i first saw 'the good, the bad, and the ugly' at the drive-in cinema as a kid. i've since seen it a hundred times or more and it gets better. i always want it to keep going. it sprawls over the screen, Sergio Leone aided by Ennio Morricones' music and Tonino Delli Collis' photography in what is a true collaboration. you can pause it anywhere and the composition is spot on, its like a million great paintings joined together and called 'film'.
tonally the light filters through a muted dusty palette - glints of colour here and there accentuate a bowl of beans, a shiny button, or a drop of blood. its protagonists are violent and uncomplicated - the tale is a simple and dense meditation on greed, luck and death. Eli Wallach as 'il cattivo' is mesmerising, and i challenge anyone to not call his performance one of the greatest ever on screen. the film is a masterpiece as enigmatic as the "Mona Lisa' or "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even".
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