Screening 12/1/12

12.1.12 update
s_dany posted:

Best of IMDb trivia

In the theatrical trailer, Angel Eyes is "The Ugly" and Tuco "The Bad," which is the reverse of their designations in the actual film. This is because the Italian title translated into English is actually "The Good, the Ugly, the Bad", not "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", and the Italian trailer had "The Ugly" and "The Bad" in that order. When the trailer was transferred to English, The Ugly and The Bad were not reversed to coincide with the altered title, causing the incorrect designations.

Charles Bronson was offered both the roles of "Tuco" and "Angel Eyes" (the latter because Sergio Leone feared that audiences would not take kindly to Lee Van Cleef going from the fatherly, likable "Col. Mortimer" to a sneering villain. He declined both.

Sergio Leone first had Gian Maria Volonté in mind as "The Ugly". According to Eli Wallach's autobiography "The Good, the Bad and Me", Sergio Leone picked him for the role of Tuco not because of his role as "Calvera" in "The Magnificent Seven" as most people assumed but rather because of his brief role as a Tuco-like bandit in "How the West Was Won".

Besides Clint Eastwood of course, actors Mario Brega, Benito Stefanelli, Aldo Sambrell, and Antonio Molino Rojo are the only actors to appear in all 3 of the "Dollars Trilogy" movies. Even though this movie does not have the word "Dollars" in its title, it is grouped with "A Fistful of Dollars" and "For a Few Dollars More" as part of the "Dollars Trilogy".

The film was budgeted at an expensive (for the time) $1.6 million.

Orson Welles warned Sergio Leone not to make this movie on the grounds that Civil War pictures were box office poison.

The film was shot with a process called Techniscope. This process means that you can shoot without an anamorphic lens, and only use half as much film as you would normally use. The Techniscope process places two widescreen frames on a single 35 mm frame.

Shot in the deserts of Spain with 1,500 Spanish soldiers as extras.

The bridge that Tuco and Blondie blow was an actual bridge built by Spanish army engineers. According to Eli Wallach, when it came time to blow up the bridge, Sergio Leone asked the Spanish army captain in charge to trigger the fuse, as a sign of gratitude for the army's collaboration. They agreed to blow up the bridge when Leone gave the signal "Vai!" (Go!) over the walkie-talkie. Unfortunately, another crew member spoke on the same channel, saying the words "vai, vai!", meaning "it's OK, proceed" to a second crew member. The captain heard this signal, thought it was for him and blew the bridge; unfortunately, no cameras were running at the time. Leone was so upset that he fired the crewman, who promptly fled from the set in his car. The captain was so sorry for what happened that he proposed to Leone that the army would rebuild the bridge to blow it up again, with one condition: that the fired crewman be re-hired. Leone agreed, the crewman was forgiven, the bridge was rebuilt and the scene was successfully shot.

Eli Wallach would have been decapitated during the train scene if he had lifted his head up. In the wide-shot, you can see the step that would have impacted his head.

Eli Wallach was almost poisoned on the set after drinking acid used to burn the bags filled with gold coin to make them rip open easier when struck with the spade. The acid had been poured into a lemon soda bottle and Wallach didn't know it. He drank a lot of milk and filmed the scene with a mouth full of sores.

In the scene where the bridge is blown up, and "Tuco" and "Blondie" are hunkered down behind sandbags waiting for the explosion, Clint Eastwood's career came within 2 feet of ending prematurely. A fist-sized piece of rock shrapnel from the explosion slams into the sandbag right next to Eastwood's head (watch it in slow motion to see the rock flying in).

Clint Eastwood wore the same poncho through all three "Man with No Name" movies without replacement or cleaning.

The grips on Clint Eastwood's pistol have an inlaid silver rattlesnake. His pistol in "For a Few Dollars More" had the same grips. In the TV series "Rawhide", "Rowdy Yates" (Eastwood) kills a gunfighter carrying a pistol with the same grips and takes it for his own. Eastwood's character would carry the pistol with the rattlesnake grips for the remainder of the series' run.

Eli Wallach claims that Sergio Leone decided that Tuco would carry his pistol on a lanyard because Wallach told him he always had trouble putting a pistol in a holster without looking at it.
Leone asked him to grasp the gun by shaking his neck, thus making the gun land in his hand. Wallach claimed that he wasn't able to do the intended action, and asked Leone to demonstrate it. When Leone tried, the pistol missed the director's hand and hit his crotch. Leone then told Wallach to hold the gun in the belt.
In the gun store, everything Eli Wallach does with the guns is completely unscripted. Eli knew little about the guns, so he was instructed to do whatever he wanted.

During the scene right before the final duel where Tuco (Eli Wallach) is running frantically through the cemetery, a dog can be seen running on-screen at the beginning of the scene. In reality, that was improvised on the spot. Sergio Leone, who was afraid that the scene was going to slip into melodrama, released the dog without informing Eli Wallach first - thus, his look of surprise is quite genuine.

The three man gunfight scene is called either a "Mexican standoff" or a truel (game theory). There are several mathematical papers covering the many complex outcomes of a truel. Other movies that use a truel are "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction".

Due to the striking height difference between Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach of over 9 inches, it was sometimes difficult to include them in the same frame.

Eli Wallach remembered that when he first came to Madrid all the hotels were full. Clint Eastwood invited him to sleep over at a friend's house and they shared the same bed. Wallach's wife Anne Jackson told him he could boast that he was the only man to sleep with Clint Eastwood.

Ennio Morricone's iconic theme music was designed in places to mimic the sound of crying hyena.

There is no dialog for the first 10-1/2 minutes of the film.

The three principal actors are the only ones who speak actual English in the film: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach, with the exceptions of Al Mulock (the one-armed man) and John Bartha (the sheriff). Everyone else in the film is really speaking their native language, mostly Italian and Spanish, and was later dubbed into English.

Four scenes were cut from the original English-language release and were never dubbed into English from Italian. When American Movie Classics showed the "Extended English Version", the scenes were restored. Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach dubbed their voices for the movie, but another actor had to be found to dub Angel Eyes' lines, as Lee Van Cleef had died in 1989.

Though no specific year or date is stated in the movie, at least part of it takes place during the New Mexico Campaign of 1862.
The price of gold in 1862 was US$20.672 an ounce. As of 5 March 2010 it is US$1134.45 an ounce. So the $200,000 Tuco, Angel Eyes and Blondie are after would be worth $10,975,715.94 on 5 March 2010.

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9.1.12
s_dany posted:

Η Κινηματογραφική Ομάδα
του Οικονομικού Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών (ΑΣΟΕΕ)
σας προσκαλεί στην προβολή της ταινίας
"Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo"
(1966, Sergio Leone, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", "Ο Καλός, ο Κακός και ο Άσχημος")
την Πέμπτη 12/1/2012 στις 17:00
στο αμφιθέατρο Β (Πατησίων 76, κεντρικό κτίριο).
Είσοδος ελεύθερη.

RSVP: facebook event

[Illustration by Christopher King]


AUEB Film Club
invites you to the screening of:
"Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo"
(1966, Sergio Leone, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly")
on Thursday 12/1/2012 at 17:00
in classroom B (76, Patission Str., central building).
Free entrance.


The film will be screened in its 2003 extended English version
with greek subtitles.

Official U.S. 1967 theatrical trailer