The Good, the Bad, and the Classic
For such a sprawling film in setting and scope, Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly hinges on its intimate character dynamics. The relationship between Tuco (Eli Wallach) and the Man with No Name, or Blondie (Clint Eastwood) as he’s referred to here, is at the center, and several others rotate around this blazing Western sun: Blondie and Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef), Tuco and Angel Eyes, Tuco and his brother, Father Pablo Ramirez (Luigi Pistilli), and the titular trio and the money (a dead man’s $200,000, and a $2,000 bounty on Tuco).
These pairs form a dense web of double binds that reflect the depth and quality of Leone’s trilogy. And they also illuminate other dualities present in the film, perhaps most strikingly how it is a Western and war movie, an arc that shows the shifting of tectonic eras in this country, the conditions beyond control of the titular characters and how they grapple with their consequences and go on living. In a way then, as much as it’s the birth of the spaghetti Western, maybe it’s the last Western movie for how it shows the denouement of that era and the beginning of another (of course many others have been made since then, but if you could have a thematic end to them all you could do worse). It’s certainly the end of something, a daring apotheosis of a genre that, if not perfect, still functions as a rousing tribute to its origins and a thrilling divergence into new cinematic territory.
Viewing the movie through this lens, you can see how Angel Eyes, who is posing as a war commander as he tracks down the bounty, makes sense as the true “Bad” of the film. The new military order is closing in on the lawless West and its archetypes, the stoic Blondie who may not be “good” by traditional norms, but is in this world, as well as the rough riding Tuco, contentedly at home in his brazen lawlessness. Like the character he plays in A Few Dollars More, Van Cleef’s Angel Eyes wears black and moves with a cold, efficient menace. Unlike Tuco and Blondie, who often find themselves in no shortness of plight, with nooses around their necks and mouths as dry as the dusty deserts they wander through, he doesn’t appear to struggle much, his maneuvering through the world as mechanical and precise as those in the theater of war. After seeing him in A Few Dollars More, it’s a little confusing for me seeing Van Cleef here as a different, and still prominent, character, but he’s still at the top of his game and is an inextricable element of Leone’s operatics. From a storytelling standpoint, I like seeing Angel Eyes as Blondie’s projection of what the antagonistic forces in his world look like, a recurring spectral image that is elusive, shifting, and ever-present, no matter the tribulation (“These eyes…watched you bring my world to an end,’ these dark Angel eyes).
On the other side of the gold coin is Tuco, as played by Wallach with such manic glee that it’s hard not to root for him and be in some dismay when his fate hangs in the balance at the end. He is so endearingly sleazy as to evoke a touch of humor and lightness in Blondie, creating a freewheeling, off-kilter relationship that is a joy to watch and a harbinger of other cinematic odd couples like Charles Grodin and Robert De Niro in Midnight Run (although maybe not Clint’s best ever on-screen companion). And how better to illuminate this grubby conman on the run then to have him hold court with his quite priestly brother, Father Ramirez? I first saw The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly about 11 years ago, but it was only upon a recent rewatch at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles that his performance really jumped out to me as a treasure worth relishing, an easy addition to the hall of fame of great supporting actor turns. It was at this screening that I also noticed how the only cheer given to anyone in the movie was to its composer, Ennio Morricone, whose notes deserve to echo forever, alongside those of horse hooves and gunshots flying over the sandy horizon.
