Influential Classic Now Restored and on BluRay: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The American Western is no longer the staple of Hollywood cinema that it once was, but it had a huge impact on international filmmakers whose re-imagining of them have become major influences upon today’s directors, notably Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, among others. One of the most influential filmmakers of the past half-century is Italian director Sergio Leone, who almost single-handedly changed the cinema’s approach to making westerns with his “Dollars” trilogy in the mid-1960s. Ennio Morricone’s memorable music changed the scoring of westerns forever, and even became a pop hit on record charts.

The third and perhaps most popular of Leone’s key films, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” premiered in Italy at about three hours in 1966, but was cut by close to half an hour before its original American release the following year. An earlier DVD of the 161-minute longest U.S. version (there was also one at 148 minutes) included 14 minutes of deleted scenes copied from an Italian print as bonus features, since there had never been an English-language soundtrack made for them.

In 2002-03, MGM/UA restored all the missing scenes that could be located from the original negatives, got back Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach to dub in their dialogue, and remixed the audio elements to create a 5.1 stereo soundtrack befitting the film’s epic scope.

The restored 179-minute version of “Il Buono, il Brutto, e il Cattivo” (“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”) is scheduled to be the closing-night feature at “Il Cinema Ritrovato” (“The Rediscovered Cinema”) film festival in Bologna, Italy this fourth of July. However, American movie fans can now see this complete version on an impressive new Blu-Ray disc released last month.

A simple story of three men struggling to find a cache of hidden gold became, in Leone’s hands, an epic and timeless tale of greed and man’s inhumanity to man. For the masses, he blended grand, action-oriented melodrama with dark comedy, yet dealt with anti-heroes and incorporated a fair amount of ambiguity, which had become more popular in European films. Although its three main characters are merely fortune-hunters, Leone used the American Civil War as a major plot element and political statement on war in general.

When the film first came out it was a hit with audiences, but critics and many viewers found it disturbingly violent compared to Hollywood films of the time, and especially to what they expected from traditional westerns. Today its violence appears relatively moderate, and what stand out are Leone’s carefully composed widescreen images, many inspired by noted artists or Civil War photographs of Matthew Brady, as well as his trademark style of long takes and contrasting extreme close-ups with extreme long shots.

The old DVD of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” looked pretty good, especially all the close-ups, but the Blu-Ray (as one should expect) is substantially sharper, getting as much picture information as possible from the original Techniscope negatives. It’s sharp enough that a number of slightly out-of-focus close-ups are now more obvious than they had been on the standard definition DVD. Overall the picture is quite good, with the film grain preserved intact and occasional but minor film wear visible. Leone’s numerous panoramic extreme long shots benefit the most from the high definition transfer.

The old DVD had only mono soundtracks in English, French, and Spanish. On the Blu-Ray, the original 1960s mono soundtrack is included for purists, in its English version and Italian version. The remixed 5.1-channel stereo track sounds quite good, without the range of a new film but with a substantial amount of dialogue nicely directionalized across the screen, plus a few slightly enhanced sound effects to fill out the bass and surrounds, with music ambience also coming through the surrounds. The English stereo track is a 5.1 “DTS-HD Master Audio” recording, the German 5.1 track is regular DTS, while the Spanish, French, and Portuguese tracks are all 5.1 Dolby Digital.

Even though the box cover says the film runs 161 minutes, it’s really 178 minutes. Since the deleted scenes have been put back with new English soundtracks, there’s no need for them as bonus items except in one case where the original negative had been too badly damaged to include every shot. The torturing of Tuco in the prison is in the restored print, but a slightly longer version copied from a rare surviving Italian release print is included for comparison. There’s also a lost scene reconstructed from stills and brief trailer clips.

Several other bonus items (unfortunately all standard-definition), include three interesting featurettes on the film itself, one on its restoration, another on the actual Civil War general and battle referred to in the story, plus an audio essay about the composer and his score, the original American trailer, and the original French trailer. Two audio commentaries repeat some of the same information but elaborate and expand upon much more. The commentary by historian Christopher Frayling is the most interesting and informative, but the one by film critic Richard Schickel is also worth listening to.

While “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” is not quite the masterpiece that Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West” and “Once Upon a Time in America” are, it’s far more influential and the Blu-Ray makes a valuable addition to any film buff’s library.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY – Blu Ray at a Glance:

Movie: A-

Video: A-

Audio: A-

Extras: A-