The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Sergio Leone 1966)
Posted on July 08 at 12.49, 2006 by Eric Mahleb
This film won’t dethrone Once upon a Time in the West as my favourite western but it comes very close.
John Ford may have brought an almost boring perfection to the western genre (with Hawks, Sturges and Zinnemann adding very little in terms of novelty), but Leone (and Peckinpah) took it to a new level, one that distances itself from its predecessors through a more aggressive and much less romantic and conservative style.
Gone is the John Wayne regulated, regimented, black and white republican view of the West. This is an American West where the bad guys and the good guys are the same people, where Darwinian and animalistic forces dominate in an unforgiving and harsh environment.
Van Cleef is absorbing to watch and Wallach simply astonishing, while Eastwood’s stoicism has never looked more appropriate. The cemetery scene where Wallach looks for the tombstone remains one of my all-time favourite.
My vote: 
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2 Responses to “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”
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The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - Quiet Please - Film reviews by Eric Mahleb Says:
April 7, 2008 at 15.52[…] Personally, I believe they did it a lot of good and infused it with a much-needed dose of realism and freshness. I recently surprised a Cinephile friend of mine for stating that Red River (48) had left me unimpressed (as do most films with John Wayne). And as I explained in this post, most traditional Westerns, while stimulating our imagination with their exploration of a mystical historicity, have a tendency to nonetheless deal with aspects of human nature that probably shouldn’t be so unabashedly revered. […]
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Brenda Sipa Says:
April 27, 2008 at 21.57I have a comic book dated in 1966 called Outlaws of the West Jesse James, Vol.2, No. 58 April - May, 1966, 12 cents, is it worth anything? It is in good shape.