Day 6: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (cont.)

Movie #4 - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) - 161 min, cert 15.

Another long one, but this one doesn't drag, it positively flies by. I've got nothing bad to say about this movie at all. It's been my favourite movie for many years, and it continues to be so.

The film follows the fortunes of three gunslingers during the time of the American Civil War. There's Blondie (Clint Eastwood), Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) and Tuco (Eli Wallach) - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the title respectively. They are looking for a large cache of gold coins buried in a cemetery, but none of them seems to be willing to share it three ways.

As far as I’m concerned, there is one person who transforms this film from being an above average (if a little long) western, into a glorious cinematic masterpiece. And it’s not Eli Wallach or Lee Van Cleef. It’s not Clint Eastwood. It’s not even Sergio Leone. The person I’m talking about is Ennio Morricone. I could literally sit in a darkened room and just listen to the soundtrack of this film and be in heaven. Some of the scenes in the film just wouldn’t work if it wasn’t for the accompanying music. If any other film had a sequence of someone just running round a graveyard looking for a specific gravestone that goes on for a full three minutes, you would say that was about two and a half minutes too long. But Morricone’s Ecstasy of Gold makes it work. Similarly, at several points in the movie, there are long spells without dialogue, but the void is filled beautifully by the score. There is no dialogue at all until over 10 minutes into the film, and the final shootout goes a good six minutes without speech.

But it’s not just the score that makes this film great. Delli Colli’s cinematography and Leone’s direction are also superb. There are plenty of lingering long shots of desert shanty towns and rugged plains where the actors are deliberately placed a long way from the camera and off-centre so as to make them seem somehow unimportant by comparison with the vast landscape.

And, of course, there are the performances of the three leads. Van Cleef exudes quiet malice, speaking only when required to do so. Wallach, by contrast, hides his cunning and treachery behind a torrent of words, hardly any of which are actually true, but designed to be what he thinks the people around him want to hear. Eastwood, like Van Cleef, is a man of few words, and he maintains a calm, laid-back, unflustered manner at all times. It’s easy to see why he was picked up by Hollywood as a leading man on the back of this performance.

Overall, everything about this movie is perfection in my eyes. I score it 10/10 and it jumps straight to the top of my personal list –

1. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
3. The Godfather (1972)
4. The Godfather: Part II (1974)

Next on the list is another of my personal favourites, Pulp Fiction. I’m out tonight on a work’s Christmas do so I don’t suppose I’ll get a chance to watch it until Saturday. But, I’m looking forward to it.