The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Italian: Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo) is a 1966 Italian epic spaghetti Western directed by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach in the title roles. The screenplay was written by Age & Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni and Leone, based on a story by Vincenzoni and Leone. Director of photography Tonino Delli Colli was responsible for the film's sweeping widescreen cinematography and Ennio Morricone composed the famous film score. It is the third film in the Dollars trilogy following A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965). The plot centers around three gunslingers competing to find a fortune in buried Confederate gold amid the violent chaos of gunfights, hangings, Civil War battles, and prison camps.

Opening on December 23, 1966 in Italy and in the USA on December 29, 1967, the film grossed $6.1 million, but was criticized for its depiction of violence. Leone explains that "the killings in my films are exaggerated because I wanted to make a tongue-in-cheek satire on run-of-the-mill westerns... The west was made by violent, uncomplicated men, and it is this strength and simplicity that I try to recapture in my pictures." To this day, Leone's effort to reinvigorate the timeworn Western is widely acknowledged: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly has been described as European cinema's best representative of the Western genre film, and Quentin Tarantino has called it "the best-directed film of all time."

Segments Alluded To

 * The Tortoise, The Hair, and the Ugly