The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Special Edition/Gold Edition (1966)

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General		Extras
Category	Western	Main Menu Audio & Animation Scene Selection Anim & Audio Audio Commentary-Richard Schickel (Genre Expert/ Historian/ Author) Featurette-Making Of-Leone's West Featurette-The Leone Style Featurette-Documentary - The Man Who Lost The Civil War Featurette-Restoring The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Featurette-The Socorro Sequence: A Reconstruction Unseen Footage-Extended Tuco Torture Scene Featurette-Il Maestro - Composer Ennio Morricone Featurette-Il Maestro: Part 2 - Composer Ennio Morricone Theatrical Trailer-French Gallery-Poster-8 Easter Egg-3
Rating
Year Of Production	1966
Running Time	171:21 (Case: 178)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (80:51) Dual Disc Set	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Sergio Leone
Studio Distributor	MGM	Starring	Clint Eastwood Lee Van Cleef Eli Wallach Aldo Giuffre Mario Brega Claudio Scarchilli John Bartha Livio Lorenzon Antonio Casale Sandro Scarchilli Benito Stefanelli Angelo Novi Antonio Casas
Case	Amaray-Transparent-S/C-Dual
RPI	$34.95	Music	Ennio Morricone

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired German for the Hearing Impaired French Dutch Swedish Finnish Norwegian Danish Portuguese Polish Greek Hebrew Turkish Czech Slovenian Croatian Romanian English Audio Commentary German Audio Commentary French Audio Commentary Dutch Audio Commentary	Smoking	Yes, frequent!
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    If you make a list of the most memorable and most influential Westerns of all time, then The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly must appear, and probably in the top ten.

    The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a classic Western. It has classic themes: greed and revenge. It has gunfights, it has grudges, it has hats and horses and heat. It even has some historical accuracy in its setting — there really was a General Sibley, and he really did bring the American Civil War across into Texas (there a documentary about this on the second disc). So it's amusing that this Western wasn't shot in the West — it was shot in Italy and Spain by an Italian director using Italian, German, and Spanish actors, with a trio of Americans brought across for the title roles.

    If you haven't seen this film before, an outline of the plot is in order. This is a story about three men, set against the backdrop of the American Civil War in Texas. One of the men, known as Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) is hired to dig up information about a missing chest of gold coins; he finds the information, then murders the source, because he decides to look for the gold for himself — he is The Bad. Another man, Tuco (Eli Wallach), has a price on his head, and bounty hunters after him — he is The Ugly. A third man, Blondie (Clint Eastwood), captures Tuco and brings him in for the bounty — he is The Good. This name seems rather ironic when you discover what he does when Tuco is set to hang. Through a sequence of events, Tuco and Blondie find themselves each in possession of half the information that leads to the chest of gold coins, and so they form a reluctant partnership to go find the gold. They are unaware that Angel Eyes is also after it. The journey to the gold is made more complicated by the war raging across the landscape. At one point Tuco and Blondie arrive at a bridge they should cross, only to discover Confederate forces heavily emplaced on one side, Union forces entrenched on the other, both sides determined to take the bridge intact, and neither side inclined to allow Tuco and Blondie to wander across it. Their solution to this problem is funny, but also a comment on war.

    Indeed, this entire film has a lot to say about war, and none of it is in favour. Watching the film this time brought home to me how anti-war this film is. This version, which reinstates some scenes that were removed before the film was shown in America, emphasises that aspect even more thoroughly.

    What's this about reinstated scenes? The film premiered in Rome in 1966 with a run-time of almost three hours. The American distributors thought this was too long, and demanded that it be shortened — not to censor it, just to reduce the run-time so they could get more sessions in the cinema and make more money from it. Leone was not impressed, but about quarter of an hour was snipped, yielding a run-time of about 162 minutes (apparently that was short enough to fit into the cinema schedules) — the film appeared in the US in 1968 in this shortened version. Note that these excisions were made before the film was translated into English — there was no translation for the deleted scenes (That's why the deleted scenes were only available in Italian on the previous DVD). In 2002, a complete restoration of the film was commissioned, and they decided to restore the missing scenes to the film. They even got Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach (now a few years older...) to dub their dialogue in the missing scenes; Lee Van Cleef having died, they found a voice actor to do his lines. So only now do we get the chance to see the film as it was originally intended. Well, almost — they could not resist the temptation to produce a 5.1 soundtrack, so the restored version has 5.1 sound in place of the original mono.

    I'm not generally a fan of long films, let alone a fan of making them longer, but I am definitely in favour of restoring the missing scenes to this movie — they enrich the anti-war theme, and it is easy to see why Leone included them in the first place. They also cover a couple of plot holes (most notably, (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) where did Tuco find henchmen?).

    The trilogy question: are A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, a trilogy? Marketing will have you believe that they are (but the same marketing folks had the English language trailer showing Lee Van Cleef as the Ugly and Eli Wallach as the Bad...); they also want you to believe that Clint Eastwood plays the same character in each film (this idea was apparently concocted after the films were released). Some people will have you believe that the cigars Clint smokes link the films together, and that Clint Eastwood swapping his coat for the trademark serape near the end of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is proof that this film is set earlier than A Fistful of Dollars. I don't agree. I think these are three films starring Clint Eastwood, directed by Sergio Leone, with music by Ennio Morricone, set in roughly the same time and place and with thematic similarities; that's all. If you like one, you'll probably like them all. As for the serape? I think that's a tip of the hat by the director to the success of the earlier films, just like the appearance of one of the earlier musical themes during the showdown scene. And the cigars? Well, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar...

    This film has been released on DVD before, some years back. It was a perfectly acceptable DVD for a film of its age, but nothing special. This time they did a lovely restoration job on this film — this version makes the film look far more recent. I'm definitely replacing my old copy with this new one.

Video

    This DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and is 16x9 enhanced. The original aspect ratio was 2.35:1, so that will do nicely, thank you. Note that this film was not shot in Cinemascope, but rather in Techniscope, and part of the restoration work involved finding a company who could handle the transfer from Techniscope to a more commonly used format.

    The picture is surprisingly sharp, especially on the frequent tight close-ups — you could frame them. Shadow detail is fairly good, perhaps a little limited when compared with a film made today, but good for a film of this era. Film grain can be noticed on long shots, and on the occasional darker shot, but it's generally very well controlled. There's no visible edge-enhancement. There is no low-level noise.

    Colour is well-rendered. A lot of the colours look dull and dusty, but that seems an accurate representation. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are no objectionable film artefacts — there are a few, such as a fairly small white spot at 49:12, but this is much cleaner than the previous version. Note that some of the things you might think are film artefacts aren't — there are things like bits of grass being blown past by the wind.

    There's minimal aliasing (horses, unlike cars, don't have grilles). There's no noticeable moire, and no other MPEG artefacts.

    For a film of this age, this is an excellent transfer.

    There are subtitles in 17 languages, including English for the Hearing Impaired. I watched the English, and they are rather good, well-timed to the dialogue, easy to read, and with relatively little abbreviation (these are mostly laconic men, so their monosyllabic sentences are easy to subtitle). There are subtitles for the commentary, too.

    The movie disc is single sided, dual layer, formatted RSDL. The layer change comes at a silent still moment at 80:51 — it's barely noticeable. The second disc is single sided, single layer.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    I learnt something new while watching the extras in this set. This film has no original language! Normally a film in made in one language, then possibly dubbed into another one, and oft-times purists will prefer to watch the film in its original language (with subtitles if they don't understand the language). In this film, because they expected to dub it into several languages, they allowed each actor to speak his (or her) own language. So Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach spoke English, but the Italian actors spoke Italian, and the Spanish actors Spanish. According to the actors, they would listen to the others speak, and start when they stopped, even though they didn't understand what the others were saying. Extraordinary! This made the job "interesting" for the writers of the dubbing script. They had to try to conjure up lines which made sense in English, but fitted the mouth movements of actors speaking Italian. Not overly different from the job of writers creating dub scripts for anime, but just that much more complex: you can imagine the poor writer: "OK, that line's in Italian, so it's four syllables, but the English equivalent is only three syllables, gotta stretch it; the next line is in Spanish, so it's six syllables, English equivalent 8 syllables, have to shorten it somehow; the line after is in English (yay!)". Even with such care, it is inevitable that we'll see some mismatch of dialogue and mouth (dubbing live action can almost never be perfect), no matter what language we choose.

    There are three soundtracks, in English, German, and French (no Italian, which is a shame) — I only listened to the English. It is Dolby Digital 5.1 at 448kbps. I also listened to the commentary, which is in English.

    The dialogue is clear enough, and fairly easy to understand, even with the various accents. As explained above, it doesn't matter which soundtrack you listen to, there will always be audio sync issues.

    Ennio Morricone made his name with this score. Its memorable theme, complete with that distinctive ululation, has been copied and referenced ever since. The unusual choice of instruments and the combining of electric guitar and choir are distinctive elements that he made work. Without this music, this film would be severely diminished, most particularly (but not only) the walk in the desert, the run through the cemetery, and the showdown.

    The centre channel gets a lot to do, which is not surprising for a soundtrack that was originally mono. The mains see occasional use — occasionally dialogue is routed to the left or right, but it sounds more than a little artificial when it happens (listen to 15:30, for example). The score is also distributed to the mains, and that sounds better. The surrounds get very occasional use for sound effects, but you won't miss anything much if you don't have surrounds. The subwoofer does get used for cannon fire, but that's about all. For a soundtrack of this age, the fidelity is reasonably good.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    There are transitions between menus, and the main menu is animated with music.

    Irritatingly, the menu on the Extras disc always returns to the top item on the menu after playing a piece, rather than highlighting the piece just played, or the next one.

    Disc One

Commentary: Richard Schickel — genre expert / film historian

    This is a good commentary, containing all manner of information about this film, and the spaghetti Western genre in general. Strongly recommended.

    Gotta say, though, that this can't be called a full-length commentary: he doesn't start talking until 1:12 in, and stops talking fully 0:37 before the end of the film! And he pauses every so often to draw breath, too. So this commentary is only 169:32 long...

    Disc Two

    Most of the extras on this disc are full-screen — in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, but the menu is still 16x9 enhanced.

Featurette: Leone's West (19:55)

    This is about Sergio Leone's Westerns. It's quite interesting. Interestingly, the photos of Leone are taken from A Fistful of Dynamite — I guess they didn't take photos of him during this film.

Featurette: The Leone Style (23:48)

    This concentrates on the style of Leone's Westerns, particularly talking about the intermixing of extreme close-ups and wide shots. This repeats quite a bit mentioned in the commentary, and contains more than a few spoilers — wait until after you've watched the movie.

Documentary: The Man Who Lost the Civil War (14:23)

    An interesting little documentary that explains the history that acts as a backdrop to this movie. It's good to learn that Leone was right: the Civil War did reach as far as Texas.

Featurette: Restoring The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (11:08)

    This is cool — it gives us an idea of the amount of work they went through to restore this picture.

Featurette: The Socorro Sequence: a reconstruction (3:01)

    This shows us what this sequence would have been like. It was not fully shot, so some of the reconstruction is storyboard images and stills.

Extended Scene: Extended Tuco Torture Scene (7:15)

    The negative for part of this scene was damaged and it was edited down after the Rome premiere. Recently a copy was uncovered, and that's what we have here — a copy of the scene that's slightly longer (it was regarded as not good enough quality to be restored into the film).

Featurette: Il Maestro (7:48)

    This is a short piece about Ennio Morricone's score, with Jon Burlingame.

Featurette: Il Maestro, Part 2 (12:25)

    A second piece about Morricone's music, also with Jon Burlingame. This one feels like a lecture piece, with Burlingame talking over a still image.

French Theatrical Trailer (3:30)

    This is interesting, because it was mentioned during some of the earlier featurettes that the French trailer used footage from the unfinished Socorro sequence, amongst others. It's not very well preserved.

Gallery: Posters (8)

    A short gallery of eight theatre posters in different languages.

Easter Egg 1: Clint Eastwood (0:44)

    This is a short piece from Clint Eastwood, on the process of shooting in Italy, and how lunch breaks differ. You get this Easter egg by (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) moving left from Leone's West on the first page of Extras to highlight a noose, and pressing Enter.

Easter Egg 2: Eli Wallach (0:09)

    This is a very short piece from Eli Wallach, on the subject of horses. You get this Easter egg by (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) moving right from Leone's West on the first page of Extras to highlight a noose, and pressing Enter.

Easter Egg 3: Eli Wallach (0:59)

    This is a short piece from Eli Wallach, on the subject of having his gun on a thong instead of in a holster. You get this Easter egg by (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) moving left or right from Extended Tuco Torture Scene on the second page of Extras to highlight a noose, and pressing Enter.

(Missing) English Theatrical Trailer

    No, there's no English-language trailer. Unlike the previous version, this one does not include the English-language trailer. And that's good, because the trailer included a huge mistake, labelling Eli Wallach's character (Tuco — the Ugly) as the Bad, and Lee Van Cleef's character (Angel Eyes — the Bad) as the Ugly.

    This new version was released in Region 1 quite recently. The R1 is essentially the same as the Region 4, except that the R1 includes the original Italian mono soundtrack, something that I feel is a serious omission from the Region 4 offering. I cannot comment on packaging differences, because I was only supplied with the DVDs, but if we get anything like the R1 package, we'll do very nicely.

    I'm sorely tempted to get the Region 1 for my own collection because of that original Italian mono soundtrack, but if you are going to watch the film in English, I think you'll be happy with either version.

    An impressively complete version of one of the classic Western films. Presented well on DVD.

    The video quality is impressively high for a film of this age. It has been restored very well.

    The audio quality is good, especially for a film with this history.

    The extras are extensive, detailed, and include almost everything you could ask for.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall