Media Diary Week 2

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - review
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is an epic Italian western film from 1966 directed by Sergio Leone. In the title roles it stars Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in the title roles. The screenplay was written by Agenore Incrocci, Furio Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni and Leone, the story was written by Vincenzoni and Leone. The screenplay of the film has to gain credit therefore the credit goes to the Director of photography Tonino Delli Colli who was responsible for the film's sweeping widescreen cinematography. It is the third film in the ‘Dollars Trilogy’ it was the last of the trilogy following A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965). The plot revolves around three gunslingers competing to find a fortune in buried Confederate gold amid the violent chaos of gunfights, hangings, American Civil War battles and prison camps.

The filming was taken in Germany, Italy and Spain. Filming began at the Cinecittà studio in Rome again in mid-May 1966, including the opening scene between Clint and Wallach when ‘The Man with No Name’ captures Tuco for the first time and sends him to jail. The production then moved on to Spain's ‘plains’ region near Burgos in the north. This doubled for the south western United States. The western scenes where also shot in Almeria in the south. When the production required more elaborate sets such as when the town is under cannon fire, in an extensive prison camp and in an American civil war battlefield. The climax involved several hundred Spanish soldiers who were employed to build a cemetery with several thousand grave stones to resemble an ancient Roman cemetery. For the scene where the bridge was blown up filming occurred twice as in the first take all three cameras were destroyed by the explosion. Leone’s visual sense is as strong as ever, however he uses combination of extreme close-ups and long shots for effect. Much of Tonino Delli Colli’s photography is immense.

Of the three men, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, only ones real name is exposed. This is of the Ugly. We learn that he is called Tuco Ramirez, he's a Mexican bandit working in the States. We meet him as he escapes from a trio of bounty hunters. He has the most screen time, but not considered a protagonist as such. He's arguably the most recognisably human character. Next up is the Bad, goes by Angel Eyes, who first appears in the act of capturing and interrogating a target, he is conveyed as a bounty hunter. He indulges in some cat-and-mouse acts but before killing the man for his son. Onto the Good is a stone-faced, unspeaking gunslinger that some call Blondie. The most noticeable thing is that he's not wearing that famous serape made famous by Eastwood in the first two movies of the trilogy. However it's obvious from the mannerisms and the squint and the cigarettes that this is the same man with no name.

The good the bad and the ugly, which has a running time of 169 minutes, has earned it place of the 5th best film of all time by IMDb. It had a budget of only 1,300,000 but earned a mind-blowing 25,100,000 at the box office.