1966 – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

It is the classic spaghetti western epic (meaning it was written and produced by Italians and typically shot in Europe). It was directed by Sergio Leone and stars Clint Eastwood as “the Good”, Lee Van Cleef as “the Bad”, and Eli Wallach as “the Ugly”. Its story is original, written by Leone and one of his writers, Luciano Vincenzoni. There are many unique aspects to this movie, but one special standout is its music by Ennio Morricone. I rented it on Apple TV for €3.99. Incidentally, in Germany, this movie is called “Zwei glorreiche Halunken”, which roughly translates to “Two glorious bastards” — huh? Did the translator simply drop one of the key ingredients present in the original title?

When I was 8 years old, my parents took me to see “The Mission“; they had to really fight to let me enter with them, as it’s not a kids’ movie at all. There are a few images in my mind here and there, but I don’t really remember much of the movie anymore. What really stayed with me, and I recall it immediately like it was yesterday, was the amazing musical score that accompanied the film. I already mentioned somewhere in the blog being introduced to “Cinema Paradiso” by my dad. In the final scene where the protagonist watches all the cut kisses, that score that has been in the background all along starts to swell up and begs the tears on your face to flow, flow, flow – how can some kitchy kisses from movies make you cry so much? That is the mastery of Ennio Morricone! Before Hans Zimmer and Ludwig Göransson, even before John Williams “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” defined score. Where you hear a few notes and are immediately transported into the movie. Parodied, copied, emulated, incorporated – he was the trailblazer.

So, it wasn’t a hard decision to choose which movie I would see for 1966. Why not the one that made him famous? Well, I have already discussed my reluctance toward Westerns, and this movie is 3 hours long, so I was a bit scared going into it. Part of it was wrong expectations: I really thought Clint Eastwood was going to be a caricature of “good”, the noble cowboy somehow fighting against the very good-looking “bad” character. It turned out that all three characters are some shade of gray (though Angel Eyes, “the Bad” is a scary character like Anton Chigurh in “No Country For Old Men“); there were no pure good guys here.

I actually liked that it poked fun at the nobleness portrayed in movies just a decade prior. There is that 1960s cynicism that keeps repeating, contrasting itself with the aspirations of the 1950s. I just never thought it would also translate to Westerns. The anti-war message about the senselessness of fighting over a bridge, for example, hits especially hard when one thinks that two years later in 1968, the Americans would pursue exactly that strategy in Vietnam: fighting over a hill with enormous casualties only to let it go later.

And then the movie also looks so damn good. From a technical aspect, you can really appreciate how well they coped. Does your “western town” movie set look dilapidated and poorly built due to budget constraints? No worries. We’ll just say it was marred by the Civil War passing back and forth through this town, with the Yanks and the Confederates taking it over. Add to that, it is really well portrayed. I don’t know how to describe it, but the movie is incredibly cinematic. It shows a close-up right at the exact moment when I thought, “Ah, now it’s time for a close-up!”, perfectly highlighting how scary somebody is or how much they want to redeem themselves. Perfect timing throughout! Even though it’s an epic, I didn’t feel like it lost a beat or meandered around.

So yes, come for the music and stay for a really good time. The climax features a tense three-way shootout between the titular characters — who will come out on top? I won’t reveal it, but my heart rooted for “the Ugly” the whole time!

P.S.: This review was supposed to come out already last Sunday, but I was quite sick a few days ago. So sometime in October I will have to do 2 Sundays in a row again, so that I finish with 25 movies by the end of the year.