The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Extremely uneven spaghetti western. Sergio Leone directs and makes beautiful landscapes look even more beautiful. Ennio Morricone’s music is iconic and haunting. And Clint Eastwood is as magnetic as ever. But the tone of the film is really odd, and sometimes scenes intended to be slightly “comedic” simply fall flat. In particular, Eli Wallach (the “ugly”) seems strange with his sneering and grimacing. Plus, there’s a sadistic thread that runs through it. Deliberate moral ambiguity, perhaps. 

It’s more ambitious than A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More (with which it’s often grouped as a loose trilogy), with an ongoing, parallel narrative about the US Civil War. There are spectacular battle scenes involving a huge number of extras. It’s unclear whether you are supposed to take it as an anti-war film, or whether it’s again being morally ambiguous on purpose. 

On the plus side, Lee Van Cleef (the “bad”) is charismatic as “Angel Eyes”. But the dubbed voices used for all of the actors – even the English-speaking ones – remain a barrier that prevents it from ever seeming even remotely real.