Angel Eyes, the cruel assassin, hears of a fortune in Army money, lying hidden in a graveyard. Blondie is the benevolent free spirit, Western Man in his perfect incarnation. His partner and nemesis is Tuco, the irresistible rogue who combines charm, courage and total amorality in equal measure. Only Tuco knows where the graveyard is, but only Blondie knows where to dig, so each must keep the other alive if they are to collect the money.
"The Good, The Bad And The Ugly" is the keystone of the 'Dollars' trilogy, and the pinnacle of the Spaghetti Western genre. Neither before nor after did the format achieve this sweeping majesty, this clarity of characterisation or this narrative power. Leone's curious hybrid of American art-form, Japanese look and European sensibility worked beautifully - and hit its zenith in this picture.
Ennio Morricone's revolutionary musical score is universally acclaimed. The conservatoire-educated composer came up with material for this film which is more than merely innovative and arresting - it sets a new benchmark by which to measure cinematic composition. The central motif was an instant worldwide hit and has never lost popularity, but the score has much more to offer than one engaging melody. Insistently-picked guitar enhances moments of tension, and the lasciviously latin trumpet passage at the film's climax expands the meaning of the photographic images. Music melds with visuals like paint bonding with plaster to form fresco. Without that music, this film is almost unimaginable.
A picaresque story in the great European tradition, the film recalls (and extends) the line of inheritance which runs from "Lazarillo de Tormes" through Voltaire and Dickens. Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows, and Blondie and Tuco find themselves meandering in tandem through an evilly-disposed universe, lurching from one scrape to another (the desert episode, the prisoners-of-war episode, etc.) This western Quixote and Sancho double act draws on the selfsame comic proposition, that two very different men, yoked together by fate's whimsy, can forge an understanding that comes close to love.
Though Blondie is the 'doer' and the presiding intelligence, the heart of the film is occupied by the unforgettable Tuco. What a character! Comical charlatan, savvy killer, conscienceless swindler and lovable monster, Tuco remains fascinating for every second that he is on the screen. Fine writing delineated the character but it took Eli Wallach's inspirational performance to breathe life into one of cinema's immortal rogues. With the natural courage of a wild animal and the vulnerability of a born loser, Tuco is suffused with a vital humanity which leaps off the screen. His introductory vignette is a masterpiece of exposition, told entirely in images. Our anti-hero escapes a gunning-down (not for the last time!) and makes off gnawing a chicken leg, wiliness, vigour and sensuality mingling in one great affirmation of life itself. Tuco is the other, the dispossessed, the one who must rely on his wits to survive. He is the most frenetic character in the film, and the one who constantly wears a noose around his neck. He has developed his 'otherness' and transmuted it into a life force. Tuco is, par excellence, one of "those that come in by the window".
If you think of the world's great novels, it is surprising how many of them are comic - "Ulysses", "A La Recherche", "Oliver Twist", etc. And so it is with this cinematic novel. Virtually every scene is casseroled in a piquant comic sauce. The lists of Tuco's outrageous crimes, read aloud at his various hangings, the wild fluctuations in the relative fortunes of Blondie and Tuco, the transparent attempts of Tuco to save his own skin in every tight corner - all combine to make this a richly comic work, though the humour is usually dry and always understated.
This is a film of immense visual power. Each of the three protagonists is given an opening vignette: extreme close-up forces the viewer to take note of the vulpine quality of Lee Van Cleef's extraordinary eyes, fixing him in the mind as a merciless predator. Blondie is seen, not as a man whole and complete, but fragmented by his defining symbols - hat, cigar and gun-holster. The desert sequence contains an image of Blondie staggering on foot, with Tuco's mounted shadow pursuing him over the sand, an object lesson in conveying mood and information without words. Tuco sets an empty bottle rolling down a dune, and in the next shot it hits Blondie in the face. Tuco's ascendancy and Blondie's fading hope are communicated in a single gesture. Blondie's compassion for the whipped mongrel Tuco is enshrined in the little act of sharing a cigar. In the gunshop scene, Tuco hardly utters a word, but his purpose, his knowledge of guns (and the lethal beauty of the weapons themselves) is conveyed powerfully. Tabernas, the Spanish location, is a place of parched hills and scrubby desert, and the film makes superb use of wide panoramas to capture the quality of the terrain. The American Civil War happened on the green pastures of Virginia, not in this barbaric Nowhere, but it doesn't matter. Rock and sand provide a mythical context for these exotic characters who never existed, and never could exist.
The finale, with its three-way draw, is epic in scale. Tuco's crazed run through the tombstones is brilliantly shot, with the short field of focus rendering the graves a single unbroken blur as Tuco's greed blinds him to reality. Rapid cuts between the eyes of the participants in the draw heighten the tension dramatically, and then after the explosive release, the closing conceit is a comic gem worthy of a Moliere or a Goldoni.
"The Good, The Bad And The Ugly" is the keystone of the 'Dollars' trilogy, and the pinnacle of the Spaghetti Western genre. Neither before nor after did the format achieve this sweeping majesty, this clarity of characterisation or this narrative power. Leone's curious hybrid of American art-form, Japanese look and European sensibility worked beautifully - and hit its zenith in this picture.
Ennio Morricone's revolutionary musical score is universally acclaimed. The conservatoire-educated composer came up with material for this film which is more than merely innovative and arresting - it sets a new benchmark by which to measure cinematic composition. The central motif was an instant worldwide hit and has never lost popularity, but the score has much more to offer than one engaging melody. Insistently-picked guitar enhances moments of tension, and the lasciviously latin trumpet passage at the film's climax expands the meaning of the photographic images. Music melds with visuals like paint bonding with plaster to form fresco. Without that music, this film is almost unimaginable.
A picaresque story in the great European tradition, the film recalls (and extends) the line of inheritance which runs from "Lazarillo de Tormes" through Voltaire and Dickens. Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows, and Blondie and Tuco find themselves meandering in tandem through an evilly-disposed universe, lurching from one scrape to another (the desert episode, the prisoners-of-war episode, etc.) This western Quixote and Sancho double act draws on the selfsame comic proposition, that two very different men, yoked together by fate's whimsy, can forge an understanding that comes close to love.
Though Blondie is the 'doer' and the presiding intelligence, the heart of the film is occupied by the unforgettable Tuco. What a character! Comical charlatan, savvy killer, conscienceless swindler and lovable monster, Tuco remains fascinating for every second that he is on the screen. Fine writing delineated the character but it took Eli Wallach's inspirational performance to breathe life into one of cinema's immortal rogues. With the natural courage of a wild animal and the vulnerability of a born loser, Tuco is suffused with a vital humanity which leaps off the screen. His introductory vignette is a masterpiece of exposition, told entirely in images. Our anti-hero escapes a gunning-down (not for the last time!) and makes off gnawing a chicken leg, wiliness, vigour and sensuality mingling in one great affirmation of life itself. Tuco is the other, the dispossessed, the one who must rely on his wits to survive. He is the most frenetic character in the film, and the one who constantly wears a noose around his neck. He has developed his 'otherness' and transmuted it into a life force. Tuco is, par excellence, one of "those that come in by the window".
If you think of the world's great novels, it is surprising how many of them are comic - "Ulysses", "A La Recherche", "Oliver Twist", etc. And so it is with this cinematic novel. Virtually every scene is casseroled in a piquant comic sauce. The lists of Tuco's outrageous crimes, read aloud at his various hangings, the wild fluctuations in the relative fortunes of Blondie and Tuco, the transparent attempts of Tuco to save his own skin in every tight corner - all combine to make this a richly comic work, though the humour is usually dry and always understated.
This is a film of immense visual power. Each of the three protagonists is given an opening vignette: extreme close-up forces the viewer to take note of the vulpine quality of Lee Van Cleef's extraordinary eyes, fixing him in the mind as a merciless predator. Blondie is seen, not as a man whole and complete, but fragmented by his defining symbols - hat, cigar and gun-holster. The desert sequence contains an image of Blondie staggering on foot, with Tuco's mounted shadow pursuing him over the sand, an object lesson in conveying mood and information without words. Tuco sets an empty bottle rolling down a dune, and in the next shot it hits Blondie in the face. Tuco's ascendancy and Blondie's fading hope are communicated in a single gesture. Blondie's compassion for the whipped mongrel Tuco is enshrined in the little act of sharing a cigar. In the gunshop scene, Tuco hardly utters a word, but his purpose, his knowledge of guns (and the lethal beauty of the weapons themselves) is conveyed powerfully. Tabernas, the Spanish location, is a place of parched hills and scrubby desert, and the film makes superb use of wide panoramas to capture the quality of the terrain. The American Civil War happened on the green pastures of Virginia, not in this barbaric Nowhere, but it doesn't matter. Rock and sand provide a mythical context for these exotic characters who never existed, and never could exist.
The finale, with its three-way draw, is epic in scale. Tuco's crazed run through the tombstones is brilliantly shot, with the short field of focus rendering the graves a single unbroken blur as Tuco's greed blinds him to reality. Rapid cuts between the eyes of the participants in the draw heighten the tension dramatically, and then after the explosive release, the closing conceit is a comic gem worthy of a Moliere or a Goldoni.