DVD Review-The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

When the film was made in 1966, United Artists forced Leone to cut 18 minutes for the American release, but in 2002, MGM (now United Artists' parent company) had the original version restored, complete with new voice dubs by stars Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach (Lee Van Cleef died in 1989 so another actor was brought in for his lines). This was needed due to the fact that the cuts were made to the film in 1966 prior to the actors assembling in New York to record the English-language version.

Both a 2003 essay by Roger Ebert that is included in the DVD box and the feature-length commentary by Time Magazine film critic Richard Schickel contain quite a bit of insightful information and analysis of Leone's directorial style, the history of Spghetti Westerns and the life of Leone. For example, Leone was an avid art collector, especially of Francisco de Goya and the surrealists which Schickel believes informed Leone's now famous back and forth editing between garish super close-ups which Schickel compared to Goya images and super-wide shots likened to surrealist images.

Another note touched upon in both the Schickel commentary and in the Ebert essay is the fact that unlike 1973's High Plains Drifter, Eastwood's character in the "Man With No Name" trilogy (Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) actually has a name. Blondie in this film and Joe and Manco in the first two, respectively.

Extras on the disc include: Three deleted scenes, the aforementioned audio commentary, three documentaries: Leone's West making-of documentary; The Leone Style, and The Man Who Lost the Civil War and two featurettes, Reconstructing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Il Maestro: Ennio Morricone and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Also included are a set of 5 mini-posters reproducing some international one-sheets for the film, an on-disc poster gallery and the original US theatrical trailer. Interestingly enough, the trailer goofs, misidentifying Wallach as "the bad" and Van Cleef as "the ugly," when it was the other way around.

Ratings:
Movie 5/5
Extras 4/5-Commentary is good, but some additional input from stars Wallach and Eastwood beyond the short doc would have been nice.
DVD quality 5/5

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