Inspired by an old Roman song about a cardinal who did bad things well and good things badly, Leone’s cynical epic interweaves historical events – the American Civil War, refracted through twentieth century wars – with the picaresque adventures of ‘good’ Clint Eastwood, ‘bad’ Lee Van Cleef and ‘ugly’ Eli Wallach, whose carnivalesque performance dominates the show.

Leone had made use of bizarre anecdotes about the Wild West in his previous films. But this time, his perverse version of American history would colour the entire story. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly may all be self-serving bums, but the Civil War through which they ride is an inferno of needless destruction and cruelty. And if the film would question and make arbitrary each of these labels, it would at the same time question the received, popular version of historical events. Leone, who had started in the business with the mythologies of Roman baths, now found himself grappling with the Mythologies of Roland Barthes: As always I took conventional cinema as a base.

Then I set about demolishing the codes in order to play with appearances, while presenting a ‘comedy of murders’ to sweep up all the untruths attached to the historical context. Alberto Moravia reckoned that the Italianisation of the Western is complete.

Italy/U.S.A., 1966.
Colour.
Techniscope.
180 mins.