The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo)

Released: December 23, 1966

Studio: Produzioni Europee Associate

Genre: Western

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 25.10 Worldwide: 25.25

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: 186.80 Worldwide: 187.94

Directing: Sergio Leone

Screenwriting: Age & Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Leone

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach

Review:

The third installment in Italian director Sergio Leone’s epic trilogy was actually a prequel to A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965). “This sweeping, stylistic, and operatic film” ^FS has become possibly “the best known ‘spaghetti western’ of all time,” ^FS credited as “invigorated the ailing western.” ^PM

Like Leone’s other westerns, the movie “is viciously violent and machismo in tone, but buoyed by the classic, instantly recognizable, twanging Ennio Morricone score.” ^FS It features “very little dialogue…and vast widescreen landscapes.” ^FS “Leone built the action to a vertiginous climax, intercutting vivid panoramas with jarring close-ups.” ^PM This is his movie which “best balances art and entertainment.” ^E18

The film is set during the Civil War. Leone traveled to America to research the Civil War at the Library of Congress. He credited “legendary Civil War photographer Mathew B. Brady's expansive collection of images documenting the war as a main source of inspiration.” ^MSN

The story focuses on acquiring “a treasure chest of $200,000 in stolen Confederate gold buried in a grave at a faraway location.” ^FS Three “basically amoral, anti-social bounty hunters, outlaws, and murderers, are forced to form an uneasy partnership or alliance, leading to the film’s climactic graveyard shootout in which the opportunistic desperados find themselves facing off one last time for the fortune.” ^FS

Clint Eastwood plays “the unsmiling anti-hero ‘Good’ guy” ^FS known as “The Man with No Name.” He was in all three of Leone’s Dollar movies, but this was his “star-making role.” ^FS “Angel Eyes Sentenza (Van Cleef) serves as the vile and ruthless ‘Bad’ guy, and Tuco Ramirez (Wallach) provides the greedy, talkative, clownish and self-centered ‘Ugly.’” ^FS It’s the latter who “steals this Wild West show.” ^E18