had more scenes with Angel Eyes. He’s a really smart and maybe even somewhat compassionate villain. When Tuco is being setup to be hung by the second town where he is captured, a lady in a stage coach or train says to Angel Eyes that it’s a good thing they’re hanging him. And he’s smart enough to look around and spot Tuco’s blond savior. We don’t hear much dialog from Angel Eyes after this scene. There’s a little bit at the prisoner of war camp later where he has someone torture Tuco, but we don’t see or hear from him much even in those scenes.
Thanks for the reminder.
It’s trite but true to say the mark of a great film is that you get something new out of it every time you watch it. I’ve seen TGTBATU dozens of times and I’m still seeing new things. This time, it was the parallels with Lebowski. Bear with me… Obviosuly both films are ridiculously quotable. But what is distinctive about both Lebowski and this film is how key phrases keep recurring, and in particular how characters pick up on other people’s turns of phrase and and repurpose them: “There are two kinds of :… my friend” "“When I’m paid, I always see the job through” “If you save your breath I feel a man like you can manage it”.
Beside that, what’s not to love about this film? The editing is among the best of any film, almost arrogant in its bravura nature. To my shame, I had to look the credit up, and it was Nino Baragli and Eugenio Alabiso.
The score is of course incredible, with both the main theme and The Ecstasy of Gold unforgettable, and the diegetic music in the Andersonville powerfully used. The deep streak of compassion and anti-war humaneness that runs through this ostensibly cynical and brutal film. The bleak yet beautiful landscapes. The lightfooted humour. The parsimonious storytelling (and dialogue for that matter - the gunshop scene may as well have been the inspiration for the “Fuck” scene in The Wire).
Last month when I had Netflix, I was surprised to see this movie “recently added” to Netflix. And I couldn’t resist watching again. It’s so good. I was just reminiscing today, and it occurred to me: hey wait a minute, this is supposed to be part of an unofficial trilogy. I should track down the two other movies in this unofficial trilogy. (TGTBATU is supposedly movie number 3). Justwatch.com says that the second movie is on Amazon Prime right now for streaming. So I should rent the first one, Fistfull of Dollars in the meantime.
For a Few Dollars More is kind of an oddball.
Honestly, it’s by far my favorite of the three. I absolutely love the duel in the church:
Both are very good, just not great epics like TGTBATU. Note that A Fistful of Dollars is an unofficial remake of Yojimbo, while For a Few Dollars More is, like Kolbex said, kind of an oddball (but has some great scenes and of course music).
If you’re still on a Sergio Leone Western crave after watching those, make sure to hunt down Once Upon a Time in the West. It has nothing to do with those Dollars movies, but it’s considered by many to be his best Western (though my favorite is still TGTBATU). The opening sets the tone perfectly:
