Since his 1992 breakout thriller Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino has established himself as one of the most iconic and successful directors in Hollywood history through films like Pulp Fiction. Never one to keep his opinions about cinema to himself, he has praised fellow directors he admires, including a man who almost single-handedly reshaped the Western genre.
Of all the genres in cinema, Tarantino has been most clearly influenced by action, thriller, and Western, with the latter even influencing sequences from his action and war movies. Where many directors often shy away from acknowledging their influences, avoiding having their work compared unfavorably, Tarantino is all too happy to discuss where his style comes from. Ranging from the “hangout” tone of Howard Hawks’ Western Rio Bravo to the style of Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry, it’s hard to tire of him praising cinema at its best. One film that he, along with countless other directors, has praised is the movie that completely changed cinema for decades to come.
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Quentin Tarantino Has A Passion For Westerns
The ’60s Were Full Of Influential Westerns
Image via Armada Productions
Since making a name for himself as a leading director, Tarantino hasn’t been shy about his views on cinema, whether good or bad. In particular, his passion for Spaghetti Westerns has influenced his career, with him pointing to the likes of Django and Rio Bravo as inspirations. His love for the genre is so strong that he didn’t just make two modern-day revisionist masterpieces; he even used it as a plot point in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, is planning a Bounty Law spin-off miniseries, and wrote a Django/Zorro comic book with artist Matt Wagner.
In Django Unchained, Tarantino crafted a film that effectively served as a love letter to the Spaghetti Westerns of the ’60s, playing on Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 icon, Django. A movie that speaks to the violent nature of the Pulp Fiction director’s style, it was controversial at the time of release, but has aged like fine wine in the genre. He followed its success with 2015’s The Hateful Eight, whose characters he crafted as an ode to the mysterious guest stars of old TV Westerns. He blended that premise with the shut-in paranoia of John Carpenter’s The Thing, another movie he’s praised over the years. In effect, Tarantino’s career has been a blend of personal style and homage to his favorite films, with a 1966 Western sitting at the top.
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While his fondness for films by directors like John Ford, Don Siegel, and Corbucci is all clear, there are few directors he reveres quite as much as he does Sergio Leone. An Italian director who tackled everything from drama to gangster movies, Leone helped redefine the film industry as audiences know it today. That began when he released his 1964 Spaghetti Western movie A Fistful of Dollars, which cast Clint Eastwood in the defining role of his career, The Man With No Name. After he improved his style through 1965’s For A Few Dollars More, his status as a master of cinema was truly cemented in his 1966 epic: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, Explained
Now Streaming On Prime Video, YouTubeTV, and The Roku Channel
Dollars Trilogy Movies
IMDB Rating
Streaming
A Fistful of Dollars
7.9/10
Prime Video, YouTubeTV, and The Roku Channel
For A Few Dollars More
8.2/10
Prime Video, YouTubeTV, The Roku Channel, and Kanopy
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
8.8/10
Prime Video, YouTubeTV, and The Roku Channel
In 1964, Sergio Leone entered the Western genre with A Fistful of Dollars, which cast Clint Eastwood as a mysterious drifter nicknamed Joe. Recognized by his now iconic poncho, he rides into a small town and plays two rival families against each other. A clear copy of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, the film helped lead the way for a new type of gunslinger story: the Spaghetti Western. What followed was a wave of similar European-produced revisionist movies, from Death Rides a Horse and The Mercenary to Django and Leone’s next Dollars Trilogy film, For A Few Dollars More. In 1966, the director claimed his place as king of the then-modern Western genre through the success of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the third outing of Eastwood’s Man With No Name, here with the nickname of Blondie, given to him by his partner, Tuco. Together, they scam small towns, claiming the reward on Tuco’s head and, at the last minute before his hanging, shooting the rope and freeing him. However, when Blondie decides the odds of his bounty going up are slim, he decides to end their partnership, leaving him to die in the desert. At the same time, the audience is introduced to Angel Eyes, a feared mercenary hired to search for a Confederate soldier named Jackson, as he interrogates a man named Stevens. With Jackson known to have buried a stash of Confederate gold, he learns from Stevens that his target now goes by the name Bill Carson. With enough clues to pursue the treasure for himself, Angel Eyes guns down Stevens and his son and later murders his employer.
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When Tuco and his old gang ambush Blondie, the latter manages to gun down everyone but his old partner, who gets the drop on him during his escape. With a gun at his back, the bounty hunter marches out into the desert until, nearing exhaustion, they find a Confederate wagon, a dying Carson inside. After learning the name of the cemetery with the gold, Tuco rushes to bring a dehydrated Carson some water, only to find him dead when he returns, though not before he could tell Blondie the name of the grave. Reforming their tentative partnership, Tuco and Blondie make their way through the front lines of the Civil War, encountering Angel Eyes along the way. When the story reaches its climax, the audience is treated to one of the greatest standoffs in cinematic history.
Why Leone’s Western Is Among Tarantino’s Favorites
It’s A Masterclass In Genre-Driven Filmmaking
Throughout his career, Tarantino has expressed his belief that films work best when they put their genre first, something Leone certainly believed in his Westerns. His films aren’t meant to truly reflect how the Old West was, but rather speak to the mythology surrounding it that so many moviegoers believed at the time. In a sense, his films have an almost fairytale quality about them, using characters that are almost too perfect a representation of their archetypes. This is as true of dastardly mercenaries like Once Upon A Time In the West’s Frank as it is of flawless and honorable gunslingers like Harmonica. When it comes to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Blondie, Angel Eyes, and Tuco perfectly speak to an almost comic book-level vision of the characters of the West. As both writer and director, all the themes, visuals, character development, and tone of the film are almost entirely the vision of Leone, something also true of Tarantino’s films.
In Tarantino’s eyes, the Dollars Trilogy was the bridge between “Old Hollywood” and modern cinema, beginning with Leone’s use of dynamic, bright, and exciting opening credits sequences. It should come as no surprise that he regards the entire trilogy as perfect, labeling it “the greatest achievement in the history of cinema.” Throughout his films, fans can see the influence of these stories in full swing, most notably how Hans Landa’s introduction in Inglourious Basterds is a direct homage to Angel Eyes’ entrance in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Both Landa and Lee Van Cleef’s Angel Eyes are brilliant detectives who, as products of their time and place, channeled their intelligence and skills of deduction for self-gain and evil deeds. These villains aren’t the one-dimensional characters audiences are used to in their genres, rather men who stand out as the most formidable foes imaginable.
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Leone’s direction of the film isn’t merely one of great action sequences and suspense. From the introduction of Angel Eyes, the director uses his signature use of longer, quieter scenes to build tension between people, allowing the audience to get organic exposition while understanding the characters. In just two scenes, they know everything they need to about Lee Van Cleef’s villain; he’s a cold-blooded detective who adjusts his broken moral code to his own benefit. The same can be said of Tuco; in just a handful of scenes, he’s defined as a survivor in the truest sense, a man who, despite being a tough gunslinger, knows how to walk away from unwinnable situations alive. It’s in scenes like the Battle of Branston Bridge and the final standoff, however, where Leone’s talents as a filmmaker truly shine through. His West is one far more epic, honorable, and almost romantic in a sense than other revisionist pieces, and exists in its own world away from the rest of America.
Why The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Is Still An Icon
Multiple Scenes Are Masterpieces
Property of United Artists
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly grossed $38.9 million against a $1.2 million budget.
Quentin Tarantino is far from the only admirer of Sergio Leone or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. In the aptly-named documentary Sergio Leone: The Italian Who Invented America, everyone from Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg to comic book legend Frank Miller praised the style of the film and the director. It would also be impossible to praise the director or film without mentioning the work of Ennio Morricone, who elevated a great story into a truly exceptional piece of art. Thanks to Leone, Eastwood, and Morricone, the audience was given a new type of Western, one so fantastic that even people who hate the genre never deny just how great a movie it is. As much as people like to credit Steven Spielberg’s Jaws with creating the modern blockbuster, the environment for making such films might not have existed without this epic.
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Every prominent director brings something unique to the film industry, whether it’s their distinct visuals, the intensity of their stories, or their influence on a genre. For Quentin Tarantino, that was the way he reshaped the crime genre throughout the 1990s, with Pulp Fiction paving the way for fledgling directors to bring their own voice to film. For Sergio Leone, it was the reshaping of the entire Western genre and modern blockbuster cinema itself through the masterpiece that is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Release Date
December 29, 1967
Runtime
161 minutes