The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The film that cemented Clint Eastwood’s status as The Man with No Name, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly stands as one of the most influential Westerns of all time and, more importantly, one of the most striking examples ever of how cinema can create a living myth out of pure visual spectacle. Eli Wallach (the “ugly,” absolutely), Lee Van Cleef (the “bad,” undoubtedly), and Eastwood (the “good,” barely) crisscross the arid Texas plains while double-crossing one another as they search for a fortune in stolen Confederate gold. It’s not the story that one remembers, however, but how it’s told—or painted, as the film’s innovative opening credits suggest. Like a brush on canvas, Sergio Leone’s lens colors desolation with beauty, juxtaposing close-ups of scarred faces with long-distance shots of sky-stretched panoramas to create a disorienting, almost hyperreal landscape, one aurally haunted by Ennio Morricone’s now-legendary score. Here the American hunt for gold winds up—literally—in the grave.