Overdue Movie Reviews #9 - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

Sure, I've written about this film before, but never what I'd consider a real review of the entire thing. And this might very well be my favorite movie of all time, so 1-2-3, let's jam.

A bandit (Eli Wallach) with a price on his head. A bounty hunter (Clint Eastwood) with a scheme to make some dough. A hired gun (Lee van Cleef) trying to track down a man who knows the location of $200,000 in gold coins. Tuco learns the name of the cemetery where the gold is hidden, Blondie, the name of the grave. And the race to the money is on.

In the barest bones of the plot, there's not a lot there, yet the movie is nearly 3 hours long. Leone takes his time, right from the start, the slow build of the three men marching towards each other down an empty street, only for all three to charge into a saloon and gunfire to erupt. It's 20 minutes before Eastwood shows up, around a half-hour before "the good" appears on screen beside him, in what is more than a little tongue-in-cheek, given he's in the middle of betraying Tuco and stranding him in the desert.

But Leone fills the film with smaller set pieces and odd characters. The scam Tuco and Blondie run, Tuco constructing himself a new pistol. Tuco's painful reunion with his brother the priest. The prisoner of war camp, although this does serve to bring Angel Eyes into the chase more directly. The drunken captain commanding the Union forces trying to take the bridge.

The build-up to violence is long, the violence itself brief. Nobody gets shot, only to stagger back to their feet and keep shooting. No running gunfights where characters dive for cover. People draw their guns, someone fires first, the other person dies. Even in the Civil War battle scene, there's Tuco and Blondie's conversation about their respective pieces of information while rigging explosives. Then the bridge explodes, and a few seconds of cannon fire, impactful as two kids hurling insults at each other, and it's done.

The exception would be Tuco's beating at Wallace's hands in the POW camp. But it's non-lethal violence, a rarity in the film. Plus, Leone seems to have some fascination with main character(s) getting the crap beat out of them, as he used it in A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, though those beatings are administered by a gang, not an individual. And this one seems more brutal, maybe because Leone focuses more on Tuco's increasing distress. The choking noises he makes, the futile attempts to grapple with the bigger man, while one arm is shackled to the chair. Fistful might show Eastwood's battered face after the fact, but during, it's him staggering about, getting punched by whoever is closest. Or maybe it's that, in the other movies, those administering the beating are having fun. They're usually laughing, but Wallace isn't. I imagine he enjoys it, but it's also work, and he's got a specific purpose in mind: hurt this man until he talks. 

It was Roger Ebert's entry on his Great Movies list that clued me in to one quirk Leone maintains in this film: If the audience can't see something (because it isn't in the shot), neither can the characters. Right from the first seconds of the film, when a long shot of a distant ridge seamlessly becomes a close-up when a bounty hunter Tuco steps into view from off-screen, that's how things work. The world outside the camera is invisible to those within.

This plays out repeatedly. Tuco and Blondie ride up on the massive Union encampment at the bridge - where two battles take place a day - without knowing it until they're surrounded. In the cemetery, as Tuco claws at the dirt on Arch Stanton's grave, Blondie catches him by surprise, only for them both to be surprised by the arrival of Angel Eyes. Blondie's first appearance in the movie is him somehow walking up on Tuco and 3 other bounty hunters without any of them noticing until he speaks. While Blondie's distracted in the hotel by the men Tuco brought, Tuco was clearly sitting on the windowsill for several moments before announcing his presence. It's a curious approach, though it allows Leone to have repeated dramatic reveals and arrivals, and it may speak to these men's blinkered approaches to life. They're locked in on their desires, and when they sense it close to fruition, become blind to everything else.

Tuco would be easy to reduce to a comic relief character. His grandiose expressions and threats, the bluster. Hands tied and still creaming threats at Blondie. But Leone takes the time to list Tuco's crimes at both occasions of his hanging, many of which imply not just cruelty, but a level of planning, notably the one about getting paid in advance to lead a wagon train, then abandoning said wagon train on the Sioux hunting grounds. (Also, he's charged specifically with arson in a prison, which makes me wonder if it was part of an escape plan, or he just did it for kicks.)

And Eli Wallach gives Tuco enough cunning and sheer determination that he remains a threat. Sure, it seems unwise for Tuco to keep running his yap at Wallace, but he eventually gets the man's guard down and throws him off a train, then bashes his head against a rock to make sure he's dead. Tuco keeps his gun on him when he bathes, keeps it hidden until needed.

Tuco may appear the butt of the joke in the final showdown, unaware Blondie emptied his gun, but it speaks to how much of a threat Blondie considers Tuco. Initially, he had so little regard for Tuco he figured it was enough to leave him in the desert and ride off with the money. After only escaping death in the hotel via dumb luck, and nearly dying in the desert because Tuco wouldn't stop hunting him, Blondie knows better. He surely knows, as they near the cemetery, that Angel Eyes is out there, somewhere.

I doubt Blondie had the whole thing with the name on the rock planned, since the most planning we see from him is the scam he ran with Tuco, then "Shorty," but he must have figured there was a point it would come to shooting. And while Blondie seems confident he can handle Angel Eyes, he does not want Tuco in the mix. Whether because he can't trust Tuco choosing him over Angel Eyes, or he just isn't certain he can kill both of them, Blondie hedges his bets.

(He also decides Tuco's presence evens things enough he can go against Angel Eyes and his gang in the town being shelled. 6-on-1 was a no-go, but 6-on-2, where the 2 are Blondie and Tuco? Those are odds Blondie likes.)

And Tuco is the one who drives the story. It's his bounty that brings he and Blondie together, that leads to the betrayal, and ultimately the death-march. Which is how they meet "Bill Carson" in the desert and learn about the money. Minus Tuco, Blondie would have continued with his penny-ante scam of turning in criminals, then freeing them. Angel Eyes' plan to join the Union Army and scour prisoner of war camps would come to nothing, because Carson and everyone else who knew about the gold was a corpse in the desert. Tuco's also the only of the three we get any backstory for. He had wives - more than one if his remark to his brother is to be believed - and a brother, and two parents.

(Leone creates this trio, but tends to focus on duos. Tuco and Blondie as allies, then enemies, then allies again. Tuco and Angel Eyes briefly in the POW camp. Angel Eyes and Blondie as uneasy partners. When it looks as though it'll be Tuco and Blondie vs. Angel Eyes, the latter withdraws, leaving it a duo. And in the final gunfight, Tuco being unarmed means it's really just Blondie vs. Angel Eyes.)

One of my dad's complaints about Leone's films is there's no one who's good. Everyone is a scumbag, he says. While applying "the good" to Blondie seems sarcastic, and there's definitely a joke to the heavenly choir music that plays when Angel Eyes spots him at Tuco's second hanging and opines that a 'golden-haired angel' watches over Tuco, there are hints that Blondie has humanity or capacity for empathy the other two lack. The comfort he offers to the dying soldier in the burned out church, just prior to the final showdown. Covering the boy with his coat and offering a cigarette isn't much, but at least the kid doesn't die alone. The fact he asks Tuco whether he can save Shorty from being hanged, and apologizes softly to Shorty when Tuco says no.

Heck, it would have been simpler for Blondie to let Tuco hang, if he really thought their partnership had reached its logical endpoint. But he saved him, though we can question how seriously he meant it when he said he thought Tuco could make the 70-mile hike back to town. And he did leave Tuco half the gold, which Angel Eyes certainly wouldn't have (and I have my doubts about Tuco doing the same for Blondie, were their circumstances reversed.)

Leone sets the movie in the Civil War, yet the war is, at best, an impediment. None of the three characters have any investment in the outcome. Blondie regards it as a waste of lives. Angel Eyes uses it as cover to search for Carson, while lining his pockets by robbing the prisoners. Tuco puts on Carson's uniform because it makes it easier to demand treatment for Blondie. If he had recognized the soldiers riding towards them as dusty Union soldiers, he'd have thrown the Confederate uniforms away in a second, because their only use is as something to clear paths. They blow up the bridge simply so both sides won't have it to fight over, and will get out of their way. That those soldiers will be sent to fight and die elsewhere is not their problem. They don't notice the Union Army until they're captured because it wasn't in the shot with them, and it wasn't in the shot with them because they weren't giving any thought to it. All that mattered was crossing the river to get closer to the gold. 

It's not clear anyone else cares either. Carson enlisted to try and hide until it was safe to dig up the gold. Carson's the girlfriend, the 'fresh young whore,' as she's described by the legless soldier, is introduced as a wagon of drunk soldiers throw her into the street after having their fun. The hotel manager shouts support for Dixie, while muttering under his breath about the Confederates being cowards, and how he can't wait until they leave, so he can make money off the Yankees. Wallace is a goon, lording his strength over prisoners who can't fight back, rather than actual combat. Ditto for the Union guard who makes the prisoners play music while Tuco is beaten. The soldier Tuco taunts, who probably didn't get a penny for the arm he lost. The half-soldier sells any information he can, even if it relates to someone ostensibly on the same side as him. The captain of the Union forces at the bridge is a drunken wreck, hating his orders but unwilling to defy them. Just waiting for death, or someone who will do what he can only dream of.

The one guy who seems like a believer is the commandant of the prisoner camp, who believes prisoners should be treated with respect, and hopes to get Angel Eyes court-martialed. But he's dying of gangrene, making these vows sprawled on his back, while Angel Eyes smirks at him in unconcealed contempt. He knows he'll be long gone before this man could ever hope to prove anything. Of course, Angel Eyes expects to be rich, and instead ends up in Hell.

You really can't discuss The Good, the Bad and the Ugly without talking about Ennio Morricone's score. Unfortunately I'm not much good at discussing music, but the music is indelibly linked with the film in my head. (Also, fortunately, this Youtube video knows how to discuss music.) Morricone had some of the pieces ready before filming even began, and it's neat to watch how the music and the shots are interwoven. Tuco running among the graves, the names blurring as the music accelerates to match his pace, more instruments joining in as he darts from one row to another. The music is hopeful, Tuco thinking he's on the precipice of everything he wants, but also chaotic, the sheer enormity of the task of finding one grave among 5000.

And then the final showdown, with the guitar strumming signaling the beginning as Blondie sets down the rock. The castanets, and then the trumpets as the three slowly take their places in a long shot. A few shots of ambient noise before the music begins again, and Leone starts moving the camera closer, focusing on the expressions and twitches. Blondie giving Tuco a small smile and a nod, camera cutting between them like a signal. 'Hey, the two of us are a team, right?' Followed by a shot of Angel Eyes glance darting towards Tuco, reassessing his situation. The way Angel Eyes' hand starts towards his gun, then withdraws at a glance from Blondie. Tuco's fingers twitching, and Blondie's hand, perfectly still the whole time, even when everything else is speeding up. The cuts are coming faster, the music is building up, everyone's hands are starting to move, eyes are widening. But Blondie's impassive, just waiting for a conclusion that's foregone.