I’m specifically talking about the big shoot-out between Blondie, Angel Eyes and Tuco in the centre of Sad Hill. [No spoilers for this 47 year old movie!].
All Blondie has to do is out-draw Sgt. Angel Eyes because he has previously unloaded Tuco’s gun. What kind of an idiot goes into a gun fight without checking that his gun is loaded?
And wasn’t it really just a re-hash of the ending of “Few Dollars More” when El Indio was out flanked by Manco and Colonel Douglas Mortimer?
Plus Blondie was a jerk for not writing the name under the stone, evil swine!
I have seen this movie over 20 times and that bit gets me on the edge of my seat every time. It’s just the best movie ever made in my opinion. It’s on for almost an hour before the story starts and just draws you in from there beautifully. Eli Wallach plays it so well, it is his movie from start to finish.
I suppose it’s a bit odd that Tuco didn’t check his gun, maybe not right at that moment (neither Blondie nor Angel Eyes check theirs) but sometime since the previous night. And one has to believe that Blondie was with Tuco continuously; he unloaded Tuco’s gun and knows during the gunfight that Tuco hasn’t noticed and reloaded it. Neither of those things particularly bother me, and I think it actually enhances that scene when you re-watch it. Wallach and Van Cleef are jittery, shifting their attention back and forth. They don’t know who to be looking out for. But watch Eastwood. He knows only one of the others is a threat, and that’s who he watches.
It may be the best-directed movie scene ever. It starts with long shots, getting gradually closer, each character framed the same way; each with a different way of drawing his gun, so even when it’s a close-up of someone’s hand, you can tell who it is. Then the first shot rings out and we’re back to the wide camera angle again. It’s brilliant.
One thing that did strike me about it (and I noticed the first time I saw it) is that Blondie knew there was a grave with the name Arch Stanton on it, and he told that name to Tuco before they got to the cemetery. It had to have been part of the directions that Bill Carson gave him. I figured it would be the unknown grave next to him. Tuco might have figured it out, but didn’t have to as it turned out.
Well, Tuco was the ‘ugly’ and didn’t deserve much respect from Blondie. And since Blondie knew that Tuco’s gun wasn’t loaded he knew that if Angel Eyes got the drop on him, Tuco was toast too so why bother.
I just checked on YouTube, from the moment Eastwood puts down the rock until the first shot is fired* is nearly four & a half minutes!* No dialog during that time whatsoever, just that haunting theme!
After AE tortured Tuco, Eastwood had to have known that Tuco would not be going for him, but for his torturer, as he in fact attempted to do. Might have been cooler if he depended on Tuco nailing AE, and got the drop on Tuco after AE buys it (but doesn’t shoot, and the mock hanging scene still plays out the same).
If I knew I’d loaded my gun last night, or this morning, or whenever, and I hadn’t fooled around with it since, I wouldn’t check it. I mean, I kept a loaded Makarov by my bed for a while as a home defense gun. I didn’t check the clip every time I heard something in the night.
And it’s a brilliant scene in a brilliant movie. And it has brilliant music that I’m trying very hard to learn on the piano.
Really? I check my sauer regularly [I don’t leave one in the tube, I keep the magazine out and sitting next to it and the spare in my drawer. I have to positively put the magazine in and rack it.] as it is my target shooter and gets used as such at least once a week in nice weather and once a month in the winter, which means it also gets cleaned frequently.
But I agree, who goes to a gun fight without checking their weapon? Adding more rounds to the little loops on the belt, maybe a quick swab out with a lubed patch. I could see not checking if you are just waylaid, but something that is more or less expected is odd.
The Makarov didn’t get out much. Even if it did, it wouldn’t get put away without a magazine in. I don’t think I kept one in the tube, though, so I’d have to rack it first and the difference in feel/sound would let me know immediately if someone had stolen my magazine.
I did the same thing once. It’s so well constructed and engrossing that I had no real good guess as to how much time was passing. Not many movies can do that.
Ah, but he did. He had the gun in his pocket, but with the lanyard looped around his neck. When the three of them are taking their positions, he pulls it out of the pocket so it will just hang against his hip; for a faster draw, presumably. He does it carefully and the look on his face is priceless; Angel Eyes is standing right there and it’s like Tuco is trying to look as sheepish and harmless as possible.
Thanks for bringing this flick back to life. I just watched it (thanks youtube!). Haven’t seen it since it first came out. It was great! Tuco was pretty resilient. I guess he made it out, eh?
Brilliant film, one of my absolute favourites and I can forgive it pretty much any discrepancies just because of how it looks, sounds and feels. So I’m not adding anything to the OP.
But just as an side, There is a chavvy, pointless, pneumatic celeb in the UK called “Katy Price”, you know the type. (Google her if you absolutely must) and I was rather tickled that her “reality” TV show included a sequence of her trawling for tasteless tat round an American mall whilst all the time “The ecstasy of gold” was playing in the background.
Thanks for all the replies to my OP, it’s great to read opinions on this great movie. Here in the UK I used to watch it avidly whenever it was on the TV in the 70s and 80s, I got it on DVD when it first came out and eventually got it on extended DVD in 2004.
I was amazed, not only were there the celebrated extended and new scenes, but I realised that the TV version I had been watching all those years had some pretty major cuts to remove violent scenes. It was amazing to see the whole thing at last. Amazing to think that a film I had watched so many times over many years still had new things to offer.
Of course my OP was a little tongue-in-cheek and I’m sorry for that but I just wanted to see what you thought about this incredible movie that has such a great score integrated with its perfect story and cinematography. At times I just feel so elated and then later anguished when watching it.
As a kid I loved it for the villains and the cowboys and the gun-play but every time I see it I get something more out of it, it’s without doubt my favourite film.
Right, I never understood the choices there, I see elements of all three in every character. Tuco isn’t “ugly” he’s no worse than Blondie, both going after personal gain.
Blondie saved many hanging victims I guess but only for money. Tuco was ruthless in the same way for his own ends.
Angel Eyes was ruthless and kind of evil so I guess he was definitely “bad” but “good” and “ugly” are 50-50 to me…
This is then the perfect time to ask this: did the original movie actually referred to Tuco as the “Bad” and Angel Eyes as the “Ugly”? Sources I have seen mention that the original trailer had them like that but it switched later to the way it is now.
In Italian the title was Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo, Brutto is translated as ugly, although I always remember that it refers mostly to a person that uses brutality to get what it wants, and to confuse the issue, Cattivo can also mean Brutto.
