Sergio Leone’s 1966 classic, released uncut into theatres for the first time this fortnight, is spirited along by the same gaudy, peculiarly Catholic mysticism that defines bullfighting and ornate chapels. It is at once an act of worship, an act of sabotage and an act of salesmanship.
Watch it a million times and its effects are undiminished. There remains a strange otherworldliness about this all-out assault on the senses, a feeling that we are not really in the west anymore. This sensation is reinforced by the triumvirate of titular supermen who make up the prolonged Mexican standoff at the heart of the film. The Good, or what passes for it at the brutal tail end of the American civil war, is Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name. Blondie, as he is known for functional purposes, is, as the action commences, in cahoots with Sergio Leone’s onscreen alter ego Tuco (Eli Wallach), a bandit who never loses his creator’s sympathy or the twinkle in his eye despite a criminal past that includes murder, arson and the rape “of a virgin of the white race.”
In keeping with this moral equivalency, The Bad, Lee Van Cleef’s Angel Eyes, is really very bad indeed. A crooked Union sergeant whose conduct during war might even make Guantanamo’s finest blush, he hunts down the other principals in his quest to find an ill-gotten treasure.
Once this plot device is set in motion, none of the actions onscreen seem to conform to the physical laws of the universe. Night rarely falls. And the narrative never develops organically where deus ex machina might suffice. Bombings, explosives, trains and rivals always appear at precisely the right time. Moreover, none of these men appear to be mortal. Blondie is cooked alive in the desert. Tuco thrusts his hand into a boiling pot of potatoes without even wincing. “I’m alive you bastards,” exclaims Tuco later, “and I always will be.” We are never given any cause to doubt it.
The greatest pleasure though, comes from the lively, near S&M interplay between Messrs. Eastwood and Wallach. Blondie’s humanity is highlighted on several occasions – playing with a kitten in a hat or lamenting the waste of life – but never more poignantly than during the scene when Tuco is boasting about his close relationship with his brother. “Sure”, says Blondie, sympathetically passing a cigar to his on-again, off-again partner. He knows, as we do, that Tuco is affecting the bravest of faces.
The stunning, psychedelic finale at the graveyard, only confirms what we’ve suspected all along; that Tuco and Blondie will be locked in this eternal, quasi-romantic struggle long after the final credits roll.