You can’t argue with success — the #1 home video disc being sold on Amazon.com right now is not a Blu-ray, but an Ultra HD disc. That sounds a little chilling for the Blu-ray business: how many 4K-equipped consumers are out there? The primacy of the extremely popular The Good, The Bad and The Ugly impressed me decades ago at MGM/UA Home Video, when I caught a peek at an internal memo that placed Sergio Leone’s movie as the label’s number one seller on VHS.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly needs no introductions anywhere, and it doesn’t need review publicity to sell. A little article I wrote on it in 1998 for the original MGM Video Savant website received tens of thousands of hits, which I don’t attribute to my involvement. Now that GBU is so well known, written up and analyzed by Sir Christopher Frayling and adjudged by Quentin Tarantino to be the ‘best directed movie ever,’ it isn’t like a disc fan (or anyone) needs the movie ‘explained’ to them. And I’m not the right person for that job, anyway — I’m an admirer of Sergio Leone but not a worshipful fan; I see him as a great filmmaker but he’s not a nostalgic favorite. I think my appreciation of his westerns grew more from the music of Ennio Morricone than enthusiasm for Clint Eastwood or the cynical storylines. When I saw GBU new in 1968 my particular teenage bias held a not-flattering-to-me belief in Hollywood-centric production values. To me the American release of GBU suffered from a thin, tinny soundtrack. The gunshots sounded like machine noises heard over a telephone. I recognized the same voices from sword ‘n’ sandal pictures, and they weren’t always in sync. And finally (get your rotten tomatoes ready) in 1968 I preferred the top-40 Hugo Montenegro cover version of the title tune to Ennio Morricone’s original. My signed confession is on file with the Feds.
By the time I was asked to contribute ideas at MGM/UA Home Video I was a confirmed fan to the Dollars films, converted by the first letterboxed laserdiscs. I’m sure others would have had the same idea, but I first proposed the creation of a new English-language ‘extended’ version of GBU, bringing Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood back in to record dialogue for scenes removed for our domestic release version. The idea was to add a new best-selling product to the company’s catalog. By the time the project finally got going I had been gone from the company for four years.
I only have two observations to make about the 2003 extended version ‘revision’ of GBU, which was finished on film. It really came to pass because most of the bills were paid by American Movie Classics, AMC cable. They wanted the longest version possible, which motivated MGM’s John Kirk to put in everything he could find that was of good quality. An extended ‘Tuco Torture’ scene didn’t make the grade because the only film elements were damaged, or of poor general quality. A new scene in an underground grotto featured Eli Wallach and was in good condition. It was in the premiere cut but never in any released version of the movie. Including it necessitated borrowing music from elsewhere in the soundtrack, and that meant making editorial revision decisions that second-guessed Leone.
AMC also stipulated that the new extended version had to be in full 5.1 stereophonic sound. Had the requirement simply been for 2-channel stereo, the film’s sound effects may have stayed the same. But 5.1 surround usually mandated low-frequency effects, which at a minimum meant augmenting the movie’s gunshots. The two or three infinitely-duplicated gunshot sounds would never sound reasonable in a stereophonic environment. And to make the new scenes ‘fit,’ the audio specialists altered some music cues. The revised and remixed audio would make enemies of many of the Leone Faithful, the dedicated fans that knew the pictures forward and back.
I still like the long extended version, as it is closer to what Leone envisioned. A couple of its scenes are much-missed favorites. Eastwood’s ‘counting bullets’ campsite scene is a winner, and Lee Van Cleef’s visit to the fort-turned hospital is a beauty both for direction and the Ennio Morricone music cue. The added scenes give us more of a notion that there’s a war going on. They also even out the characterizations: even the reprehensible Angel Eyes is moved by the misery of the war wounded. In the extended version, it’s not quite so much of a shock when we arrive at that enormous battlefield, that somehow transplants The Battle of the Somme into West Texas in 1864.
Leone had carved out a career in the cutthroat Italian film industry, where nice guys didn’t last any longer than Spaghetti western bad guys. Fistful of Dollars can be described as plagiarism plain and simple; he’s lucky that Toho and Kurosawa didn’t demand that the negative be burned. Leone’s cynical winner-take-all attitude would seem to reflect the Rome moviemaking environment. All three of GBU’s adventurers are crooked, murdering opportunists. Their excuse is that they’re competing in a corrupt, morally conflicted world, which definitely describes most of Europe during the slow recovery from WW2.
Basic Situational Ruthlessness.
The model of behavior is Basic Situational Ruthlessness, as modeled for Leone in the most influential western of the 1950s, Robert Aldrich’s Vera Cruz, which is also about freebooting opportunists looking to make big money in the confusion of a civil war. Blondie and Tuco trade off sneaky double-crosses exactly as do Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper. I would think that the original point (and joke) of the ‘good, bad and ugly’ title is that the assigned labels for our three main characters are meaningless. Only points of personal style differentiate Blondie, Tuco and Angel Eyes. When the original U.S. version was reconfigured, ‘bad’ and ‘ugly’ were swapped between Angel Eyes and Tuco, without ruining the characterizations.
It’s easy to find accolades for GBU. Morricone’s tightly scored music works better here than in any other Leone picture; it steers our emotions in every scene. From this point forward Leone would seemingly edit his films to fit Morricone’s music, putting Il Maestro before the horse, so to speak. The three distinct main characters are beautifully played. Eastwood has a commanding authority, Van Cleef gives the show everything he’s got, and Wallach’s contribution elevates the general level of acting. The brother-to-brother scene with Luigi Pistilli deepens Tuco’s character — although still a rat, he’s the most endearing of the three. The U.S. cut is a solid construction that expends its first half-hour just for character introductions.
Sergio Leone’s Roman premiere of Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo was a smash late in 1966; America didn’t see it for over a year, when it was launched with a killer United Artists advertising deluge patterned after the James Bond campaigns. On San Bernardino’s KMEN 129 radio station, I remember listening to a terrific audio plug for GBU … just before hearing a news bulletin that Martin Luther King had been shot. The two things still feel connected.
There’s something about GBU which practically demands repeated viewing. I saw it on 3 separate occasions in 1 week back in 1974 and even smuggled in a cassette deck into the cinema to record the sound. The sheer hypnotic quality of the scenes sometimes make you abandon the narrative. Okay, Angeleyes in now a Yankee segeant in a prison camp. How’d he get there? Ah, it doesn’t matter, he got there somehow, let’s move on. Tuco shows up with – okay, I’m gonna say it – the 3 amigos – just to keep Blondie’s attention at the door of his room while he craftily slips in through the window. Nice move, Tooks! I’m not sure how a cap and ball pistol firing paper cartidges could fire under water but by now I don’t care, it advanced the story, let’s move on. Blondie and Tuco reunite and are on the trail again. It’s not too clear why Blondie doesn’t bend a gun barrell over Tuco’s skull and just take the map but it’s part of the story so let’s move on. In a Laurel & Hardy-esque moment the 2 stumble into a massive Union camp. Obviously, not visible to them until they were right in it; an encampment of that size could have been spotted miles away but since it advances the story let’s move on. The battle’s on and carnage rages. During the post battle lull to get the wounded the 2 begin rigging the bridge. Blondie lights a fuse about 10 or 12 feet long. Let’s say it’s a slow burning fuse just to advance the story. It would have taken the 2 guys well over a minute to wade through the water and reach the safety of the trench before it blows up. But it advances the story so we’ll move on. They’re now across the river, in dry clothes nonetheless, but it adva..you know what comes next. Tuco nabs a conveniently tied up horse and scarpers to Sad Hill. Blondie loads the cannon and boom, Tuco is now rolling in money (almost). Fast forward a bit and here’s our friend Angeleyes. He’s only notched up 2 kills but we hate him anyway. He manages to slide right up to Blondie and Tuco without being noticed even though the landscape is flat and devoid of cover. He’s back on the same horse he rode in on to send Stevens to his just reward. He abandoned the animal to take the stagecoach to Santa Anna to question Maria, but must have gone back for him later. You see, an animal lover. He can’t be all BAD. However, he’s given exactly 5 minutes to live while they decide who’s going to draw first. If he drops Blondie (yeah, right) he, in turn will be shot by Tuco. Dang, by now a 3-way split would have been the best solution for all concerned. But what a flat ending to such a high operatic drama. Nope, Angeleyes has to die. The second that the music stops Angeleyes goes for it and immediately regrets it. Tuco fans his smoke wagon only to find it empty. Sleeping with your backside up during that last barrage came at a cost. Poor old Tuco, he made such a deserving case to take home the gold but now he’s wearing another rope around his neck. Bad time to practice River Dancing on top of that cross. But wait, why did Blondie leave me half of the money? Well, they didn’t call Blondie the Good for no reason. Blondie makes good on his part of the bargain and all Tuco has to do now is free his tied hands and find himself other horse. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is such a brilliant film that the viewer can’t help being swept up in the spectacle of it all. It is choc-a-bloc with “Huh?” moments but who cares? The music alone is worth the price of admission and this 4k rendition is the best so far. Hats off to Kino Lorber!!