THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

Italy, 1967, 134 minutes, Colour.
Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef.
Directed by Sergio Leone.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was director Sergio Leone's most successful Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western (after a Fistful of Dollars and a Few Dollars More). It was larger in scale and scope, more spectacular and with Ennio Morricone's famous score. It was more substantial in theme although played largely with tongue in cheek. Clint Eastwood went on from here to acting and directorial success. Leone later became respectable, making the stolid once Upon a Time in the West (1969), the effective A Fistful of Dynamite (1972).

1. Was this just another Sergio Leone- Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western? If not, how much significance was there in the film? How much is read into this film?

2. The film is famous for its music. How did it contribute to the drama - its comic touches, its excitement, its climaxes, its irony?

3. How does Sergio Leone parody as well as use typical Western devices? How successful is this method? - situations, characters, profiles, the landscapes, towns, dinginess, etc? How effectively were the good, the bad and the ugly introduced? - comment on each. Did the attitudes and character of each come across? What kind of person was each? Was the 'good', good?

4. How ironic and callous was the film? - e.g. the good and the ugly: the hangings and each making the other suffer in the desert (the effect of the desert)? Was the film too cruel and violent?

5. The film had a Civil War background and, at times, used this effectively and importantly. What did it contribute? Was there the possibility of some kind of comment on the selfish individualism of the three and the wider social comment on the war? How? They used the Civil War for-their own ends?

6. How effective were the sequences of the war? - at the river, the soldiers, their fear and camp life, the alcoholic commander, the bridge; the towns and the bombings; the Civil War prisons and conditions.. the singing of the songs (the film-makers went to some expense to present the War)?

7. The inter-relationship between the three: suspicions, greed, cunning, violence (too inhuman?)? Their using of one another? The final search for the grave, the shoot-out and the final irony of the hanging? How successful a Western climax was this?

8. What comment on the West did this film make?