The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly opened in Italy in December 1966, completing the Dollars trilogy with Clint Eastwood after A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. The 161-minute Italian cut was heavily trimmed for international release; the 178-minute extended cut, restored in 2003 with Eastwood and Eli Wallach re-recording dialogue, is now the standard version. It has a permanent place in the IMDb top ten and sits high in several BFI polls.

Three men race each other across the American Civil War in pursuit of $200,000 in Confederate gold buried in an unmarked grave in Sad Hill cemetery. Blondie (Eastwood, the Good) knows the name of the cemetery; Tuco (Eli Wallach, the Ugly, in a career-defining performance of feral charisma) knows the inscription on the grave; Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef, the Bad) is hunting both of them. Tonino Delli Colli's wide-frame Techniscope cinematography and Ennio Morricone's score (the title theme, the Trio, the Ecstasy of Gold) meet Leone's taste for a duration the genre had always refused, with single shots held for thirty seconds and longer. Together they make this the high point of the Spaghetti Western.

Leone's grammar of the duel, close-ups of eyes and revolver grips cut against each other in time with the music, reaches its fullest form here, and Morricone's The Ecstasy of Gold has long since taken on a life of its own outside the film.

Why it's an Editor's Pick: The most enjoyable epic ever made, and the film that proved European genre cinema could beat Hollywood at its own game. Wallach's Tuco is one of the great supporting performances of the 1960s.