Tag: Lee Van Cleef

“Every gun makes its own tune.”

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY  screens at The St. Louis Public Library Central Branch (1301 Olive Street St. Louis) Saturday, August 6th at 1pm. This is a FREE event. 

There’s a new film series in town! To celebrate the Summer Reading Program theme, “Worlds of Wonder,” Central Cinema at the St. Louis Library will be screening some of the most unique and fantastical films ever shown on the big screen. This weekend is Sergio Leone’s 1966 epic THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY.

In 1964, Clint Eastwood accepted the lead role in a Western being filmed in Spain titled “The Magnificent Stranger.” The part had been offered to many of Hollywood’s most rugged actors, including Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn, and Charles Bronson. Eastwood, on break from his TV series RAWHIDE and looking for a film project, immediately recognized the story as a remake of Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO. When the movie was finally released in the US, the title had changed to A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, and both a star and a new genre, the “spaghetti Western,” were born. The “Man With No Name” series of Westerns directed by Sergio Leone and starring Eastwood came to a spectacular conclusion with THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY. Set amid the turmoil of the Civil War, the story follows three men (hence the title) on a quest for gold treasure. Leone directs with his usual dramatic flair, filling the screen with landscapes, gunfights, closeups of dangerous men, treks through the desert, prison camps, Civil War battles, and an incredibly suspenseful and satisfying conclusion. With cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli, who would later shoot films for some of Europe’s greatest directors (Louis Malle, Roman Polanski, Lina Wertmuller, etc.) and composer Ennio Morricone (who topped his previous two No Name Westerns with one of the great film scores of all time here), Leone created what some critics regard as his masterpiece. Yes, even better than ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. Eastwood’s “No Name” character fills the good role of the title, while great character actors Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach are the bad and the ugly. Van Cleef, the co-hero of Leone’s and Eastwood’s previous Western FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, here perfectly personifies evil. Ruthless and calculating, with his “devil eyes,” Van Cleef is a great screen villain. Wallach gives the performance of his career as Tuco, the ugly. Whether he’s faced with death on the hangman’s noose, or confronting his Catholic heritage, or trying to revive his “friend,” the marvelous Wallach always makes Tuco sympathetic and likable—so much so that you’re alarmed when Eastwood’s character is mean to him. Eastwood has joked that the small cigarillos he had to smoke kept him in character as The Man With No Name because (a) he’s a non-smoker, and (b) they tasted really, really bad. In his final Leone Western, Eastwood shows the same laconic squint that made him so famous. But he also shows a bit of the same compassion we only glimpsed in the previous No Name Westerns, here in his relationship with Tuco, and in smaller moments, such as witnessing the carnage left after warfare. In its final images of Eastwood riding off into the sunset, rich and invincible, THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY capped an incredible trilogy in the annals of film mythology and you can see it when it screens this Sunday, August 6^th at The St. Louis Library (1301 Olive Street St. Louis, Missouri 63103).

Here’s the line-up for the rest of the summer. All films are screened Saturdays at 1pm and all are FREE

August 13: Taxi Driver, R, 113 mins., Columbia Pictures

August 27: Blue Velvet, PG-13, 120 mins., De Laurentiis