Italian director Sergio Leone’s famous spaghetti western TheGood, The Bad and The Ugly continues to affect even today’s movies in te 50th anniversary of its first release. We are entering the 50th anniversary of the film, which left a huge impact on cinema and popular culture.
Three mustache men with sunburn faces look at each others in a cemetery. The men, who are suspicious, look at each other without moving, without saying a word. This situation continues for two and a half minutes.
It’s not an exciting movie scene, is it? But this scene is among the most immersive, most acclaimed scenes of all time. Sergio Leone brings excitement to a climax in this last scene of the film The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
Spaghette Western Trilogy
The legendary Italian director made his trademark on this subcategory, called spaghetti western, which included films made on Hollywood cowboys and Indians in the 1960s and 70s. These were innovative films made by European directors who like to take risks and work on small budgets.
However, Leone olmamışs 1966 film was not as famous and praised as the western spaghetti. The film tells the story of three vagrants with a hard temper looking for a lost fortune. The film tells the story of these people who lack moral values and has been on the best list for years, many of its scenes have been used as references and have been repeated in other films made in many countries around the world.
The stage called ıyla “Trilogy”, which includes the encounter between three men, is seen as one of the best fictions in the history of cinema. The reason why the film has remained so important for so many years is not the way it is told in the story, but the way the events unfold.
The clues that visuality will be important in the film are seen from the beginning. The film begins with wide-angle and distant plan views of a barren valley and mountain slopes. But this image is only for two seconds. Then the dirty bearded face of a cowboy wavers into the frame. Thus, without distorting the image, without any movement, the extreme distant plan becomes too close.
Unforgettable music
Music is as important as the image here. The soundtrack by Ennio Morricone is very catchy and remarkable. Written in a book about this music is one of the best known in the world of cinema. Others are Jaws ‘two-note music and Star Wars’ Imperial Anthem.
But the climax scene in the film is the trio, played by Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach. This scene takes place in the area next to the cemetery, where the victims of the Civil War were buried.
Sequences of the trio in succession, no interruptions in the image, close-ups of faces and weapons, graveyard images in the background, shortening the duration of images on each of them in accordance with the excitement created by the music. The audience is as if the character is impersonated, trembling with fear with him, tired of trying to predict.
Just like the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Pervert, academics and fans have explored this scene frame by frame. The energy in this scene, which can be called a visual poem, gives a sense of chaos, but it includes sequence, methodology and even mathematics.
‘The greatest achievement’
The influence of Good, Bad and Ugly is felt even in today’s films. Renowned director Quentin Tarantino calls it the greatest achievement in the history of cinema. Tarantino’s love for this film is also seen in his latest film, The Hateful Eight. Tarantino even composed the soundtrack for Morricone, 87. The scene of the three armed bandits at the end of the 1992 director’s Reservoir Dogs is directly reminiscent of Leone’s masterpiece.
Other films were made in the spaghetti western genre. But others have not been so successful. If there is a film that combines the best features of this genre such as being innovative, combining environment and psychological energy, it is The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
All about The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly movie.
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