Leone's The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (Lemon_Lime's "Third Times A Charm" Write-Off)

[This is my entry in lemon_lime's "Third Times A Charm" w/o, celebrating his 3rd anniversary at Epinions on January 10th, 2003. In an attempt to keep the dominant motif for the write-off triangular, Chad proposed that each participant must write about a film that is either the third in its series or contains the number THREE (3) in its title. In a rush to use these criterions as an excuse to review my favourite Western, I managed to fulfill neither. In a strictly technical sense. All will soon be made clear, as you read my review of Sergio Leone's "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly".]

Some have hypothesized that "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" (hereafter "GBU") is the first film in Sergio Leone's "Dollars" trilogy, a prequel of sorts, and not the last as was previously thought. They argue that The Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood) is seen throughout the picture assembling his iconic wardrobe and persona (the poncho, the nihilistic view of life), which he will take with him through "A Fistful of Dollars" and "For a Few Dollars More". That may be so (I'm not familiar enough with "Dollars" or "More Dollars" to refute those claims). But it was the third film Leone made with Eastwood, so I'm sticking to my guns (no pun intended) that this is the third film in the "Dollars" series. And I'm also sticking to my guns (okay, the pun was intended) that this is the finest Western I know.

The film's story, such as it is, doesn't really get going until about the one-hour mark, when a dying greycoat named Bill Carson, whom The Bad has been looking for, gives information to The Good and The Ugly regarding the whereabouts of $200,000 in gold. From this moment on, the film becomes about the search for the gold, and the willingness and need for these three men to trust each other (by hook or by crook). It also neatly points out the film's dominant backdrop: the American Civil War and what it does to men, both philosophically and physically.

Before this point, however, the film takes a lot of time (glorious, glorious time) setting up the context, and the nearly archetypal title characters.

Despite getting third billing in the title, the first of the three main characters to make an appearance is Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez, a.k.a. Tuco, and a.k.a. The Ugly. Tuco is a rogue bandit, living hand-to-mouth, but always living. As the story begins, there's a $3,000 price tag on his head, and he makes his living feigning capture, and nearly getting hanged before The Good saves him by shooting the rope down just in time. The two then split the reward.

Tuco's introductory scene, which doubles as the film's opening scene, is a wonder of comic mythology and Leone-style filmmaking. Three men stare each other down over a deserted street, close-up shots of their eyes and wide panoramas of the landscape dominating the frame. But they are not here to battle each other. At the climactic moment, when the audience expects gunplay, all three rush into a nearby saloon. Blasts can be heard from inside. And then, through the window, crashes Tuco, with a drumstick in one hand and a six-shooter in the other. Three corpses lay in his wake. His theme music ("ah-EE-ah") plays, and a title card introduces: "THE UGLY". It's a technique that Leone will use twice more during the film, to introduce the other characters.

Tuco, in literary terms, is the Sancho Panza of the piece, the disheveled and slightly dim sidekick. But that's being too reductive for a character this complex and interesting. For one thing, Tuco provides many of the film's comedic moments, such as when he buys a gun, calmly puts it together, loads it, and then robs the shopowner that sold it to him. Or the nonchalant expression on his face while his head is in a noose and a laundry list of his crimes are read, which become increasingly funny in its overkill. For another thing, it is Tuco who gets the lion's share of the film's best lines. "There are two kinds of spurs, my friend," he says to his rival. "Those that come in through the door [crosses self, for his fallen comrades who made that mistake] and those that come in through the window". Or, after being caught in the bath by a rather verbose revenge-seeker, and giving him four shots to the belly before the man knew what hit him, Tuco wisely remarks, "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk." (There’s very little dialogue here, but what exists is often stylish and profound, even after translation)

But Tuco is also the only character here who is given any semblance of a backstory. We know what happened to his parents, we know why he became a bandit, we know an awful lot about his life. There's even a scene where Tuco brings a dehydrated Good to his brother's mission, in order to nurse him back to health. The reunion scene with the brother is probably the film's most informative and dramatic, and Tuco's later retelling of the scene is intriguing in and of itself.

Eli Wallach -- who ironically once played Sancho Panza in a TV-movie during the 1950s -- brings all his charm and much of his Actor's Studio technique to the role of Tuco. Many actors would question the wisdom of playing a character billed as The Ugly, but Wallach seems to relish that side of Tuco (along with every other one of the man's sides). He is a comic delight, knocking every moment of every scene out of not only the park, but the Old West altogether. It is a balls to the wall performance, made even more courageous by the fact that he nearly died during the train track sequence. Talk about laying it all on the line for your art.

Following Tuco's introductory sequence, we get a quiet little scene of a silhouetted rider loping gently up to a dilapidated old farm. The sequence is played in near silence, as the stranger joins the wary farmer for lunch, as the rest of the family hides for cover. Slowly, the reason for the stranger's arrival is made clear (abundantly clear, moments later), and he rides away with a grin on his face and a glint in his eyes. This is Angel Eyes, a.k.a. The Bad, and he's brought to bone-chilling life by Lee Van Cleef.

Van Cleef also appeared in Leone's "For a Few Dollars More" (not to mention Zinnemann's "High Noon" and Ford's "Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance"; did this guy ever pick a bad Western?), but here he is on the opposite side of law (assuming such a concept exists in the cinematic Old West). Angel Eyes lives by a strong personal code: "When I'm paid, I always follow the job through," he says to one unsuspecting victim. He's the kind of man who you can hire as a bounty killer, yet he's just as likely to kill you as well. But he's probably also the most sophisticated, the most cultured, of our main characters. He's well-groomed, neatly dressed, and when he tortures you for information, he's prone to having a mournful string band play along for accompaniment. Okay, that last part isn't as sophisticated as I first thought, but it does provide the film with one of its more poetic moments. "[He'll] punch your friend as long as the song goes," speaks one who knows from experience.

Van Cleef makes the least impression here, probably because he has the least screentime. But when he's onscreen, he makes for a rather formidable screen villain. The Bad, indeed.

In this installment of the "Dollars" trilogy, the main character still doesn't have a name, but we're not short on things to call him. He's The Man With No Name, Blondie, or, as the title suggests, The Good. Clint Eastwood, as I've already mentioned, played the Good. Having just finished his stint on the recently-cancelled "Rawhide" TV program, Eastwood now had to make a real impact on the world of Hollywood film, else he'd face near financial ruin. The first two films in the "Dollars" trilogy did a lot for his iconic status, but not much for his pocketbook. "GBU" would change all that, making him a full-fledged star.

Ironically, his star part was routinely upstaged by Wallach's Tuco. No matter, because Clint always appears bemused by his predicaments, like he knows full well that he's the one bound to make it out alive

It takes about 16 minutes of screen time before Clint even shows up in the film, by which time Wallach and Van Cleef have established their modus operandi. But when he does amble on screen to kill Tuco's 3 captors (and Clint does little more than amble, here; not that he needs additional forms of transportation to get where he needs to go) he owns the screen. The trademark squint is there, the chewed-up cigar, the gunplay. And despite his nomenclature, The Good isn't really that good. He's as prone to pulling a dirty trick or misdirection as his more wicked counterparts. There are several moments when he leaves Tuco, ostensibly his business partner, hanging (literally and then some). Not to mention the acid tongue he reserves for those special occasions when the little man has screwed up. “God hates idiots,” he says, recognizing, Laurel-and-Hardy style, that Tuco has gotten them into another fine mess.

Sergio Leone, in his illustrious career, established an iconic directorial style, complete with trademark images and motifs. The close-ups of eyes (natch, this is the film’s first shot), faces with loads of character (same with this), gorgeously desolate widescreen shots (you better not dare watch “GBU” in anything but 2.35:1 aspect ratio, else I’ll string you up, pardner). But besides being a great technician of the image, Leone was also on top of his game here working with themes.

"It seemed to me interesting to demystify these adjectives [i.e., good, bad, ugly] in the setting of a Western,” he once noted. “An assassin can display a sublime altruism while a good man can kill with total indifference. A person who appears to be ugly may, when we get to know him better, be more worthy than he seems -- and capable of tenderness." Thus, his main characters, while appearing to be archetypes on first glance, are a lot more complex than that. The Good, as I’ve already described, is much more than Good. The Bad, well, he’s pretty bad, but he does have his moments of clarity and humanity. And The Ugly is so full of shading and ambiguity he might have been called The Grey instead. Leone understood the Western archetypes, and it was his joy to break them down. Like the stock characters from commedia dell’arte (who weren’t really stock), his films “do not have true heroes, represented by one character."

He also took great pride in using his backdrop, the Civil War, for alternative purposes. Normally we’d see only true heroism from the Union Blues (the winners, who write the history) and evil and corruption from the Confederate Greys (the losers, whose history is written for them). "You always get to hear about the shameful behaviour of the losers, never the winners,” Leone said. “So I decided to show extermination in a Northern army." So Angel Eyes’ evil (he volunteers to find Bill Carson) is as a Bluecoat, and there’s one long sequence that takes place inside a Northern concentration camp (Leone claimed it a metaphor for the Nazi camps of WWII, which isn’t too far off). And the war itself is a great backdrop for showing issues of commitment and destiny, from a personal level rather than a national level. “GBU” has this in bunches.

Leone also has a firm sense of irony when it comes to the situations he presents. The narrative is full of them, especially when the stories of Tuco and Blondie, individually, are examined. Each had long, painful walks through the desert by the other’s hand. Each was hung -- or nearly hung -- by the same noose. Each finds themselves with constantly parched lips, and a past that holds a dead mother and little to no family. Angel Eyes, not to be left out, is a bundle of ironies, from his name on down (the man is hardly angelic). But the biggest irony of all comes near the end, when, just a river crossing short of their loot, Blondie and Tuco run across a great battle over a bridge. Both sides want to keep the bridge for themselves, and will keep on fighting, losing many men. Blondie realizes that the only way to get across the bridge is to blow it up. It is an appreciation for the ludicrous that makes Leone’s films so wonderful.

Okay, that’s not all that makes them wonderful. The music by legendary composer Ennio Morricone also helps. Here, Morricone is at the height of his powers. His main theme is probably the definitive piece of scoring for a Western in the latter half of the twentieth century. I am listening to a downloaded mp3 of the theme right now as I write this, and it still gives me chills. It’s first heard over the overlong, graphical credit sequence (all sepia tones and washed-out gunfight pics), as it incorporates screams, wailing guitars, distorted mouth harps, and gentle whistles. Morricone is a master of making the same melody wear many different hats, by spreading it over many different instruments. His Trio theme, heard much later in the film, is much more subdued, but no less powerful. It builds momentum constantly, over an arpeggio guitar part, until the viewer can’t take the tension anymore. This piece of music makes the film’s finale -- five minutes of dialogue-less reaction shots featuring ever-quickening cutting rhythms before the first gunshot is ever fired -- possibly the most dramatic and tension filmed final battle I can remember.

Well, I've rambled on long enough here. Just wanted to give the film its due, and honour Chad's third anniversary with a thorough review. I'll take my gun and go home, armed with the knowledge that if I haven't yet convinced you of the mastery of "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" then some cobbled-together conclusion paragraph isn't going to do it either.

Cheers.

[Thanks to lemon_lime for hosting this write-off, and congrats on three years of churning out stellar write-ups. Sorry I went on so long there, but when the engine starts a-chugging, sometimes it's best to just get off the tracks and let it roll. The other merry pranksters in this write-off include: atchesonate * themoviechick * jankp * JackSommersby * tdswift89 * youngchinq * artbyjude * Granniemose * millinocket * annecal * BeastieGirl * Sleeper54 * ignysdayoff * mfunk75 * mashimaru * MarinerMoose22 * pmills1210 * lambchops * beckytcy * Staceys1 * deaser26 * So_Alex_Says * weirdo_87 * d_fienberg * skbreese * Simply_Crispy]