![\"Eli](\"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/goodbadugly2.jpg\" "\\"goodbadugly2\\"")
Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood are the West's odd couple in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"<\/p><\/div>\n
Fistful of Leone<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h1>\n[xrr rating=5\/5]<\/p>\n
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly<\/em><\/strong>. Starring Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Aldo Giuffre, Luigi Pistilli, Rada Rassimov, Enzo Petito, Molino Rocho, and Mario Brega. Cinematography by Tonino Della Colli. Edited by Eugenio Alabiso and Nino Baragli. Restored version edited by Joe D\u2019Augustine. Sets and costumes by Carlo Simi.\u00a0 Music by Ennio Morricone. Screenplay by Age-Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni, and Sergio Leone. Directed by Sergio Leone. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer\/United Artists Pictures, 1967 [Restored 2003], Technicolor, 179 minutes. MPAA Rating: R.)<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Good, the Bad and the Ugly<\/em>\u00a0is Sergio Leone\u2019s magnum opus. An audacious undertaking, with a totally implausible plot and over-the-top acting, it would have flopped miserably in any other director\u2019s hands. Only someone so committed to his artistic vision as Leone could have pulled off this bombastic pageantry of human nature in all its facets, its capacity for cynicism, greed, bloodlust, revenge, heroism, redemption and honor.<\/p>\nThis movie must be\u00a0experienced<\/em>. I had seen the DVD of the truncated 1967 version countless times, but I had not seen it on the big screen until this gorgeous restoration I was privileged to watch at Manhattan\u2019s Film Forum. The stereophonic soundtrack of Ennio Morricone\u2019s score pummels you square in the chest from the moment the Lardani titles blast onto the screen in a blaze of Technicolor fury. The montage of color, interspersed by stark black and white visages of Eastwood, Van Cleef and Wallach is a tough act to follow, like Saul Bass\u2019s iconic title sequences.<\/p>\nThis MGM\/UA print was first restored in Italian by Cineteca Nazionale. The English-language restoration was spearheaded by Martin Scorsese, whose efforts with the Film Preservation Foundation have helped fund preservation of America\u2019s celluloid heritage. Both Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood returned to the sound studio to dub new dialogue for approximately twenty minutes of restored footage. Both sound a little older and scratchier, but these added scenes help to explain both Tuco\u2019s and Angel Eyes\u2019 gangs and some plot points that were previously unclear. However, they both sound great! (The late Lee Van Cleef\u2019s voice was dubbed by a professional voiceover artist, and actually sounds more on target than the two surviving leads). The movie now has the true feel of a sprawling epic, one that\u2019s earned its right to take its time.<\/p>\n
Even though the original was shot silent and then overdubbed in Italian, the English-language version packs the greatest punch, thanks to Mickey Knox, who wrote the English language dialogue. Knox crafted lines that lived up to the larger than life screenplay. You\u2019d swear the original was in English, the dialogue is so perfectly tailored!<\/p>\n
But the vision is singularly Leone\u2019s. It starts slowly, as a band of bounty killers home in on their prey, small-time bandit Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan-Maria Ramirez (The Ugly, played by the venerable Eli Wallach). They pile through a saloon door, then the camera immediately pans away laterally. Suddenly, his body hurtling through the front window in a rain of glass, Tuco bursts onto the street\u2014in what has to be the most absurd grand entrance in screen history\u2014revolver in one hand, a chicken leg in the other. It\u2019s total chutzpah on Leone\u2019s and Wallach\u2019s part.<\/p>\n
If you think\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0can’t be topped, watch Wallach\u2019s entire performance. Animated is putting it mildly. More than a performance, Wallach is a one-man band, nay, army. Never has such a selfish, petty, ratty and shifty little man been played so larger than life. Wallach smirks, scurries, grimaces, chuckles, shouts, bellows, and slyly oils his way across the screen in what has got to be the hammiest performance ever by a method actor. Or\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0actor, for that matter: He makes Orson Welles, Burt Lancaster and Charles Laughton look like the gray and sullen cast of an Ingmar Bergman snoozefest. Wallach is so alive with passion that he literally sweats his performance out through the filthy pores on his stubble-ridden face. And he\u2019s wonderful!<\/p>\nIf that\u2019s a tough act to follow, you haven\u2019t met The Bad. They don\u2019t come any badder than Angel Eyes, Lee Van Cleef\u2019s hired killer who\u2019s got ice water running through his veins. Van Cleef is ruthless, bold and heartless. Riding out of nowhere onto a doomed man\u2019s rancho, Angel Eyes pays a visit, carrying out a murder for hire. The price: $500. But the victim offers him $1000 to look the other way. No dice: Angel Eyes isn\u2019t in it for the money. Rather, he\u2019s a man who loves his work, and always sees the job through. So, the poor sod dies anyway.<\/p>\n
Clint Eastwood is as cool as a cucumber as The Man With No Name (but really one with sort of a name, in this case \u201cBlondie,\u201d which is Wallach\u2019s moniker for him). It\u2019s fun watching the ongoing relationship between Blondie and Tuco as bounty hunter and prey. In another life, they would have been great pals, but in this life (\u201cwe\u2019re all alone in this world,\u201d Tuco confesses to Blondie, half seriously, half cynically) their love of money is thicker than friendship. So, they invent ingenious and cruel ways to exact revenge of each other.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s during one of Tuco\u2019s sadistic plots\u2014in which he marches pale-faced Eastwood across 100 miles of scorching desert\u2014that the action finally comes to a head: A driverless stagecoach full of wounded Confederates happens across their path, and through a twist of fate, Tuco and Blondie each have two halves of a secret which (if put together) will make them a quarter million dollars richer. But without each other, the two halves are worthless. Thus does Tuco do a 180 from brutal executioner to Blondie\u2019s would-be savior. Now that he could be rich, he suddenly realizes how valuable their friendship is.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not before long that they wind up with Angel Eyes, as they\u2019re captured by Union soldiers. At the prisoner of war camp, a deadly game of cat and mouse begins. Van Cleef is now more restrained and less thuggish as he deals with Tuco to extract the secret; his henchman Wallace (Mario Brega, a Leone stalwart), beats it out of Tuco.<\/p>\n
In epic fashion, after a shootout in a deserted town and a bridge demolition that rages across the screen, Tuco, Blondie and Angel Eyes make their way to the cemetery where the treasure is buried. In a fanfare of brass, percussion and chorus, the three face each other down in the cemetery plaza. It’s a gorgeous and cathartic set piece. Credit must go not only to composer Ennio Morricone but also to musical director Bruno Nicolai, who conducts the score\u00a0con fuoco<\/em>.<\/p>\nSergio Leone\u2019s trilogy of Westerns with Eastwood, which began with\u00a0Fistful of Dollars\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0For a Few Dollars More<\/em>, were sneeringly called \u201cSpaghetti Westerns\u201d by skeptical movie reviews when first released. In the 1970s, film theory types renamed them as \u201crevisionist.\u201d But, see this on the big screen for the first time, thirty-seven years after it was shot, and there\u2019s only one label that so perfectly adheres to\u00a0Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo<\/em>:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cMasterpiece.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in\u00a0<\/span>Black & White Magazine<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Entrepreneur<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Hoy! New York<\/span><\/span>, the New York\u00a0<\/span>Post<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>RCA Victor\u00a0<\/span>(Japan)<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Scene in San Antonio<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Spirit Magazine<\/span><\/span>\u00a0(Canada),\u00a0<\/span>Top Producer<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0 and the Trenton\u00a0<\/span>Times<\/span><\/span>. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of\u00a0<\/span>The New Individualist<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 Fistful of Leone [xrr rating=5\/5] The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Starring Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Aldo Giuffre, Luigi Pistilli, Rada Rassimov, Enzo Petito, Molino Rocho, and Mario Brega. Cinematography by Tonino Della Colli. Edited by Eugenio Alabiso and Nino Baragli. Restored version edited by Joe D\u2019Augustine. Sets and costumes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,39,15,38,35,45,3,53,59,69,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-movies","category-black-comedies","category-classic-movies","category-comedies","category-dramas","category-foreign-films","category-mreview","category-restored-re-releases","category-sequels","category-war-movies","category-westerns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":513,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions\/513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly<\/em>\u00a0is Sergio Leone\u2019s magnum opus. An audacious undertaking, with a totally implausible plot and over-the-top acting, it would have flopped miserably in any other director\u2019s hands. Only someone so committed to his artistic vision as Leone could have pulled off this bombastic pageantry of human nature in all its facets, its capacity for cynicism, greed, bloodlust, revenge, heroism, redemption and honor.<\/p>\n This movie must be\u00a0experienced<\/em>. I had seen the DVD of the truncated 1967 version countless times, but I had not seen it on the big screen until this gorgeous restoration I was privileged to watch at Manhattan\u2019s Film Forum. The stereophonic soundtrack of Ennio Morricone\u2019s score pummels you square in the chest from the moment the Lardani titles blast onto the screen in a blaze of Technicolor fury. The montage of color, interspersed by stark black and white visages of Eastwood, Van Cleef and Wallach is a tough act to follow, like Saul Bass\u2019s iconic title sequences.<\/p>\n This MGM\/UA print was first restored in Italian by Cineteca Nazionale. The English-language restoration was spearheaded by Martin Scorsese, whose efforts with the Film Preservation Foundation have helped fund preservation of America\u2019s celluloid heritage. Both Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood returned to the sound studio to dub new dialogue for approximately twenty minutes of restored footage. Both sound a little older and scratchier, but these added scenes help to explain both Tuco\u2019s and Angel Eyes\u2019 gangs and some plot points that were previously unclear. However, they both sound great! (The late Lee Van Cleef\u2019s voice was dubbed by a professional voiceover artist, and actually sounds more on target than the two surviving leads). The movie now has the true feel of a sprawling epic, one that\u2019s earned its right to take its time.<\/p>\n Even though the original was shot silent and then overdubbed in Italian, the English-language version packs the greatest punch, thanks to Mickey Knox, who wrote the English language dialogue. Knox crafted lines that lived up to the larger than life screenplay. You\u2019d swear the original was in English, the dialogue is so perfectly tailored!<\/p>\n But the vision is singularly Leone\u2019s. It starts slowly, as a band of bounty killers home in on their prey, small-time bandit Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan-Maria Ramirez (The Ugly, played by the venerable Eli Wallach). They pile through a saloon door, then the camera immediately pans away laterally. Suddenly, his body hurtling through the front window in a rain of glass, Tuco bursts onto the street\u2014in what has to be the most absurd grand entrance in screen history\u2014revolver in one hand, a chicken leg in the other. It\u2019s total chutzpah on Leone\u2019s and Wallach\u2019s part.<\/p>\n If you think\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0can’t be topped, watch Wallach\u2019s entire performance. Animated is putting it mildly. More than a performance, Wallach is a one-man band, nay, army. Never has such a selfish, petty, ratty and shifty little man been played so larger than life. Wallach smirks, scurries, grimaces, chuckles, shouts, bellows, and slyly oils his way across the screen in what has got to be the hammiest performance ever by a method actor. Or\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0actor, for that matter: He makes Orson Welles, Burt Lancaster and Charles Laughton look like the gray and sullen cast of an Ingmar Bergman snoozefest. Wallach is so alive with passion that he literally sweats his performance out through the filthy pores on his stubble-ridden face. And he\u2019s wonderful!<\/p>\n If that\u2019s a tough act to follow, you haven\u2019t met The Bad. They don\u2019t come any badder than Angel Eyes, Lee Van Cleef\u2019s hired killer who\u2019s got ice water running through his veins. Van Cleef is ruthless, bold and heartless. Riding out of nowhere onto a doomed man\u2019s rancho, Angel Eyes pays a visit, carrying out a murder for hire. The price: $500. But the victim offers him $1000 to look the other way. No dice: Angel Eyes isn\u2019t in it for the money. Rather, he\u2019s a man who loves his work, and always sees the job through. So, the poor sod dies anyway.<\/p>\n Clint Eastwood is as cool as a cucumber as The Man With No Name (but really one with sort of a name, in this case \u201cBlondie,\u201d which is Wallach\u2019s moniker for him). It\u2019s fun watching the ongoing relationship between Blondie and Tuco as bounty hunter and prey. In another life, they would have been great pals, but in this life (\u201cwe\u2019re all alone in this world,\u201d Tuco confesses to Blondie, half seriously, half cynically) their love of money is thicker than friendship. So, they invent ingenious and cruel ways to exact revenge of each other.<\/p>\n It\u2019s during one of Tuco\u2019s sadistic plots\u2014in which he marches pale-faced Eastwood across 100 miles of scorching desert\u2014that the action finally comes to a head: A driverless stagecoach full of wounded Confederates happens across their path, and through a twist of fate, Tuco and Blondie each have two halves of a secret which (if put together) will make them a quarter million dollars richer. But without each other, the two halves are worthless. Thus does Tuco do a 180 from brutal executioner to Blondie\u2019s would-be savior. Now that he could be rich, he suddenly realizes how valuable their friendship is.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not before long that they wind up with Angel Eyes, as they\u2019re captured by Union soldiers. At the prisoner of war camp, a deadly game of cat and mouse begins. Van Cleef is now more restrained and less thuggish as he deals with Tuco to extract the secret; his henchman Wallace (Mario Brega, a Leone stalwart), beats it out of Tuco.<\/p>\n In epic fashion, after a shootout in a deserted town and a bridge demolition that rages across the screen, Tuco, Blondie and Angel Eyes make their way to the cemetery where the treasure is buried. In a fanfare of brass, percussion and chorus, the three face each other down in the cemetery plaza. It’s a gorgeous and cathartic set piece. Credit must go not only to composer Ennio Morricone but also to musical director Bruno Nicolai, who conducts the score\u00a0con fuoco<\/em>.<\/p>\n Sergio Leone\u2019s trilogy of Westerns with Eastwood, which began with\u00a0Fistful of Dollars\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0For a Few Dollars More<\/em>, were sneeringly called \u201cSpaghetti Westerns\u201d by skeptical movie reviews when first released. In the 1970s, film theory types renamed them as \u201crevisionist.\u201d But, see this on the big screen for the first time, thirty-seven years after it was shot, and there\u2019s only one label that so perfectly adheres to\u00a0Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo<\/em>:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMasterpiece.\u201d<\/p>\n Robert L. Jones is a photojournalist living and working in Minnesota. His work has appeared in\u00a0<\/span>Black & White Magazine<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Entrepreneur<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Hoy! New York<\/span><\/span>, the New York\u00a0<\/span>Post<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>RCA Victor\u00a0<\/span>(Japan)<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Scene in San Antonio<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Spirit Magazine<\/span><\/span>\u00a0(Canada),\u00a0<\/span>Top Producer<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0 and the Trenton\u00a0<\/span>Times<\/span><\/span>. Mr. Jones is a past entertainment editor of\u00a0<\/span>The New Individualist<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 Fistful of Leone [xrr rating=5\/5] The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Starring Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Aldo Giuffre, Luigi Pistilli, Rada Rassimov, Enzo Petito, Molino Rocho, and Mario Brega. Cinematography by Tonino Della Colli. Edited by Eugenio Alabiso and Nino Baragli. Restored version edited by Joe D\u2019Augustine. Sets and costumes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,39,15,38,35,45,3,53,59,69,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-movies","category-black-comedies","category-classic-movies","category-comedies","category-dramas","category-foreign-films","category-mreview","category-restored-re-releases","category-sequels","category-war-movies","category-westerns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":513,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions\/513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonesing4movies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}