Sunday
15Mar2009
'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly' Comes to Blu-Ray
Sunday, March 15, 2009 at 5:30PM
Last night, I was thisclose to picking up A Fistful of Dollars and
For a Few Dollars
More on one of those bargain two-movie DVD things. I didn't, even though it's a
bargain, because they really deserve a big, splashy DVD re-release. Plus I already have Fistful. But I
wondered about these Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood classics being released on
Blu-ray, and what do you know...
Audio commentary from Film Historian Richard SchickelIf you're starting your Blu-ray collection, it's always a good idea to go with the classics first. And it doesn't get much more classic than this. Pick it on May 12th.
Audio commentary from Christopher Frayling
Leone's West
The Leone Style
The Man Who Lost the Civil War
Reconstructing The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
IL Maestro: Ennio Morricone and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (Two Parts)
Easter Egg #1 Uno, Due, Tre
Easter Egg #2 Italian Lunch
Eater Egg #3 New York Actor
Easter Egg #4 Gun in Holster
Colin Boyd | Permalink | in Blu-Ray, Classics, Clint Eastwood, DVD, Westerns | Print Article | Email Article | 5 Comments | Share Article
Reader Comments (5)
Besides McCabe & Mrs. Miller, this is the best western ever made, unless treasure of the sierra madre counts as a western
Well...The Searchers...
Oh, come on, The Searchers is one of the most over-rated films of all time. Because that character is a racist, he is considered an anti-hero. I feel like it was a gimmick to make the film more interesting, or john wayne. I love grapes of wrath and the man who shot liberty valance, but The Searchers doesn't show John Ford's greatness even a little
You're underestimating how pivotal a moment in western cinema that movie is. He's not an anti-hero because he's racist, he's an anti-hero because he's not purely heroic or even motivated by good. Sure, he's passionately racist - no question - but it's not like Ethan Edwards is otherwise a boy scout. And there weren't a lot of western protagonists before 1956 that showed any hint of having a complicated morality.
The Searchers is also one of the first major films of any kind to take a critical view of the treatment of Native Americans by white settlers and the U.S. government. You could argue that maybe Ford had trouble staying on point in his societal critique, but I don't think being subtle would've worked. Not fifty years ago.
But it's by no means overrated; on the contrary, it's one of the defining moments of the genre, in large part because the western turned with Ethan Edwards, a character that opened the door for almost all of Eastwood's portrayals that followed. He ended the "guy in the white hat" era. The film also allowed the westerns that followed to explore more thematically than they ever had before.
It is also perhaps the most influential western to come before Leone, with obvious tips of the hat in Lawrence of Arabia and Taxi Driver, which is basically an urban remake. Scorsese, by the by, does a great commentary on the Searchers DVD extolling its many virtues.
Maybe it's because I'm young and I don't like most of John wayne films or westerns of that period of time, besides things that Kurosawa, Mann, and sometimes Hawks were making, but I can not connect to it. It doesn't grab me emotionally or even entertain me. Taxi Driver is one of my three favorite movies, and I love Lawrence of Arabia, but honestly, I don't care if those films were influenced by the searchers, but I'm not. I care but it doesn't make me like it. Most of John Wayne's films are not enthralling or even entertaining to me. I've heard Scorsese's commentary on it, and I still don't get it, I've watched it, didn't like it, then watched it again with the commentary, and honestly I only get it because he was young when it came out and it probably was important then, but it's aged horribly