Cinema and music lovers might enjoy this BBC article which appeared on-line today. Not only does it discuss how Sergio Leone changed the way films were shot, it also discusses the ground breaking collaboration he had with composer Ennio Morricone.
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/201...d-and-the-ugly
Day dawns dark...it now numbers infinity.
Decent article. What's missing is Leone's inspiration from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo.
What a great documentary! Thanks for sharing it.
"The score which accompanies the film is regarded as one of the best in cinema. Created by Italian maestro Ennio Morricone, the composition was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2009"
Sure it is! And a long deserved prize.
"Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth. ". Ludwig van Beethoven
Although he, in turn, adapted his plot from Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest - and I believe he admitted it.Originally Posted by philsunset
I hadn't heard that but it makes some sense. But that's going beyond the thread topic.
The inspiration from Kurosawa was that the Eastwood character of the Man With No Name came from, as you said Yojimbo, The Samurai With No Name. And A Fistful Of Dollars is an exact western version of the Japanese film. TGTB&TG was the third film in the Leone "Dollars" trilogy and TMwithNN character is the only reference to Kurosawa.
Day dawns dark...it now numbers infinity.
There's a case to be made for TGTB&TG being the FIRST film in the Dollar trilogy, as we see Clint acquiring the clothes (OK, the poncho) that he would wear in A Fistful of Dollars. Note also that in the film Joe Kidd, he's a former bounty hunter, so that could be the fourth film in the Dollar quadrilogy.
Watched it again for the first time in a while last year, and came to the conclusion that it's probably my favourite film ever. You get so familiar with things you take them for granted.
The last stages of the film are particularly breathtaking- director and composer in perfect synch- but I've always particularly liked that quiet scene with Tuco and his estranged brother.
At the time, many a 'traditional' critic raked these films over the coals. That goes for much of Eastwood's 60s/70s filmography generally. I get a sense though that between Leone and Peckinpah, the Western was essentially finished- Clint Eastwood was one of the few to put out really major works in the genre after these (High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven). Where could you go from there?
What I didn't like was the addition of brief scenes and voice dubbing that was done later. They just didn't feel right compared to the original
The older I get, the better I was.
Luv the westerns channel.
The older I get, the better I was.
There's been lots of discussion as to whether TGTB&TU was a prequel. First, the movie takes place during the Civil War. The folded and clean looking poncho doesn't appear until the films ending. A Fistful Of Dollars and For A few Dollars More both give a feel of being post-Civil War. I forgot, but one of those later films shows a cemetary scene where the gravestones have dates in the 1870's. As far as Joe Kidd goes, the 1972 John Sturges film cannot be considered to be an extension of Leone's Dollars Trilogy. Director's like Sturges, Don Siegel and later Eastwood himself always played upon the popularity of The Man With No Name. And IMO Joe Kidd, like Hang Em' High, are the worse of the bunch. Siegel did a better job with Two Mules For Sister Sara, and Eastwood with films like High Plains Drifter. It's like saying that in Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, Samuel L. Jackson's bounty hunter is really Django from Django Unchained. Simply...not.
Day dawns dark...it now numbers infinity.
Haven't seen Joe Kidd in years but I think it's probably Eastwood's weakest Western- a bit of a potboiler, really. Hang 'Em High is pretty good but a little overlong considering it's not a big-scale epic like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
I have said the same about the re-dubbing done in 2003. Didn't work at all for me, particularly the very old sounding Eli Wallach (and obviously, he couldn't help that!). With the exception of the sequence where Tuco gathers all those bandits for the hotel sequence (in the 'normal' version, they appear out of nowhere), none of those scenes added anything to the narrative.
An oddity; look at the French trailer which contains quite a few scenes that never appeared in any version of the film! Some were from a scene which has gone missing over the years...there's a bit on this featured on the extras of the special edition from 2003.
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