Every once and a while a film comes that redefines a genre having a noticeable impact on the genre, some for a long time , some for a short time , some for better and some for worse The Good The Bad And The Ugly(1966) is a film which has redefined the western for a long time and for the better.
The film is one of the foremost examples of the spaghetti western sub-genre often being coined the definitive spaghetti western with its Italian director Sergio Leone wanting to make a tongue and cheek satire of run of the mill westerns that would challenge the conventions of the genre. one example of this is Despite the genre being mostly associated with outlaws and delinquents traditional westerns often feature very black and white morals with obvious heroes and villains which despite its namesake The Good The Bad And The Ugly does not which brings me to the film itself.
Set during the American civil war we follow three varying levels of outlaw who each seek confederate gold The Good otherwise know as Blondie, not his real name obviously, The Bad otherwise know as Angel eyes, also not his real name, and last but certainly not least The Ugly otherwise know as Tuco with the three coming into conflict in their mad dash to the gold.
The main trio of Blondie, Angel eyes and Tuco and their actors performances(Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef) bring this film to life in a way few films have and their characters endear me in a way few films have. for example Blondie despite the film giving him the title The Good is no where close to what one would consider moral or righteous even by outlaw standards he is constantly shown to take kill, lie, torture, steal the list goes on. While watching this film and seeing the horrible things "The Good" does you will inevitably ask what separates this man from the other outlaws in the film, what really earns Blondie the title of "Good". Is it that he only does bad things when necessary, to survive? definitely not .One of the first things and the last thing we see Blondie is needlessly torture Tuco for no reason given so it cant be that. Maybe he wants to spend the gold on something noble? definitely not. No other reason besides greed is given. So what separates The Good from The Bad and The Ugly? from what I gathered one single thing Blondie is good when its easy, when it takes little or no effort Blondie is shown to have some level of common decency the other two lack like giving comfort to a dying man or sparing towns people in his and Tuco's scam near the start of the film by shooting their hats off instead of their heads which for a gun slinger of Blondies calibre is no challenge. But does this make Blondie really Good? what is being a good person but doing good deeds when for others at the detriment of yourself. Flipping the audiences expectations on their in this way and forcing the audience to ask these questions is why the main trio of this film and their characters endear me and others in this way if isn't obvious from the fact that I talked about just one of the films three characters for that long.
The films cinematography and score are legendary to this day ,as they should be, the iconic guitar riffs and screeches of the films main theme and the films beautiful use of long shots and all different types of close ups create a sense of tension that is crucial to the western style that this film helped burn into the collective publics memory.
The film has a surprisingly large focus on the theme of war. As the film is set during one mankind's most bloodiest wars the American civil war and the main goal of our characters is confederate gold the trio comes across the war and its after effects multiple times where the film shows sympathy to all sides of the conflict showing the true horrors of the war and some times using nothing but well done shots to show that this type of fighting no matter the cause is futile. This can be seen as controversial considering the context of the civil war which frankly I'm no where near qualified to speak on but I do believe that the message the film is trying to communicate on war is shown well and doesn't become overbearing controversial or not.
Overall if it isn't clear from the fact I mentioned no negatives of the film, which I think it does have by the way, I think the positives of this film eclipse the negatives leaving a genre defining challenging piece of work surly to be remembered for years that I hold near and dear to my heart.
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