60 years of gold: Why The Good, the Bad and the Ugly still rules the West

Many fans of Westerns point to The Searchers, High Noon, Shane, Red River, Unforgiven, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as among the finest representations of the genre. But likely the most influential, impactful, and beloved Western of the last six decades remains The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (GBU), directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in those respective titular roles. This year actually marks the 60th anniversary of the release of GBU – a film that boasts stellar direction, an unforgettable score, and captivating power dynamics between the three main characters, which continue to make for a compelling watch that never fails to entertain.

Set during the American Civil War, we follow three cynical gunslingers – Blondie (The Good), Angel Eyes (The Bad), and Tuco (The Ugly) – who find themselves in a high-stakes race to locate a hidden fortune in Confederate gold buried in a remote cemetery. The plot is a shifting game of uneasy alliances and double-crosses, as each man possesses only a portion of the information needed to find the treasure.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, conducted last week, click here.

The casting is flawless. Eastwood’s stoic presence and rugged countenance speak for themselves, and Van Cleef, with his slanted peepers and wicked grin, was born to play Angel Eyes. But the actor with the most screen time and the most at stake is Wallach, who inhabits this role perfectly thanks to his expressive physicality and idiosyncratic approach to the part, choosing to imbue Tuco with certain tics, personality traits, and distinctive habits like crossing himself and uttering a quick prayer.

The faces are unforgettable. Leone’s famous style emphasizes extreme close-ups of the human countenance. Thanks to impeccable casting of even the smallest parts, we get up close and personal views of many distinctive visages, often tightly framed between the forehead and the chin. The faces of the three main stars were already destined to be perpetually etched in your mind, but the intimate topography of other inimitable faces and their lineaments forever stick with you, from the sweaty mug of the one-armed bounty hunter we first see to the gun store clerk biting down on his store’s “closed” sign to the wounded Southern soldier who takes a drag of Blondie’s cigarillo, and a dozen others in between.

The epic score by Ennio Morricone comprises some of the most memorable and popular pieces of film music ever composed. The innovative music serves as a character unto itself, commenting on the action and signaling a big, brassy, dramatic tension. We hear a low flute, representing the Bad (Angel Eyes), a high flute that signifies the Good (Blondie), and a wailing human voice meant to mimic a coyote call – the perfect way to musically exemplify Tuco. Leone also chooses to occasionally play sweet, serene music while scenes of torture and suffering are shown, which also reinforces the deliberately jarring and contrasting tone. Leone deemed the score so important that he collaborated with Morricone on the major musical themes well before principal photography started so that the music could influence the vibe and pace of the movie. While the main theme is the most instantly recognizable (it was nearly a #1 hit on the pop music charts), the composer’s The Ecstasy of Gold track, played when Tuco is running through the graveyard, is cherished by many as Morricone’s finest piece. Equally stirring is The Trio, which we hear during the Mexican standoff.

This could be one of the most visually impressive Civil War films ever made, utilizing hundreds of extras portraying soldiers and depicting an extravaganza battle sequence with ample cannon fire explosions, hand-to-hand combat, and the destruction of the Langstone Bridge (this is, by the way, a fictional battle). Many of the sets are impressive, including the battle across the river, the prison camp, the cannonball-cratered town, and the expansive cemetery (built exclusively for this film by a few hundred Spanish soldiers).

GBU may be one of the great anti-war films disguised as a crowd-pleasing Western. It’s also interesting that this movie remains neutral about the North vs. South, showing carnage and cruelty from both sides and using a chaotic backdrop of senseless slaughter and moral decay to send a message.

While the plot is relatively thin, there are more than enough interesting vignettes along the way that keep us focused, including the opening shootout, the scams Tuco and Blondie run as a bounty hunter and captured fugitive duo, the cruelty they inflict on each other in the desert, the visit Tuco’s brother at the mission, and several other episodes along the way. Even if these don’t advance the plot, they had crucial color, intrigue, and backstory to the narrative and our three main characters.

Ironically, for a film known more for its action than its words, GBU could also boast an embarrassment of riches in the all-time great lines department. These are among the most quoted and fan-worshipped words in any film, many of which remain downright funny:

“You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.”
“When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk.”
"See you soon, id...”/“Idiots. It's for you.”
“Such ingratitude, after all the times I've saved your life.”
“I've never seen so many men wasted so badly.”
“You never had a rope around your neck. Well, I'm going to tell you something. When that rope starts to pull tight, you can feel the Devil bite your ass.”
“Whoever has the most liquor to get the soldiers drunk and send them to be slaughtered, he's the winner.”
“But you know the pity is when I'm paid, I always follow my job through.”
“You may run the risks, my friend, but I do the cutting. We cut down my percentage…it’s liable to interfere with my aim.”

While the bad dubbing is an unfortunate consequence, GBU abides as one of the most diverse multicultural cinematic creations of the 20th century, and it’s remarkable that it works as well as it does despite its disparate heredity. The film was a three-way European co-production between Italy, Spain, and West Germany. While an Italian company led the creative vision and direction, a Spanish firm provided the filming locations and military extras, and a West German studio helped provide the necessary financial backing. This international partnership allowed the production to achieve its massive scale and eventually reach a global audience through American distribution. The film also used an international cast who performed in their native languages. While the American leads were dubbed into Italian for the Rome premiere, the English release kept their original voices but dubbed the supporting actors. This mix of languages caused the noticeable lip-sync issues seen throughout the movie.

GBU today is widely regarded as the greatest Spaghetti Western, one of the best in the Western genre overall, and among the finest films in history. It currently places #10 in the IMDb top 250 list and #169 in the 2022 Sight and Sound critics’ poll, and it ranks #25 on Empire’s list of the 500 greatest films and #49 on Variety’s all-time movies list. Its enduring legacy is further reflected in a 97% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 90 out of 100.

Although many prefer the theatrical version, others opt for the extended cut of GBU. Interestingly, for 35 years, only a 16-minute shorter version of the film was available in English. In 2003, an extended 177-minute cut was released, featuring a restoration where an older Eastwood and Wallach returned to redub their lines. Although the added scenes don't change the plot, they significantly enhance the film's essential mood and atmosphere, making this longer version the superior experience for many.

What makes GBU exceptional is its unique commendation of exaggerated style, epic scope, larger-than-life cartoonish characters, and an implausible world of grand gestures and comic book-styled action, which is evident from the opening title sequence featuring colorfully oversaturated stills. The pastiche design is also evident in the offbeat casting of Americans, Italians, and Spaniards, and the deliberate choice to shoot silent and later dub voices in.

The form and style of the film are quite unconventional from the traditional classic Hollywood structure. Leone rarely uses medium shots, preferring alternation between long shots and close-ups, especially extreme close-ups of characters’ faces, to visually tell the story. He often prefers to open a scene or sequence with a close-up instead of the traditionally used establishing (long) shot. He tricks us right from the opening image, which presents a classic establishing long shot, but one that is subtly infiltrated by the emergence into the frame of a large face.

The director often draws out certain sequences to exaggerated lengths to build tension and suspense, such as the Mexican standoff at the cemetery. The beginning wide shot of the showdown, where the three figures spread out, spans 37 seconds. An earlier shot where Blondie rolls down a sand dune lasts 43 seconds. Leone also uses silence and white space to build suspense and a surreal quality into his story. The fewer words spoken, the better.

Contrasting imagery of beauty and brutality, rich and poor, moral and immoral, is juxtaposed throughout the movie. The filmmakers also often prefer stark, barren compositions to imply the inherent violence and ghostly qualities lurking beneath the surface or just out of the edge of the frame.

Leone also sets a rule that the characters can only see what’s visible in the frame to us. What the camera doesn’t show, the characters usually cannot see; Leone continually surprises us with sudden entrances into the frame that often defy the physical geography of the landscape the characters inhabit. Per Roger Ebert, this rule “gives Leone the freedom to surprise us with entrances that cannot be explained by the practical geography of his shots. There is a moment, for example, when men do not notice a vast encampment of the Union Army until they stumble upon it. And a moment in a cemetery when a man materializes out of thin air, even though he should have been visible for a mile. And the way men walk down a street in full view and nobody is able to shoot them, maybe because they are not in the same frame with them.”

Unlike earlier Westerns, the morality of the characters in this film is more ambiguous and blurred. Each character is capable of inflicting merciless violence and being “ugly,” so the names (good, bad, and ugly) are not necessarily indicative of their personalities or moralities.

GBU is also imbued with a postmodern hyperbolic sense of humor that can border on the absurd in its comedic undertones to make a point. The film functions as a parody of the western genre in that it takes many tropes and conventions of the classic movie western and exaggerates them for dramatic and comic effect. It’s what helps make GBU one of the most unique of 20th-century westerns: it’s as funny as it is unnervingly violent.

Consider how Leone’s masterpiece fundamentally altered the cinematic landscape, inspiring later works like The Wild Bunch (1969), expanding the use of graphic violence and moral ambiguity; The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), mirroring the Man with No Name archetype in a Civil War setting; Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), influencing the "lived-in" aesthetic and Han Solo’s mercenary persona (consider that the scene where the bathing Tuco outshoots his long-winded ambusher must have influenced the cantina sequence in Star Wars, where Solo fires first on Greedo); Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981), adopting the silent, drifting hero, sparse dialogue, and desolate atmosphere; Pale Rider (1985), utilizing Leone’s signature extreme close-ups, religious symbolism, and mythological framing; Reservoir Dogs (1992), echoing the iconic three-way Mexican standoff finale; Desperado (1995), also featuring stylized action and leaning into the kinetic energy of the Spaghetti Western; Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), utilizing Morricone-inspired music cues and extreme close-ups; The Good, the Bad, the Weird (2008), providing an explicit South Korean homage to the original film’s structure); Django Unchained (2012), incorporating the cynical humor and operatic violence of the genre; and The Hateful Eight (2015), utilizing the widescreen Ultra Panavision format to capture Leone-esque tension and claustrophobic ensemble dynamics. Quentin Tarantino, in fact, named GBU the best directed film ever made.

The pop culture reach of GBU extends widely across many different media, inspiring both direct parodies and stylistic homages in film, television, video games, and music. Movies like Three Amigos, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, and Shrek 2 playfully reinterpret the Mexican standoff dynamics and Western tropes. TV series, from Breaking Bad and Community to The Simpsons and SpongeBob SquarePants, riff on many of its tropes, and videogame titles like Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Fallout: New Vegas adapt its lone-gunslinger archetype and cinematic framing into interactive form. Let’s also not forget that the international success of the trilogy, especially this film, paved the path to major stardom, and eventually a directorial career, for Eastwood.

When it comes to predecessors, Leone drew from older storytelling styles where characters are a bit rough around the edges, sometimes selfish or crafty, and the narrative follows their misadventures – similar to what you’d see in classic European tales like Deux Amis by Guy de Maupassant, or in the exaggerated, mask-like characters of Italian comedic theater known as commedia dell’arte. Consider, too, that GBU doesn’t rely much on deep dialogue or backstory to explain people; instead, in a style influenced by French writer Antonin Artaud, you understand who the characters are by what they do, how they behave under pressure, and how they clash with each other. The director was also inspired by vintage Civil War photographs shot by Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner. Several earlier films may have also motivated Leone and company. These include Buster Keaton’s The General (1926), particularly its spectacular bridge blow-up sequence and inventive visual storytelling; Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux (1947); the politically charged Viva Zapata! (1952); the sweeping landscapes and mythic scope of Ford’s The Searchers (1956); the war-infused Italian comedy-drama La Grande Guerra (1959); the tense male standoffs and stripped-down storytelling of Hawks’ Rio Bravo (1959); and the wandering, opportunistic antihero of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961).

GBU is far from a disposable piece of entertainment made to simply please the masses. The film conjures food for thought on several thematic fronts, serving first and foremost as a thesis on the senseless horrors of war. Time and again, we are shown the violent consequences and soul-crushing futility of armed combat: from the carriage packed with dead soldiers and the captured combatant killed by firing squad to the tortured Confederate spy trussed to the train’s cowcatcher and the countless corpses decimated by cannon fire on both sides of the bridge. Blondie, a man of few words, hammers home the point when he says, “I’ve never seen so many men wasted so badly.”

Another takeaway? Shifting loyalties, sudden betrayals, and living by the “kill or be killed” code. Blondie and Tuco repeatedly team up and double-cross each other. Blondie also joins forces with Angel Eyes and his gang, but Blondie preemptively kills off his men before they can do the same to him. In this world of conscienceless mercenaries and cutthroat criminals, allegiances can quickly change, and solipsistic self-preservation is the prevailing ethos that guarantees survival.

GBU also has a lesson about the universality of human vice and virtue, suggesting that we can’t neatly sort humankind into three neat “good,” “bad,” and “ugly” buckets. Truth is, we can be described as any and all of these across the span of our lives. Contemplate that there are several times when Blondie doesn’t conform to his titular name, for example. Leone explained: “What do 'good', 'bad,' and 'ugly' really mean? We all have some bad in us, some ugliness, some good. And some people appear to be ugly, but when we get to know them better we realize that they are more worthy.”

Actions speak louder than words, we are also reminded. GBU is purposely devoid of unnecessary dialogues and monologues. Talk is cheap to these hard-edged characters, for whom force, skill, and instinct speak volumes. Perhaps the funniest line in the film, “When you have to shoot, shoot – don’t talk,” summarizes this sentiment perfectly.

Additionally, this is a tale about luck trumping will. Ponder how survival in this story seems more dependent on fate and unpredictable outside factors than rugged individualism, grit, or resolve. Cases in point: Blondie is spared from certain death at the hands of Tuco first by a runaway carriage that miraculously appears in the desert and later by a fortunate blast of cannon fire. And it turns out to be fortunate that Tuco and Blondie are apprehended by the Captain and his Union troops, as it ultimately gives them the idea to blow up the bridge and cross the river, which they likely could not have accomplished otherwise.

Lastly, there’s a fascinating reading of the film (promulgated by blogger Cary Watson) that this entire story is about the battle for one sinner’s soul. It cannot be disputed that Tuco is the primary character: He’s afforded the most screen time and dialogue; he’s more relatable because he’s the most emotionally expressive of the three main characters; and he’s provided a complex backstory (we know almost nothing about Blondie’s or Angel Eyes’ past). And Leone said he felt the closest to Tuco, particularly the character’s emotional volatility. In this interpretation, GBU is concerned with the struggle for the spiritual redemption of Tuco, who has an angel on each shoulder. 

On one side sits Blondie, occasionally a Christ-like figure who is referred to as Tuco’s “guardian angel.” Blondie is certainly no saint, but Tuco observes how the man occasionally demonstrates empathy and compassion: He comforts the dying soldier with a smoke and a blanketing coat; he brings a smile to the face of the dying Captain by blowing up the bridge; and he treats Tuco with more fairness and integrity than he receives in return, repeatedly shooting him free from several nooses and splitting their profits equally. 

On his other shoulder perches the uninvited “Angel Eyes,” a devilish mercenary who tortures and mocks Tuco, offering no partnership or opportunity for mercy. When first introduced, he kills both men who hired him to murder the other, insinuating that making a deal with the devil is bound to backfire; ultimately, Angel Eyes is symbolically cast back down to hell by Blondie, falling dead into an open grave. Tuco is the everyman sinner made all the uglier by original sin; ponder how the pre-hanging public recitations of crimes read like a laundry list of serious sins a priest might hear inside a confessional. Watson suggests that, because Blondie severs the rope on each occasion, Tuco’s sins have been forgiven. At the conclusion, Blondie forces Tuco to stand atop a cross and consider one of two options: remain upright and live (ergo, lead a more virtuous life), or go for the gold and risk death by hanging (suffer eternal punishment by indulging in greed and materialism). Tuco’s trespasses are ultimately forgiven by Blondie, who again severs the rope.

Ultimately, what is GBU’s greatest gift to viewers? Perhaps it’s the perfect marriage of music and visuals that closes the story. The showdown stands as one of the greatest sequences in movie history, masterful in its direction, editing, scoring, and performances, and all the more impressive because it relies on three characters standing motionless for a seemingly interminable stretch.

“The ordering of these shots begins perfectly balanced between the characters,” wrote BBC writer Luke Buckmaster. “There are three close-ups of each person’s pistol, for example, followed by three medium close-ups of their faces, then three close-ups zooming in further. The scene gets more frenetic and the shots shorter and tighter as Morricone’s score soars. The audience enters that rare and special space where we feel as if we are inside the characters’ minds, trembling along with them in fear and anticipation.”

The way Leone juxtaposes wide shots and over-the-shoulder shots with extreme close-ups of faces and hands, and uses rhythmic cutting that builds to a frantic pace before the gunfire climax, is nothing short of extraordinary – deserving of being mentioned in the same breath as Hitchcock’s shower scene in Psycho and the Odessa steps sequence in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin.

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