Recommended Film #11
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly by Sergio Leone
This awe-inspring and genre-modifying western by Sergio Leone quite literally changed how directors portrayed good and evil by turning it into something incredibly complex. After this, the western was never the same. It’s about three man; Blondie (Clint Eastwood), Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) and Tuco (Eli Wallach) who search the whole west for 200000$ in gold. The mexican standoff scene, the impeccable, messy yet controlled directing of Sergio Leone and the performance of Eli Wallach as the Ugly will not leave your mind for a long while. I will cut my words short because this film should be experienced first-hand. In fact, don’t even watch a trailer.
Still from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966), dir. Sergio Leone.
Born in January 1929, Italian director Sergio Leone was a game-changer. He brought an outsider’s look into the American mythos with films like Once Upon A Time In America, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, For A Few Dollars More and the one that started it all: A Fistful of Dollars. What started as just an Italian knockoff of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo turned into something that inspired filmmakers like Tarantino and George Lucas.
Leone’s cinema is definitely one of extreme scale. He mastered the art of balancing vast, sweeping landscapes with the tightest, most intimate close-ups in film history. He understood that a man's eyes and his sweaty skin could tell more story than any kind of dialogue. In his world, silence is a weapon, and music is a soul. Through his legendary collaboration with composer Ennio Morricone, he transformed the Western into something operatic and mythic. He didn't just film a story; he choreographed it to the rhythm of tension and release. Leone’s gaze was often cynical, stripping away the polished heroism of old Hollywood to reveal a world of sweat, dust, and moral ambiguity, yet there was always a deep, operatic romanticism beneath the surface.
Who is Once Upon A Time In America and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’s director Sergio Leone?
RECOMMENDED FILM #12
Once Upon A Time In America by Sergio Leone
For what would be his final film, Leone left the Old West for the smokey streets of New York’s Lower East Side to give us this 4 hour sprawling epic and tell the story of Noodles, an American gangster who returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan over thirty years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life. The film was a huge flop at the box office upon its first 1984 release, because studios had cut it to just 2 hours and 19 mins and rearranged the scenes into chronological order, against Leone’s wishes, while also destroying the complex flashback structure that gave the story its emotional weight. Leone never lived to see the critical vindication of his original vision as he passed away just 5 years later, in 1989.
Once Upon a Time in America is a film about the heavy weight of time and the bitter taste of regret. It is a story of brotherhood, betrayal, and the 'American Dream' as seen through the eyes of those it chewed up and spat out. The score by Ennio Morricone is especially haunting and melancholic. The Cockeye’s Song with Gheorghe Zamfir on the pan flute might be the greatest OST ever put into film and it still sends chills down my spine with every listen.
To watch a trailer of it, click here
After you watch it,
To read my review of it, click here
Still from Once Upon A Time In America (1984), dir. Sergio Leone.