By: Ben Holchak, Class IV
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly could never be mistaken for a modern movie. Part of that fact is technical – the type of camera used, the method of recording audio, and more. However, part of its old look is style – a style I’ve never experienced anywhere else, and one that I think is worth seeing. In a survey that I conducted, I found that four out of six students (sixty-six percent) at TBLS recognized The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’s name. Directed by Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is often considered a landmark of the Spaghetti Western subgenre, which was born in Italy in the 1960s. Sergio Leone is largely credited with the creation of the subgenre, having produced the films A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and A Few Dollars More (1965), both of which belong to the same trilogy as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. They all exemplify the Spaghetti Western subgenre, with imperfect protagonists, desolate deserts, and shanty towns.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly follows three gunslingers as they each race to find and loot a grave against the backdrop of the American civil war. This grave is rumored to have two-hundred-thousand dollars hidden in it. It is a large pursuit, requiring all the characters to cover miles of physical ground. By its end, there is an old-fashioned, unmistakably western showdown.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly opens with a detail of a man’s face, set against a vista reminiscent of the American west. The shot cuts to a view down the street of four shanties. Two men on horseback arrive, dismounting at the end of the street. The men approach each other – two on one side, one on the other – and the camera cycles between their faces, which are complemented only by the crunch of gravel underfoot. This opening scene lasts about two minutes altogether, and ends with the men within three feet of one another. They pause for a moment, then rush into the nearest building, guns drawn. Three gunshots sound before the window is shattered by a new man, who runs through the window in an escape. Then, the movie pauses on the image of the new man, and in cursive writing at the bottom right of the screen, “The Ugly” is spelled out. The audience learns that this man is “The Ugly” before they even learn that his name is Tuco.
In The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Sergio Leone expresses a style that I’ve only ever seen in the Spaghetti Western genre. This style is one of the things which makes the movie worth watching. The characters of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly are excellently demonstrated in the film’s introduction, featuring Tuco. The frozen frame of Tuco so early into the movie is both unusual and a stylistic decision. The choice to literally freeze the frame, let alone to write on it, is more expected out of a cartoon. Cartoons, particularly animated ones, don’t tend to ‘immerse’ the audience in the world they portray. And while The Good, the Bad and the Ugly isn’t animated or a cartoon, it employs the same kind of trade, sacrificing immersion for storytelling power. In this case, the association of Tuco’s character with ugliness sets the movie up for the trichotomy between the good, the bad, and the ugly, which recurs throughout the film as the frame-pausing is repeated.
The writing of the next scene, the arrival of Angel Eyes at the home of a man called Stevens, is also notable. Stevens stands on the far side of the house from the door. Then we get a shot of the man, viewed from Angel Eyes’ perspective. Stevens seems wary and afraid, but he limps steadily to a seat at his table. Once he sits, we are given a view of Angel Eyes from the man’s relative position. This view persists throughout the scene. Angel Eyes moves forward at a slow walk, stops before the man, sits down, and serves himself with the food at the table. Still, there is silence. No one has talked since the beginning of the movie. From here, Leone lets silence persist even further as Angel Eyes eats from the table, not once lifting his gaze off of the man. As the camera moves closer to the men, the tension stretches as far as it will go – tension created in large part because dialogue is to be expected, especially this far into the movie and between two people seated at a table.
But Leone is also unafraid to discard the silence when it becomes so extended that it is no longer useful or welcome. Stevens addresses Angel Eyes, saying shakily, “You’re from Baker? Tell Baker that I told him all that I know already! Tell him I want to live in peace, understand? There is no use to go on tormenting me! I know nothing at all about that case of coins…I can’t tell Baker what happened to the money. Go back and tell him that.” This break of the silence introduces the pursuit which, henceforth, will occupy Angel Eyes, Tuco, and the protagonist, The Man with No Name.
The Man with No Name offers a great analysis of how Spaghetti Westerns differ from other westerns like 3:10 to Yuma (1957). The Man with No Name is a solitary gunslinger who kills many times throughout the films, yet he is the “good” of the film’s title. This is mostly because he has identifiable empathy, and although it is kept to a bare minimum throughout The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, it still separates him from Angel Eyes, and, to a lesser extent, Tuco. One of The Man with No Name’s most empathetic moments is when he offers a dying Union soldier (the movie is set during the American Civil War, remember?) his cigarette and coat. This sequence is expertly positioned right before the final showdown – and the height of the trichotomy – between all three characters, distinguishing The Man with No Name as good before he is contrasted with the other characters. In direct opposition to this, Angel Eyes is the unambiguous cutthroat of the film. In his introduction, he kills both Stevens and Baker in pursuit of the aforementioned money. Whereas Tuco is the ugly, Angel Eyes is, unequivocally, the bad.
The musical score also adds to the movie, and nowhere is it more intense and effectual than when Tuco arrives at the cemetery. Tuco’s arrival at the graveyard is the culmination of over two and a half hours of eventful on-screen journeying, and Leone treats it as such. The scale of the moment is stressed by The Ecstacy of Gold, which was composed by Ennio Morricone, who wrote all the music for the film. Dramatic trumpets fill the music, especially in its last half, where the music builds. Near the song’s end, the noises of bells are added, then more bells, and more intense, rapid chaos.
The cinematography during the scene at the cemetery is equally full of stress and weight. As Tuco runs around, frantically and desperately looking for a particular grave, the camera does the same, as if it is from Tuco's perspective. By the song’s end, the audience is getting shots of gravestones flying by the camera so fast that they are a blur and a mess of color. Leone exchanges clear, steady shots for ones that reflect Tuco’s chaotic mindset.
Overall, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is an unmistakably iconic (Spaghetti) Western, and a movie well worth watching. Fifty-eight years after its release, it continues to embody a unique style – one whose uniqueness has not faded as the film has exceeded its 50th anniversary. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is certainly unusual in some ways, but in others it is simply a Western directed by an effective director. If you don’t hate Westerns, give it a watch!
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