The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
“There are two kinds of people, those with guns and those who do the digging”.
Quick draw! Think of the ultimate Spaghetti Western – if you came up with Sergio Leone’s 1967 The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (and you probably did) then you will be delighted to know that today’s Lockdown Rewatch is the western classic.
The third film in the Dollars Trilogy stars Clint Eastwood in what is arguably his definitive role: The Man With No Name (Or “Blondie”, if you prefer to use a name) was made on a tiny $1.2 million budget and went on to rake in $25 million at the US box office. With its beautiful cinematography, tense action, THAT climatic Mexican standoff, and an iconic score from Ennio Morricone, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly is THE genre-defining western.
But did you know…
1) In the US, each film in the Dollars Trilogy was released in the same year: A Fistful Of Dollars in January 1967, For A Few Dollars More in May 1967, and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly in December 1967. A good time to be a fan of westerns.
2) Sergio Leone was Italian and spoke no English. He relied on translators to communicate with his English-speaking cast, except for Eli Wallach – they communicated in French.
3) A 2002 re-release introduced 18 minutes of new scenes. As the original film was shot with no dialogue track – standard in Leone’s films, everything was later dubbed in – an older Clint Eastwood was brought in to record his lines.
