The Good, the Bad and the Ugly / Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (Sergio Leone, 1966)

Everything connected with the war could have been replaced with something similar. Without too much problems, even the prison camp could have become a normal chain gang prison. It’s not difficult for me to imagine such ideas.
So it could still have become a 3 hour film, by just changing the background.

Couldn’t that be said about almost every film though? Most stories can be transplanted in a different environment with different themes. With that reasoning a war film like Kelly’s Heroes is a western as well.

The usual SW is in several aspects different from most US westerns, but still Spags are far away from being an opposite. They are not even anti-westerns, they are basically another possibility for the genre to generate a fresh view on form and/or content.

Can you give some examples of what 40s/50s american westerns and SWs have in common besides surface level elements of the aesthetic and world?

I have no idea why the style of GBU should be not that of a SW when every single shot is directed like a typical one. Even more, the film’s style is that of the archetypical Spag in perfection. The Mercenary is of a similar virtuosity in western directing.

I already said why I don’t think it’s directed like a typical one. It’s irrefutably more of an offshoot, like the Zapata western… and a typical Zapata western is a mix between a western and a war film (with the only exception being ABFTG which is more espionage as I already said).

Gratifying war set pieces are an expectation when watching a Zapata western. The Mercenary is what created that expectation, surely that makes them war films to an extent.

And what a western is and what not, for that many definitions exist, some are broad, some are close, it’s just another matter of opinions.

Agreed. Which is why I don’t think arguments about semantics are worthwhile.

Kellys Heroes is obviously GBU in a WW2 setting.

The Zapata SWs take place in the 1910s so you could argue they are not quite westerns.

But GBU take place in the “correct” time setting and use the civil war just as a background that the main characters move in and out from.

So of course GBU is a western.

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Yeah, which proves my point.

But GBU take place in the “correct” time setting and use the civil war just as a background that the main characters move in and out from.

It doesn’t use war as a background though. So many scenes depend on the war. It even has war set pieces, albeit not the focus… but war as a theme and aesthetic are a focus. Definitely not just background. War as a background would be like Vengeance is Mine (1967), where the war is present but unimportant. In GBU it is important.

The Zapata SWs take place in the 1910s so you could argue they are not quite westerns.

I don’t think time periods near the death of the west are “incorrect”. OUATITW is set during that period. It’s still set in the wild west, albeit near the end. It’s still a western. Anything after the death of the west (Late 1910s/1920s onwards) is the cutoff point imo, such as Bonnie and Clyde.

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The characters in Kellys Heroes are soldiers in the army from start to finish. That is not the case in GBU.

But KH wouldn’t have been made if it wasn’t for GBU.

A lot, actually! You should watch more of them. Try the B-westerns

I watched basically all the big ones, perfect for a weekday night cos they help me sleep haha… and I find them to be completely different beyond some surface level elements… any suggestions for b-westerns?

Yes, that could be said.

If a film is set in the American west in the 2nd half of the 19th century with guns, hats and horses, then it most likely is a western. If the same story is set elsewhere it most likely belongs to another genre.
Inside these patterns a western can be filled with anything you want, and it is still a western.

This is now a simplified view, but a few exceptions don’t change the big picture.

So Mag 7 and FoD are westerns, and 7 Samurai and Yojimbo and Last Man Standing are not. And Dashiell Hammetts Red Harvest is a crime novel.
And Kelly’s Heroes is definitely a war film, but one with an obvious SW influence.

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If a film set in the civil war is a war film (like Glory) or a western (Springfiled Rifle, Major Dundee, GBU) or something else can be discussed.
Gone with the Wind is not a western for a single second (but on a first view has all the patterns), and despite having war film elements, and is just like GBU only set against a war background, GwtW is in fact neither but it is a pure melodrama.

Of the mentioned films it is Major Dundee which is at first a western, but unlike GBU could also be viewed as part of the war genre. Same for other westerns about Cavalry/Indian wars.

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And for me the similarities are much stronger than the differences.
The SW is a development of thematic, visual and narrative structures established in older westerns. The US westerns of the 60 and 70 are also such a development, but with different results, with a different orientation.

The surface is that what the SW directors liked and took and then made something of their own with it.
Btw 40/50s westerns can also be already very diverse. Rio Bravo is as far away from The Ox Bow Incident or Devil’s Doorway as it is from Django or El puro or The Wild Bunch or Little Big Man.

For me the fascination of the western as a genre is, that it can in its best films be very diverse, and still they all belong to that one genre.

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I don’t agree. There are some surface level similarities like the fact they both prominently feature revolvers and wooden towns set in desert environments… but not much beyond that… the storytelling, the action, the characters, the themes and ideologies, the pacing etc. are completely different. American Westerns also depict the west as a place that is worth saving, with themes of moral responsibility, honor, law and order etc. Italian Westerns depict the west as a place that is inherently and hopelessly corrupt and not worth saving, where the best thing you can do is to look out for your own interests. Completely different worlds, even if they both feature sheriffs and outlaws. There may be more similarities between some specific films but you have to generalize at some point. The italian western is obviously heavily inspired by the American western, but they couldn’t be more dissimilar. All similarities are very surface level. It’s with the 70s american westerns when they started to take elements from both genres.

You’re missing my point. My intention is not to argue about semantics (i.e. the meaning of “western”) as I already said but simply to say that GBU is stylistically very different from FFDM and other spaghettis, being more similar to a Zapata western.

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Sorry if this has been discussed before, but are the extended Tuco torture and desert walking scenes included in the longer cut or just extras?

Only extras, if you man with “longer cut” that what was released on DVD or Blu.

The original uncut theatrical version with 178 min only exists in 35 mm copies. Probably, not sure about VHS releases of the 80s, but I think these also contain only cut versions.

Interesting. The original Italian theatrical version was 178 mins and the current Italian version on Blu-ray and UHD is 175 min, so even they did not manage to restore these scenes. The print damage must have been too bad.

35 mm IB prints are available, if they wanted to restore the original theatrical version, they could. But it seems they are not really interested.
Apart from that the modern possibilities of digital restoration should allow them to find a solution.

Actually I think the torture scene is too long in the uncut version, so far I prefer the shorter one.

More important is to get rid of the grotto scene, that one should be out. So far at least the Italian discs still don’t have it.

I think the Leones are doing a horrible job at preserving their dad’s legacy in this regard. It should all be restored and preserved anyway, even without getting into possibly revisionist debates about the best possible versions. The technology is there to let the viewer choose a cut from the menu… so it’s really just laziness on their end I think, it’s cheaper to re-issue the same shit over and over again

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Apparently, the grotto scene was in the film’s Rome premiere, but cut from the subsequent general release.

I would be interested to know what materials the Italian Blu-ray and UHD used for their restorations, and the rationale for their editing choices. They did not restore the full torture and desert walking scenes.

I think we can conclude that the current Italian version on Blu-ray and UHD is every bit as revisionist as the US MGM extended Blu-ray with the grotto scene.

Not sure if this is really true, there is no real evidence for that.
The premiere was one day before the nationwide release. At that time the copies must have been already in the theatres, and it is unlikely that they could have cut that scene out so quickly.

It’s just the version they have in their archive, and that’s not the original camera negative. It seems later cuts were done to the original negative, and not all were properly restored.
And even if there is now enough evidence how the original version was, they never really tried to recreate it.

Same for OuTW which was never released on DVD or Blu in its original theatrical version.

Like Seb said, today it would not be a problem to make a Blu which allows by seamless branching to release multiple versions on one disc.
And actually the versions would not be too different, we are not talking about real damages to the film’s integrity.

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From what I have read on Blu-ray.com, the Italian UHD used the same master as the MGM extended Blu-ray, but back-pedalled on the piss yellow tint! I think the definitive version, for English speaking audiences at least, is the Kino UHD, which made a real effort to recreate the US theatrical release and its colour scheme.

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The Good, The Bad and The Ugly 4K - down to 20 bucks!
Buy here (SWDb link): Amazon.com