For A Few Dollars More (1965)

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly produced in Italy and Spain in 1966, is to western fans and cinephiles, as Harry styles is to teenage girls; as soon as we hear one note of the sensational score and catch one glimpse of our heroes squint of an eye. Instantly our pulses quicken, heart races and we must try our hardest to suppress a squeal of joy. Following on from two film predecessors; A Fist full of Dollars and For a few Dollars more, in a inherently Sergio Leon way, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly opens up with a series of intercutting close ups of sun beaten faces looking out towards the horizon, and wide shot of the setting, which appears to be an old rundown little town. But just as you would expect from the spaghetti western master, we are given very little information from the start. We don’t know who these men are at first or what their intentions are, but from the looks of them, they don’t seem all that two friendly. But what the opening shots do reveal, in particular Leon predilection for wide and close up paring, is that Leon was avid art collector; the close ups where reminiscent of Goya, while the vast unyielding landscapes where an allusion to surrealist painting style Leon was a fan off. As the men make their way down into what appears to be a salon, we don’t follow them in instead we hear a shoot out occurring, then all of a sudden the camera pans to focus on a window in which ‘The Ugly’ leaps out with wine in one hand and a half eaten pigs leg in the other, this is Tuco (Eli Wallach), and those two items some him up best, he is a bear drinking, untrustworthy swine. But on the other hand he does phenomenally inject a whole lot of humour and wild edge to the film. Next we find ourselves with a little boy riding a donkey; he looks to the distance where he sees a lone man riding a horse towards him, we then passes him with little regard. Little does that boy know that man will go on to mercilessly shoot and kill both his brother and father, for that man is ‘The Bad’ also known as Angel eyes (Lee Van Cleef from John Ford’s High-noon). Then last but not least, we return again to The Ugly we find himself in a tricky situation, involving three gun slingers. But cue the introduction of the man with no name (Technically he does have a name, its Blondie in the film and Clint Eastwood in real life) who saves Tuco only to return him to a nearby town to cash in on his bounty, justifying his title ‘The Good’ . But not everything is what it seems, it soon turns out the both men are in collusion and turning Tuco in is merely a trick to get the bounty, save Tuco from getting hanged and then gets the heck out of there. The plan is so genius that they could continue getting away with the same trick, oh wait they completely hate each other and can trust each other as far as they can throw. The relationship between the leads make for a great stand up duo; Tuco the loud mouth and Blondie the silent brooding one, similar to famous magicians Pen and Teller. Eventually for the rest of the film The Good, The Bad and The Ugly must unite in search for $200,000 loot stashed inside a person’s grave, but only The Ugly knows where the grave site is, while The Good only knows which name it is buried under, but of course they can’t trust each other with that information. While other western director like to cut to the chase and draw out the scenes violence such as Howard Hawks and Sam Penkinpah, instead on the other hand , something I particularly love most about Leon is how he always extends all precursors before a shot out or a act of violence which eventually end rather quickly . It’s better that why, because we invest ourselves deeper into the characters, whilst also allowing the tension in the scene to build up to almost excruciating levels even before the first bullet is fire. What I also love about The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, is the moral ambiguity that runs thick throughout the film, never are the lines between good and bad really competently drawn through. I guess that it down to the decision to keep back stories and exposition rather low. But what it does offer you is the freedom to choose what side you cheer for because there isn’t any real distinct good guy in the film, which makes it all the more exciting. At a lengthy 2hrs and 50 minutes, GBU is almost David Lean and Lawrence Arabia-esk in terms if scope and grandeur, and you can also drew comparisons between the two films in the deployment of the incessant use of panoramic shoots of the vast scenery and man insignificant compared to it. As long as GBU is, not once to I find the film meandering or tedious, despite its length it was able to move a furious pace, so it felt that we the audience were ourselves almost sucked into the action by an almighty whirl wind. But in a largely dead genre, we can look back to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly with great nostalgia and affection, for it a shinnying beckon of what great film making is.