The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

This is not going to be another post about a western that I preface with “I hate westerns, but...” I do hate some westerns. But I also like a lot of westerns, the more I explore the genre. I hate John Wayne-era westerns. They feel so campy and neat and pretty to me. In my imagination, the west was a dark, gritty place, and I see that come to life in this movie. For those unfamiliar, it was directed by Sergio Leone in 1966, and I just adore his over-the-top version of the west.

I think it can be hard to remember what was so groundbreaking and new about this movie when it came out. Clint Eastwood is a household name, but he wasn't in 1966. He was a TV star that no one thought would succeed. “In those days,” Ebert writes, “it was thought that a movie audience wouldn't pay to see an actor it could watch for free” (Great Movies II, 161). He got paid barely anything for his work with Leone, but it paid off. People were also much more used to the Wayne west, where there was not so much blood and dirt, where everything was filmed in the US. Here, Leone gave us big sweeping foreign vistas. People with dark, sun-stained skin. Blistering, peeling faces and grit covering everything. It was sort of alien, almost. I know there were many critics who didn't like Leone's emphasis on style, but I really love it.