The Spaghetti Westerns really, really suck.

Cafe Society
1

I had the opportunity last weekend to watch For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. Take away my man card now, because I couldn’t handle them for more than ten minutes at a stretch. They sucked, despite the presence of Clint Eastwood my hero.

In no particular order:

[ul]
[li]The villains were universally poorly acted, and were one-dimensional cartoon characters.[/li]
[li]The sound effects were atrocious (yeah, I know they were made in the late 60s-early 70s);[/li]
[li]The plots jumped around so much that I couldn’t follow along at times;[/li]
[li]People don’t die instantly from a gunshot wound.[/li]
[li]Shooting from the hip is a waste of good ammo, second only to the the Hollywood machine gun technique of spray and pray.[/li][/ul]

Thank Og Clint is a much better actor than those wastes of film are worth.

2

Blasphemer! The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a great movie, and the last 20 minutes are a masterpiece of direction. The music when Tuco (Eli Wallach owns that role) is running through the cemetery (The Ecstasy of Gold, Ennio Morricone) is amazing. The way the final shootout is filmed (long shots, to medium, to close-ups, all framed the same (cropping this movie is a crime), different holsters so you can tell the characters apart even when you can only see their hands) is brilliant. The surprise when Blondie knows something that we don’t.

If I ever have to show someone how a director’s touch can tell a story, that’s the movie I’ll use.

3

I think you might’ve been watching them in the wrong frame of mind. I realize that that’s dangerously close to saying “You just don’t get it, man,” but I really do think it’s true in this context.

In my opinion, Morricone wasn’t trying to make gritty or realistic Westerns; he was setting out to make myths. Or, at the very least, sweeping epics that in many ways defined what an American myth would look like. So, you have one-dimensional bad guys, and good guys who can instantly kill with their bullets. You’ve got sweeping, unreal-looking landscapes, and sprawling plots encompassing all sorts of ideas. You have experiences that really don’t have any grounding in anything rational, but encompass in many ways the mythic view of the West that’s ingrained in all our heads.

(You also have crappy sound effects and occasionally shoddy dubbing, but that may not actively play into the whole “myth” thing as much. Were you watching the Criterion versions? They did a great job of restoring them.)

Basically, you’re seeing a different animal than a 3:10 to Yuma or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. You’re seeing a mythical epic inspired by samurai films, which were themselves inspired by a lot of kabuki tropes (and, oddly enough, early westerns). It’s like a big cinematic high-art circle jerk. If that’s not your cup of tea, well, that’s the way it goes. But accomplishing what they set out to do doesn’t make those movies suck.

(Granted, I’m not in any way a film expert, so this could just be talking out of my ass. But man I love those movies.)

4

Then you probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the suck that is Once upon a Time in the West.

5

A good summation. Maybe you SHOULD quit your day job.

6

Amen to that brother. I watched this movie once in pan-and-scan. Never again!

7

[quote=“VunderBob, post:1, topic:484715”]

I had the opportunity last weekend to watch For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. Take away my man card now, because I couldn’t handle them for more than ten minutes at a stretch. They sucked, despite the presence of Clint Eastwood my hero.

In no particular order:

[li]The villains were universally poorly acted, and were one-dimensional cartoon characters.[/li][/quote]

Mr. Van Cleef is not a poor actor. And the wonderful thing about The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly is that Angel Eyes is really, really bad ass, but Blondie and Tucco really aren’t that much better on the moral scale.

[quote]

[li]The sound effects were atrocious (yeah, I know they were made in the late 60s-early 70s);[/li][/quote]

I thought the sound effects were pretty effective. I like the way Morricone was able to work with what he had. It’s not like he was churning these out in a Hollywood studio.

Do you think you might have had an easier time with it if you had watched it in one sitting? Morricone wrote surprisingly complicated films, story wise. He expected the audience to follow along and not zone out, even when long stretches of the film are in silence, or the actors speak rapidly. In fact, he makes amazing use of silence, using pure visuals to get across what’s happening. Of course, it’s tempting to let your mind wander when there’s nobody talking, but that’s not the film’s problem.

Dude, they’re not documentaries. Shooting from the hip looks cool. And movies take shortcuts and use shorthand all the time.

I would suggestion you try Once Upon a Time in the West or The Great Silence, but I don’t think you’d make it through them. That doesn’t make them bad films. It just makes them stories.

8

Hah! Thanks, but maybe not, considering that upon closer inspection, I credited the composer for the movies (Morricone) as the director (Leone). Galdurned I-talians, always mixing me up.

9

People can certainly die from a single bullet; like restaurants, it’s location, location, location.

And hip shooting is an art, that requires a good degree of native talent and considerable practice.

10

Heh, oops. I just went with what you wrote instead of taking the time to look it up, too. Oh well. Morricone wrote great scores. Did anybody else notice that when he was honored at the Oscars a few years ago, they didn’t even mention Once Upon The Time in the West? I thought that was weird.

11

Ooh, sad to hear that. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is my all time favorite film. The characterization, the epic scope, the sexy cinematography (Delli Colli, my favorite DP), the cool baritone guitar. Wallach steals the show. That graveyard scene as he runs circles searching for the grave! The genius of Sergio Leone.

It’s hard for some to get past the overdubbing of the Italian actors but there is a whole lot going on there.

And Once Upon a Time in the West comes pretty close to the grandeur of The Good , the Bad…

12

Then whatever you do don’t check out They Call Me Trinity. You’ll be throwing stuff at your TV.

13

Or My Name is Nobody.

14

Next thing you’re going to tell me is that people don’t talk the way Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams and David Mamet talk!

They are verbal stylists. Leone is a visual and temporal stylist. The pauses, the spaces, the music, the landscapes, the pacing, the framing, the action–They’re all handled masterfully. If you want to see a documentary on the old west, definitely go elsewhere.

15

The sound effect used for pistol fire definately sounds different than in an American made western to me.

Was this merely what the Italian (or Spanish?) used for their films, or was this sound unique to the Leone stuff?

16

Or Django.

17

May god have mercy upon your soul. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is one of the best movies ever made, and I say that as a person who has spent the last 10+ years seeking out and watching “good” movies. I admit that the middle drags a bit, but how you can not be intrigued by the beginning and absolutely captivated by the end, I’ll never know. The last ~30 minutes of that movie absolutely hypnotizes me.

18

That’s my favorite Spaghetti Western of them all. I revel in it’s badness.

19

I first began to love TGBU when I realized that it’s really an extremely straight-faced comedy. :slight_smile:

20

I know “you don’t get it” is verboten around here, but the OP so clearly made absolutely no effort to understand what makes these movies what they are, that I’m gonna go ahead and play that card. Point being, lots of filmmakers have artistic goals that are completely perpendicular to the unexamined expectations of the OP, and unless you make an effort to understand the discrepancy between your expectations and the artwork that’s in front of you, then you will always be disappointed.