The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Release

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly opened in Italy on 23 December 1966.[73]

In the United States, all three of Leone's Dollars Trilogy films were released during 1967: A Fistful of Dollars was released 18 January;[74] For a Few Dollars More was released 10 May;[75] and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was released 29 December.[76] The original Italian domestic version was 177 minutes long,[77] but the international version was shown at various lengths. Most prints, specifically those shown in the United States, had a runtime of 161 minutes, 16 minutes shorter than the Italian premiere version, but others, especially British prints, ran as short as 148 minutes.[10][78]

Box office

In Italy, the film grossed $6.3 million at the time.[79] In the United States and Canada, the film grossed $25.1 million.[76] It also grossed $7.5 million in other international territories,[80] for a total of $38.9 million grossed worldwide.

Critical reception

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly holds an approval rating of 97% based on 75 reviews, with an average rating of 8.8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Arguably the greatest of the spaghetti westerns, this epic features a compelling story, memorable performances, breathtaking landscapes, and a haunting score."[81] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 90 out of 100 based on 7 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[82]

Upon release, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly received criticism for its depiction of violence.[83] 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."[84] To this day, Leone's effort to reinvigorate the timeworn Western is widely acknowledged.[85]

Critical opinion of the film on initial release was mixed, as many reviewers at that time looked down on "Spaghetti Westerns". In a negative review in The New York Times, a critic Renata Adler said that the film "must be the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre."[86] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the "temptation is hereby proved irresistible to call The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, now playing citywide, The Bad, The Dull, and the Interminable, only because it is."[87] Roger Ebert, who later included the film in his list of Great Movies,[88] retrospectively noted that in his original review he had "described a four-star movie, but only gave it three stars, perhaps because it was a 'Spaghetti Western' and so could not be art."

Home media

On January 28, 1998, the film was released on DVD by MGM Home Video.[5] Its release from MGM contained 14 minutes of scenes that were cut from the film's North American release, including a scene which explains how Angel Eyes came to be waiting for Blondie and Tuco at the Union prison camp.[78]

In 2002, the film was restored with the 14 minutes of scenes cut for US release re-inserted into the film. Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach were brought back in to dub their characters' lines more than 35 years after the film's original release. Voice actor Simon Prescott substituted for Lee Van Cleef who had died in 1989. Other voice actors filled in for actors who had since died. In 2004, MGM released this version in a two-disc special edition DVD.[89]

Disc 1 contains an audio commentary with writer and critic Richard Schickel. Disc 2 contains two documentaries, "Leone's West" and "The Man Who Lost The Civil War", followed by the featurette "Restoring 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly'"; an animated gallery of missing sequences titled "The Socorro Sequence: A Reconstruction"; an extended Tuco torture scene; a featurette called "Il Maestro"; an audio featurette named "Il Maestro, Part 2"; a French trailer; and a poster gallery.[89]

This DVD was generally well received, though some purists complained about the re-mixed stereo soundtrack with many completely new sound effects (notably, the gunshots were replaced), with no option for the original soundtrack.[90] At least one scene that was re-inserted had been cut by Leone before the film's release in Italy but had been shown once at the Italian premiere. According to Richard Schickel,[89] Leone willingly cut the scene for pacing reasons; thus, restoring it was contrary to the director's wishes.[91] MGM re-released the 2004 DVD edition in their "Sergio Leone Anthology" box set in 2007. Also included were the two other "Dollars" films, and Duck, You Sucker!. On 12 May 2009, the extended version of the film was released on Blu-ray.[47] It contains the same special features as the 2004 special edition DVD, except that it includes an added commentary by film historian Sir Christopher Frayling.[10]

The film was re-released on Blu-ray in 2014 using a new 4K remaster, featuring improved picture quality and detail but a change of color timing, resulting in the film having a more yellow hue than on previous releases.[90] It was re-released on Blu-ray and DVD by Kino Lorber Studio Classics on 15 August 2017, in a new 50th Anniversary release that featured both theatrical and extended cuts, as well as new bonus features, and an attempt to correct the yellow colour timing from the earlier disc.[92] On 27 April 2021, Kino released an Ultra HD Blu-ray version of the theatrical cut, using the same scan from the 2014 remaster, but with extensive colour correction.

Deleted scenes

The following scenes were originally deleted by distributors from the British and American theatrical versions of the film but were restored after the release of the 2004 Special Edition DVD.[89]

  • During his search for Bill Carson, Angel Eyes stumbles upon an embattled Confederate outpost after a massive artillery bombardment. Once there, after witnessing the wretched conditions of the survivors, he bribes a Confederate soldier (Víctor Israel, dubbed by Tom Wyner[93]) for clues about Bill Carson.
  • After being betrayed by Blondie, surviving the desert on his way to civilization, and assembling a good revolver from the parts of worn-out guns being sold at a general store, Tuco meets with members of his gang in a distant cave, where he conspires with them to hunt and kill Blondie.
  • The sequence with Tuco and Blondie crossing the desert has been extended: Tuco mentally tortures a severely dehydrated Blondie by eating and bathing in front of him.
  • Tuco, transporting a dehydrated Blondie, finds a Confederate camp whose occupants tell him that Father Ramirez's monastery is nearby.
  • Tuco and Blondie discuss their plans when departing in a wagon from Father Ramirez's monastery.
  • A scene where Blondie and Angel Eyes are resting by a creek when a man appears and Blondie shoots him. Angel Eyes asks the rest of his men to come out of hiding. When the five men come out, Blondie counts them (including Angel Eyes), and concludes that six is the perfect number, implying one for each bullet in his gun.
  • The sequence with Tuco, Blondie, and Captain Clinton has been extended: Clinton asks for their names, which they are reluctant to give.

The footage below is all featured within supplementary features of the 2004 DVD release

  • Additional footage of the sequence where Tuco is tortured by Angel Eyes's henchman was discovered. The original negative of this footage was deemed too badly damaged to be used in the theatrical cut.
  • Lost footage of the missing Socorro Sequence where Tuco continues his search for Blondie in a Texican pueblo while Blondie is in a hotel room with a Mexican woman (Silvana Bacci) is reconstructed with photos and unfinished snippets from the French trailer. Also, in the documentary "Reconstructing The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", what looks to be footage of Tuco lighting cannons before the Ecstasy of the Gold sequence appears briefly. None of these scenes or sequences appear in the 2004 re-release but are featured in the supplementary features.[47]

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