The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Now, I know there are all sorts of Westerns, but if someone starts talking about this genre, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is what I automatically think of.  Few other westerns have the same dynamism of a Sergio Leone western. They are full of action, have amazing characters and are beautifully shot.  Having said that, I'm really looking forward to Django Unchained in 2013.

Having wowed the world with his dynamic, violent style in Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, TGTBATU is the icing on the Sergio Leone cake.  It's a film that is in no hurry.  The first half an hour are spent slowly introducing the characters: Tuco (The Ugly) is evidently often a wanted man, but is perfectly capable of looking after himself.  Angel Eyes (The Bad) is a real mercenary and will stop at nothing to get his hands on as much cash as possible. Finally there's Blondie (The Good), still quite the mercenary, but with more scruples than Angel Eyes.  It's typical of Leone that even the "hero" (The Good) is a morally ambiguous character.

After these introductions we get into the story proper, these nefarious characters are trying to track down a cash box buried in a graveyard.  Of course it's not as simple as that, they get there via various altercations and encounters with the Unionist and Confederate armies, as well as each other.  However, when the graveyard is reached, the climax to the movie is 25 of the best minutes ever committed to film.  Leone's style is most evident here as the camera slowly gets closer to the protagonists using static shots of faces, eyes, hands and guns.  I have talked more about this in my Sunday Scene; quite simply, it's superb.

Behind all this wonderful direction and editing is an amazing score from Ennio Morricone.  Perhaps it is the theme music from the film that is most famous (perhaps even the most famous music from a Western), but The Ecstasy of Gold and "The Trio" showdown music are truly magnificent.





The three stars are quite brilliant.  Lee Van Cleef is the perfect embodiment of The Bad; the piercing blue eyes, the mousey smile, all played with such gleeful recklessness.  I know that Clint's character is meant to be the main hero, and Blondie is the epitome of cool, but it is Eli Wallach's portrayal of Tuco that is the highlight of the film.  He has the best lines: "If you're gonna shoot, shoot! Don't talk!", and the scene in which he "buys" a gun in a shop is pure genius.  Tuco is very much an adolescent character trying to survive in a man's world, and as such always seems to make it through by the seat of his pants.  Eli Wallach always manages to make his beady eyes full of wonder at the possibilities available to him, but at the same time terrified by what might happen to him.  This is no better demonstrated than in the truel at the end of the film: his beady eyes searching, his mouth twitching as he tries to second guess his opponents, and his gun on a piece of string! He could win so much, but he could lose everything.  Superb.

I’ve only really scratched the surface of what makes this a fabulous film, and I know I haven't done credit to how excellent TGTBATU really is.  Cast, action, music, style, composition of shots, script (have I forgotten anything?) all completely excellent, and one of my all time favourite films.

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, The Outlaw Josey Wales is a story of revenge and retribution. When a rogue group of Unionist soldiers known as the Redlegs attack Josey’s farm, killing his wife and son, he joins a group of men aiming to bring their own flavour of justice to the Redlegs. With the end of the war the renegades turn themselves in, all except Josey, who becomes outlaw number one.

Josey is a very interesting character; initially emotionally broken by the murder of his wife and son, he becomes a real hard man, shooting and killing his way to inner peace. As the film progresses we learn that he never lost the desire to lead a peaceful life with a family. As he travels, evading both the Unionist men hunting him and Bounty Hunters, he meets/rescues other lost souls until he has essentially surrounded himself with a surrogate family. It is also quite striking how Josey portrays the native Americans in the film. In a lot of classic Westerns the “Injuns” are the bad guys; the enemy here is definitely the soldiers who murdered his family, whereas the Cherokee and Navajo are just people (funnily enough) who believe in Josey. Even when Josey meets Ten Bears, the chief of a ferocious-looking tribe, he speaks to him as an equal and negotiates a peaceful solution.

Of course what we want to see in a Clint Eastwood Western is Clint being quick on the draw, delivering a great script, and generally being cool; and Josey Wales doesn’t disappoint. There are plenty of duels/shootouts/sticky situations; all of which are dealt with in typical cool Clint style. The film also looks amazing, lots of lovely cinematography of the Utah landscape giving a really epic feel. The cast is great, low-key (if a cast can be low-key?), and they all work really well together. However I feel that I must mention Chief Dan George who plays Lone Watie, the first person that starts to tag along with Josey. He is the main supporting actor I guess, and he is great; laid back, sarcastic, and has quite a sense of humour, and (get this) he was born in 1899! That’s crazy!

This is the fourth film that Eastwood both directed and starred in. When I recently watched The Town, the DVD extras make a big song and dance about how great Ben Affleck is because he both starred and directed. I enjoyed The Town, but Clint has been starring and directing since before Affleck was born! Though credit to Affleck, he was 38 when the made The Town, and Clint was 41 when he made his first film, Play Misty for Me.

In a time when interest in Westerns was waning, Clint really invigorated the genre when he made Josey Wales; to such an extent that it received a nomination for an Academy Award. OK, so it was for best original score, but it’s impressive that the movie got that much attention; and not that I generally put much stock by these things but the film still has a 94% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes! I think that it is a great film; simple yet effective revenge story, Clint is wonderful as the outlaw who has far more of a moral compass than the Unionists, great dry sense of humour in the script, excellent supporting cast and wonderful scenery.

The Sunday Scene #1 TGTBATU

This is the first post of a spanking new FilmsrRuss feature. In true High Fidelity style, I have often thought about what my favourite cinematic moments are; so I thought that this would be excellent material for a series (plus all the cool kids are doing this kind of thing!).

So this is the first of (hopefully) many in a series I will call The Sunday Scene. No, not descriptions of arguments around the Sunday dinner table! Each week I will introduce a scene from a film, one that sums up everything that is great about the film and say why I think it is so cool (or perhaps naff). So, without further ado, I will launch into my first scene.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I completely love this film, especially the last half an hour; but to pick one scene I would have to have go with the final standoff between Blondie, Angel Eyes and Tuco. Everything about it is just brilliant. For a start there is another of Ennio Moricone's wonderfully atmospheric compositions:

Ennio's music is as synonymous with the spaghetti westerns as Clint himself. Setting the confrontation in a graveyard is very fitting given that someone is likely about to die; the mass of untidy graves a reminder of the "many men wasted so badly" as Blondie observes earlier in the film.

Leone's shooting style comes to a climax during the final shootout; he cuts between all three characters, firstly portrait, then head shot, then the gun belt, then behind the characters, before closing into the faces and finally the eyes. As the music speeds up, the cutting between the characters also become more frenetic, cranking up the tension. All the hallmarks of Leone; and it's ace!

Without doubt Eli Wallach's "Tuco" is the best thing in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Blondie is cool, Angel Eyes is mean, but Tuco is always desperately trying to assess the gravity of the situation, with his shifty eyes constantly looking for his best way out. The shoot-out is no exception. Every time the camera focusses on his eyes, they are open wide constantly trying to second guess the other two protagonists. The look that he gives Angel Eyes as he lowers his pistol on a bit of string is fabulous; letting him know that this isn't just a two-person shoot-out; do not underestimate Tuco.

When the climax finally comes, the end result is perhaps not so surprising, but everything is done in Blondie's cool, inimitable style that you don't feel cheated by the result. The scene really demonstrates that some of the most memorable moments in cinema don't have to be complicated; here the characters are filmed, not speaking, not moving very much, and a great music score is played, and that's it. But it works so perfectly.

Fantastic film, and a fantastic scene that makes me grin stupidly every time I watch it.

You see, in this world there's two kinds of people my friend. Those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig.

Letters from our Fathers/Flags of Iwo Jima (2006/2007)

Both Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima tell the story of the battle for Iwo Jima, a small island to the south of Japan. It is 1945 and Iwo Jima is a strategic island because the Americans want to use it as a staging post for attacking mainland Japan. Flags of our Fathers tells the story from the American point of view; the capture of the island and the raising of the American flag on the top of the hill. A photo was taken, and the picture became an iconic image of the war, and as such was used to generate much needed revenue for the war effort from the American public. Three of the remaining soldiers who were in the photo were taken back to the US and paraded around the country to help raise the money; except that one of them wasn’t in the photo! The film follows the stories of these three soldiers, as well as the fighting on the island that led to the raising of the flag and the death of the other soldiers in the photo.

Letters from Iwo Jima tells the story from the Japanese point of view, the awful conditions of the soldiers and their desperation to defend the island. The story is told through the eyes of a foot soldier Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya) and General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe). The soldiers regularly write letters home, but of course once the fighting starts no more letters are delivered. However, as one of the few survivors, Saigo manages to bury a bag of the letters before he is captured. In true Saving Private Ryan style, the film begins in the present day, where we see some historians digging in the caves in Iwo Jima and unearthing something; at the end of the film we flip back to present day and the bag of letters that Saigo buried is unearthed.

FOOFs is much more of a spectacle than LFIJ, and this makes sense in that the three soldiers are paraded around the USA, making speeches, taking part in naff re-creations of the flag-raising, and generally being wined & dined as heroes. In this way, the film is almost a celebration of war. Of course the soldiers don’t feel like heroes, and the film is concerned with them fighting their demons; losing friends on the battlefield, struggling with an alcohol problem (Ira Hayes; played by Adam Beach), or not even being in the photo!

LFIJ is far less a celebration than a depiction of the grim reality of war; constantly eating weed soup, backbreaking work digging tunnels, and the desperation of the soldiery when it is clear they can’t win. What is interesting is the common ground to the films; the fighting. The conflict is gruesome, relentless and confusing on both sides, and all of the battle scenes are essentially black & white. There is some vague colour but it is very mute; the only full colour coming from gunfire and explosions, serving to highlight the terror. In this way the cinematography is fantastic, beautifully framed shots, including some really cool pilot-cam moments from the American fighter planes.

The most poignant scene of both films is a moment in LFIJ, when having captured an American soldier who subsequently dies from his wounds, General Kuribayashi reads out a letter that the GI received from his mother. All of the surrounding Japanese soldiers are amazed at the ordinary content of the letter. One of the soldiers remarks that his mother tells him about the same kind of things from back home. At this moment it hits the soldiers that the enemy are just people too.

I did enjoy both films. The direction by Clint Eastwood is solid, the cast are great in both films, and the look of the films is excellent. I think I was just a bit under-awed by them. Clint’s films are so often tremendous that I expected more “Wow” from the movies. They are both very well made films, no doubt, I just wasn’t amazed by them.