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antialiasis · 21 days ago

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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: all of my thoughts (part 2)

Once again, this is me watching my way through The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and commenting on everything that comes to mind as I go. Where we last left off in part 1, Blondie and Tuco had just each learned half of the secret to a the location of a cache of Confederate gold, forcing two men in a thoroughly adversarial relationship to collaborate. This time, we get to see the two of them begin to bond, in the most delightful, complicated, bonkers sort of way.

The checkpoint

Another Extended Cut scene. Sad Hill Media's blog post on the Extended Cut scenes suggests the only conceivable purpose of this scene is to establish Tuco wants to go to the San Antonio monastery and that it's entirely needless because we can just figure he knew it was nearby. I do think there's a little more to it than that: this checkpoint is presumably why Tuco and Blondie actually dress up in Confederate uniforms, which is otherwise a pretty random thing for them to do (and is an important plot point a couple scenes later); it's where Tuco presumably gets the idea of actually pretending to be Bill Carson (without this scene, he's just using Carson's eyepatch randomly when they get to the monastery for unclear reasons); and more specifically it establishes that Tuco knew the monastery existed but was kind of surprised to learn they were in the vicinity of it, which adds some context to why Tuco hasn't visited his brother before in those nine years -- he hasn't been in the area before, just vaguely knew of it being near Apache Canyon. But it is undeniably a very functional sort of scene with not a lot else going on, other than Tuco's amusing assertion that "If I were a Yankee you wouldn't have time to ask me that!" to a whole encampment of Confederate soldiers, as if he'd have just taken them all out single-handedly.

Speaking of dressing up in Confederate uniforms, either Blondie was conscious enough at some point to change into the uniform or Tuco dressed his unconscious self in it to sell that he's a dying soldier to these guys. I suspect the latter.

The monastery

Tuco asks for his brother right at the start, but unknown to Tuco he's already gone to visit their dying father. Big, painful dramatic irony there on a rewatch.

Once again, we have wounded soldiers, many with lost limbs, filling up the monastery -- and once again it is a mere backdrop to our protagonists.

Tuco of course acts like Blondie is a very dear friend, like a brother to him, specifically when the monks are within earshot and then immediately drops it when they aren't. What a guy.

(He asks frantically if Blondie has said anything -- mainly thinking of if he said anything about the name on the grave, of course, but also, Blondie could theoretically tell them any number of things about Tuco that might get him kicked out of there.)

Meanwhile, even though nobody's looking (he checks!), Tuco gets down on his knees to pray. Totally sincere in his religion, praying that God will let this man live so Tuco can have his $200,000. I love this fascinating plot-irrelevant character trait.

Once the priest has told him Blondie will recover, he's thinking for a bit about next steps before he goes into the room. Everything would be easiest if he could just get Blondie to tell him what the name on the grave was, and then he can just kill him, or at least ditch him -- he's not too keen on actually having to haul Blondie around to find the treasure, after all.

Tuco starts off by telling Blondie, "The old father tells me you'll be up and around in a few days!" and then this hilarious thing of "You were very lucky to have me so close when it happened!" Ah, yes, when "it happened", this mysterious thing that caused Blondie to nearly die in the desert, how lucky that Tuco just happened to be there. Clearly this is going to work on Blondie himself. (Maybe Tuco could be banking on the possibility Blondie might not have a clear memory of the whole thing, but honestly it's perfectly in character to do this nonsense either way, because Tuco is Tuco.)

He goes on with this approach about how they're all alone in the world and have only got each other, suggesting he doesn't have any family. This is of course a blatant lie, as we'll learn in a bit -- Tuco believes he still has both parents and a brother, even if he hasn't seen them in a long time -- but right now it seems convenient to pretend he has absolutely nothing and no one, in case it will help him earn Blondie's sympathy and trust, so all alone in the world it is.

But then he changes tack again! Come to think of it, maybe it'd be easier to convince him to tell if he thought he was dying. So nah, now he's sad, devastated, that Blondie's dying and it's all his fault. :'((( (He looks around first to make sure none of the monks are around to contradict this, but he already contradicted it when he himself told Blondie just earlier that he'd be up and around in a few days. Tuco just does not keep track of his lies, at all.)

Love the shot where he's looking through his fingers, trying to gauge if this is working at all, and then turns it into wiping the definitely real tears from his eyes. He's trying so hard.

In Blondie's place, he would tell about the gold! (He would not tell about the gold.)

If he gets his hands on the $200,000, he'll always honor Blondie's memory! (He will not.)

Oh, Tuco, totally buying it when Blondie beckons him closer only to get coffee in his face because of course. The combination of absolute unrepentant lying and swindling and naïveté is so endearing, in a terrible way.

Blondie is so smug about "I'll sleep better knowing my good friend is by my side to protect me" while Tuco is pointing a gun at him (upside-down) and it's great. Tuco having him at gunpoint is simply not a threat anymore, because Tuco now wants him to live more than anything! He will protect him! Just in his best interests that Blondie survives!

(And the funny thing is Blondie can probably entirely legitimately sleep a little better with someone else actively invested in his survival than he normally does as a lone wolf drifter, even though the guy actively invested in his survival now also happens to hate his guts. We see him later being a very light sleeper who keeps his hand on his gun, suggesting he's kind of used to expecting someone might attempt to kill him in his sleep; Tuco would never let anyone kill him in his sleep, not while he's the only one who knows the name on the grave.)

Notably, Blondie isn't angry in this scene, as much as he has every right to be when Tuco's being an absolutely shameless little shit about trying to manipulate him, after a lengthy bout of straight-up torture. Instead, Blondie seems more amused by his utter ridiculousness, now that Tuco is harmless and in fact warpedly helpful to him. He's enjoying every minute of the reversal of fortunes here, and in the process Tuco's Tuco-ness has just become kind of entertaining. This is an important little development for how their relationship evolves from here.

After the non-obvious timeskip, Tuco's fetching water for Blondie, grumbling all the while about if I get that name from you I'll give you water, and calls him a dirty skunk, kicking his foot -- notably, not keeping up the pretense of being his friend even a little bit unless the monks are around anymore. Presumably, in the time we skipped over, they've had some talks about how they'll proceed -- Blondie naturally not even considering telling Tuco the name but agreeing to accompany him so they can find the treasure together, Tuco reluctantly figuring yeah, fine, they'll do that, but he doesn't have to be happy about it. He feels free to be an ass to Blondie, even though he can't lose him, because Blondie also needs him to get the money, and at least to Tuco it's unthinkable he would just skip out on $200,000, so it probably has not crossed his mind at all that Blondie could just decide once again to ditch him if he got fed up with him.

Most of the analyses I've read on this movie emphasize that all three main characters are motivated by greed in their pursuit of the gold. But Blondie has never actually felt all that invested in the gold per se to me. Throughout the movie he's mostly being pulled along on this treasure quest by either Tuco or Angel Eyes; I don't think he ever even mentions the gold in any context that's not about how it's something the others desire, and he doesn't take much of any active action to facilitate finding it, other than being along for the ride as the quiet inevitable kingmaker. Instead, whenever it's actually Blondie's choices driving what's happening (which isn't too often, mind; he spends a lot of time quietly going along with the others and biding his time), his motivations are distinctly about something else, as far as I can tell. My overall read on him is that his chief priority is his own survival, and while the treasure hunt has his interest piqued it's almost more for the interesting puzzle of how he's going to come out on top at the end of this than out of desire for the money, though the money certainly doesn't hurt. I think I read something somewhere about the never-produced sequel proposal involving Blondie having given his share of the gold to the monastery, and honestly, I don't know if that's true or if I'm remembering right what I read, but that checks out to me.

At any rate, what I'm saying is I think Blondie is not so invested in the gold that he has to stick with Tuco for it, the way Tuco has to stick with Blondie; Blondie has all the leverage and is enjoying it, and he almost certainly did give some thought to whether he should just try to get out of there if he gets the chance. But ditching Tuco would inevitably mean Tuco just comes to track him back down again, even more fiercely, after already finding him once -- and Blondie is almost certainly already sketching out a plan for when they've reached the cemetery. Tuco is probably planning to try to kill him as soon as he shows him the grave, after all, and Blondie is going to have to make sure he's fully in control of the situation before he reveals anything. And then he's going to make Tuco put his head in a noose.

Tuco mentions the wounded are just pouring into the monastery so they'd better get the hell out of here -- that war sure is still intensifying in the background, and the main characters still want no part of it!

Blondie silently hands Tuco his still-lit cigar here just as Tuco's been insulting him; Tuco just drops it on the floor and steps on it, not keen on sharing. Again, we see how Blondie, when he has this leverage, is completely unruffled by Tuco's toothless hostility, and in fact is just having fun being friendly in an ironic sort of way in return, knowing this annoys Tuco. This is a very fun little contrast to a little later, when Blondie gives him a cigar with a more genuine sense of sympathy, and Tuco actually accepts it. I didn't actually even notice this bit for the longest time, but yes, good.

When Tuco learns Pablo is back, he just tells Blondie that This is something I have to look into, not wanting to tell him anything about his family -- though of course, it wouldn't be hard to guess that "Father Ramirez" is related to Tuco Ramirez. And while Blondie probably does muse on how he could just go out and grab the wagon that's already ready to go (though he would probably ultimately dismiss that either way as discussed above), he must be curious -- and also realize that understanding more about how Tuco ticks might be useful later.

This whole sequence is quite funny, showing off a lot of Tuco being Tuco, while we get a good look at the fundamentally changed dynamic between Tuco and Blondie now that Tuco needs Blondie alive. So far, it looks like Blondie having great fun rubbing in the leverage that he has, completely and unshakably confident that Tuco won't touch him now, while once Tuco understands he's not about to convince Blondie to give up the name, he's nakedly hostile -- but Blondie just finds his hostility amusing now that it doesn't actually represent a threat. We don't spend a whole lot of time on this stage of the dynamic, but it's still pretty important that this is where it has resolved to at this point.

Tuco and Pablo

Tuco is initially obviously wary and nervous about approaching Pablo but then puts on a cheerful smile before he says anything. He probably knows Pablo might not be super happy to see him, but he's going to live in his best world and doggedly pretend this is a normal cheerful family reunion.

Initially the smile falters when Pablo turns around without acknowledging him, but he forces it back up again. "Don't you recognize me? It's me, Tuco!" Surely it's just because he didn't recognize him with the eyepatch, right?

He goes in for a hug. Pablo folds his arms. Tuco decides this is totally just because maybe that's not appropriate with a monk - "I don't know the right thing!" he says before getting down on his knees and kissing the knot of his rope instead. It is Definitely Not that Pablo just does not want to hug him, nope.

Pablo's fed-up eyeroll on "I wonder if my brother remembers his brother" is very good. I can't believe these actors were each speaking a language the other didn't understand and just waiting for the other to pause to say their next line (Eli Wallach brings this up specifically as a really tough scene because of this). Talk about acting with a handicap. I take every hat off for how well they absolutely pulled it off -- this is honestly one of the best scenes in the movie.

"Did I do wrong?" he asks, like he's almost considering whether maybe Pablo thinks it was wrong of him to come here, but then nah, it doesn't matter! He's very happy!

"You have seen me, Tuco." Ouch. Implied, so goodbye. Tuco chooses not to take it that way!

All in all, Tuco's face for this whole thing is great, the genuine awkward reactions always dissolving into undaunted cheerful smiles as he keeps going, insistently trying to make this interaction normal. Eli Wallach is so good.

Pablo just stares him up and down after "I'm very glad I came!" "Oh, my uniform! It's a long story!" Yup, definitely just wondering about the uniform.

Tuco's trying so, so hard to bring back some long-lost brotherly dynamic that they used to have, sometime. "Let's talk about you, it's more important! You look well! A little thin, perhaps, but you were always thin, eh, Pablito?"

And then he asks about their parents. "Only now do you think of them." Pablo's so cold about it -- even though really Tuco hasn't mentioned them until now because he's been trying so hard to connect with Pablo! This is probably part of why Pablo's been so cold for this whole conversation; it's got to sting extra hard for him that Tuco's there playing up this cheerfulness when both their parents are now dead and he wasn't there.

Tuco is still trying hard to salvage this and be cheerful about it after Pablo tells him it's been nine years and it aches. Nine years! How time flies, ha-ha!

Instead Pablo tells him their mother's been dead for a long time, and also Tuco only just missed the death of his father, who had specifically asked for him. I'm pretty sure the implication is they've been at the monastery longer than the few days since his father's death, so theoretically he could probably have made it, if he'd known. Instead he's been here, grumbling about having to fetch things for Blondie. Oof.

Finally Tuco's resolve to be cheerful and normal about this is broken. I like how we don't really see him cry, just him turning away at the wall and the slight movement of his shoulder and tensing in his neck and the sound of his breathing. Any open display of emotion from Tuco would come across as pretty suspect, but it's precisely the fact he's hiding his reaction that drives home that it's 100% real.

When he finally turns away from the wall, it's to tell Pablo, voice cracking, that he didn't just have one wife, he had lots. He can find them wherever! He's doing great! (Normal people who are doing great definitely have lots of different wives they've run off from.)

He dares Pablo to preach him a sermon about it, but Pablo doesn't take the bait. Tuco wants to hear him do his usual thing of judging and condemning him so he can throw it back in his face right now.

Instead, Pablo goes, "The Lord have mercy on your soul," and Tuco responds that while he's waiting for the Lord to remember him he'll tell him something. Another great little bit that's effective because we've seen him being sincerely religious in his own Tuco sort of way, but of course really this extremely down-on-his-luck bandit feels pretty forgotten by God, even if he's only properly voicing it when he's just learned both his parents died in his absence.

In response to being judged and disdained for his (genuinely bad) choices all the time, Tuco has built up this whole defensive self-image of how really he took the harder path and Pablo's just a coward, and I love that a lot.

Pablo left to become a priest, while ten-or-twelve-year-old Tuco was left alone with his parents; the way he emphasizes that he stayed suggests that he felt he was there for them where Pablo had simply abandoned them. And yet, "I tried, but it was no good." The banditry probably originated out of desperation as a way to earn money to support his parents, or at least support himself without burdening them. And yet he ended up alienated from all of them as a result (of course he did, he's a wanted criminal). Oof.

Kind of fun how these two brothers hitting each other in the heat of the moment are actually possibly the most convincing physical strikes in the movie.

We only see Blondie watching now; we don't know exactly how long he was watching or how much he saw, whether he heard Tuco's whole backstory. But he definitely saw them come to blows, which is the really important bit about him watching.

The way Tuco helps Pablo up and then immediately turns away before Pablo can say anything more or make eye contact is a really good, painful acting choice.

Pablo saying his name, and Tuco stopping for a moment, starting to turn around, and then tossing his hand behind him and leaving anyway is also a really good, painful choice. They almost got to have what might have been a more reconciliatory conversation (Pablo says, "Please forgive me, brother," after he's gone), but Tuco was just expecting more judgement and hostility and decided not to bother.

This scene is so good. Tuco was already the most colorful character in this movie, but there's a huge amount of depth added via this conversation with Pablo -- not just some token effort in the form of the fact his parents are dead and he's sad about it, or the explicit exposition about him growing up in poverty and becoming a bandit because the only ways out were banditry or the priesthood, but all the little nuances and implications and Eli Wallach's performance of it all. Tuco's insistent way of looking for alternative explanations for Pablo's coldness at the start; his dogged, desperate efforts to lighten the mood; the particular genuineness of his reaction to the news about his parents and the way he then deflects all those feelings into anger at Pablo and at God; the painful, painful way that they part. It's such excellent character work, and it makes Tuco really, properly sympathetic, where he's been serving a pretty villainous role so far.

Nothing like a good cigar

Tuco silently joins Blondie on the wagon, obviously in a pretty sour mood, and Blondie doesn't say anything either as they set off. I expect at this point Blondie is fully intending to just not comment on what he saw. (Tuco, of course, doesn't realize he saw anything at all.)

But after a moment, Tuco decides to live in his best world. His brother is so great! He was just having soup with him! He never wants Tuco to leave when he visits! Earlier he expressly didn't want to let Blondie know he was going to see his brother, but now he says casually that oh yeah, his brother's the one in charge there, like he just sort of happened not to mention it before. His brother's very important and also crazy about him, and the great thing about having him is he'll always be there for him to give him a bowl of soup if he needs it. This is definitely what actually happened and not a bald-faced lie-slash-fantasy in which Tuco's fine and loved and appreciated and has a robust support network. (This lie, of course, very directly contradicts Tuco's previous lie to Blondie about how he's all alone in this world. He's so consistently shameless about not being remotely consistent with his own lies.)

(And, notably, the way Tuco's treating Blondie has abruptly shifted, too, even though no one's watching -- he's just having a casual chat, smiling, lightly bumping his shoulder at "Bring your friend, too!" Tuco is feeling shunned and rejected and needs a friend right now, and Blondie's the one guy he's got, who has been acting basically friendly to him, not returning his hostility -- so Tuco's just choosing to at least for a moment live in the world where yeah, sure, they're the best of friends and always have been.)

We may not know exactly how much Blondie heard, but he knows at minimum that actually they were not having soup, that Tuco's brother slapped him, and that he punched him in return. So he knows exactly how bullshit all of this is. And yet, he actually has a little smile at it and chooses not to contradict him, but instead to actively play along with the lie by telling him, "Well, after a meal, there's nothing like a good cigar." (There was no meal, after all, and Blondie knows it; he could have offered him a cigar without actively playing along with that bit, but he specifically chooses to do so.) In spite of all Tuco has done, Blondie hears his pathetic bullshitting about his brother and it actually endears him to him, makes him human.

It's very possible he heard more of Tuco's backstory, too, and perhaps developed some sympathy for him based on that, the way we have -- but the particular reaction he's having right now, the smile and the cigar, is a reaction to Tuco telling him this. It's such a blatant, pointless, specific lie, delivered with such a bizarre change of attitude, and all by itself it says so much about Tuco: that he craves positive relationships he doesn't have, that he was hurt enough by this encounter he doesn't want to admit or sit with how it really went, that he uses lying as a coping mechanism, that he lies to himself too, that ultimately he loves his brother and would rather talk him up and lie that they're tight than just complain about him, that he really needs a friend right now and Blondie is all he's got so he's just discarding the hostility to do this. It's pretty sad, and it really is very endearing. Look at this miserable little man and his pathetic, absurd ways of coping.

And the reason this works is Blondie was already honestly a little endeared to Tuco, in a strange way. Tuco had stopped representing a threat, and his Tuco-ness had become entertaining -- initially because Blondie was just having fun rubbing it in and watching him flail in his unique way. But it's not that far from there to seeing his humanity, and this bit of more obviously desperate Tuco-ness will do it. Tuco still tortured him, and Blondie has not and cannot forget that -- but alongside it he's starting to get him, a little bit, and it makes him sympathize with him.

(Blondie doesn't look at him while offering the cigar, though. Not getting too sentimental about it.)

Tuco looks at him for a long moment after taking the cigar, perhaps realizing Blondie might have seen or heard something (even Tuco suspects it's not that he just genuinely bought all that and wants to give him his cigar because it's good after a meal; this looks suspiciously like a gesture of sympathy). But then he just puts it in his mouth, and shares another brief look with Blondie, and then we can see this great progression on his face as he actively psyches himself up into one of his normal grins (love Eli Wallach so much, what a great actor who makes this film), just as we shift from the somber Father Ramirez music back to the upbeat main theme. Tuco is fine! Blondie is living in Tuco's best world where they're friends too! Everything is great!

This is another great, fascinating little character interaction. Tuco has a great need to create his own reality and act fine at all times (unless acting otherwise serves some other goal he has, of course), because actually his life kind of sucks, and lying and pretending, to himself and others, is just how he copes with everything. He didn't need to say anything to Blondie at all -- he didn't ask what Tuco was up to in there and wouldn't have asked -- but it just makes himself feel better about it to go rewrite reality into what he wants it to be and then affirm it by telling somebody else about it and acting like they're totally friends. And out of it comes this weirdly cute little bonding moment where Blondie's beginning to understand Tuco, and feel kind of sorry for him, despite everything. I love them.

The map

One more brief Italian/Extended Cut bit. Tuco's reading the map, looking at where they're going; Blondie asks about where they're headed, and Tuco catches himself and tells him he'll tell him when they get there. Dead soldiers are lying around; Blondie notes they're not worried about anything anymore and asks again about where they're going because they might get caught up in the war as they go on. Tuco, defensive, says they're going towards $200,000.

This mostly serves as the first ambiguous sign that Blondie has some sympathy for the dying soldiers, even though he's mentioning them briefly in the service of making a different point, while showing Tuco's still wary of telling Blondie anything that would render him unnecessary, afraid that then Blondie would just kill or ditch him and go for the gold himself. It's not a very important moment and the film wouldn't lose much without it, though I don't think I agree with the idea that Blondie's expressed sympathy for the soldiers here is too much for where we're at -- it's not exactly an outpouring of sentiment, just an observation about why the situation is dangerous that happens to involve him noticing the dead soldiers, and it certainly worked as a part of his character progression for me, though I also think it would work without it, with the prison camp being the first thing to spark his sympathy.

The one thing Blondie does do in the movie that sort of seems like he's invested in claiming the gold for himself is these intermittent moments where he asks Tuco about where they're going. But I'm not sure that's actually what's going on in these moments either. They're very casual and understated and, especially as the movie goes on, grow to feel more like he's trying to catch him out for his own amusement than any serious hope that it will work. And in the end, when Tuco does tell him the name of the cemetery, Blondie then does not in fact ditch or kill him to get the gold first, even though he easily could have. So all in all, it doesn't actually sound like he really hoped to learn the name of the cemetery so he could go find the gold himself without Tuco, even though Tuco obviously fears that.

So I think his stated reason for asking at this point is basically genuine. He's agreed to accompany Tuco, but they could be about to get themselves into danger, and it really might be less dangerous if they both know where they're headed. It's very understandable why Tuco won't, though -- Blondie's not telling Tuco anything for the same reason, after all -- so ultimately he can't insist too hard.

How do you do fellow Confederates

When Tuco spots troops he wakes up Blondie and is preparing to just take off his uniform immediately -- it's Blondie who asks if they're blue or gray (Tuco looks at his own uniform for a moment like he needs to double-check which arbitrary uniforms they have again before he looks off at the soldiers, enjoy that), and that's when Tuco figures well, okay, they're gray so I guess we don't need to. In other words, this is actually Blondie's fault, inadvertently; Tuco by default would have played it safe and gone with being civilians. (Though obviously Tuco's ridiculous over-the-top yelling did not help.)

"God's not on our side, 'cause he hates idiots also." Blondie is calling them collectively idiots. Blondie is a very smart guy but I enjoy how willing he is to include himself in that.

All in all, this silly scene is great because it's hilarious, but also just very fun about how utterly arbitrary the Civil War is to the main characters. It's just blue versus gray, yell out support for whichever color they're looking at while unclear on what the generals' names even are, whatever. Tuco obviously doesn't really know or care what the whole thing is about at all. Blondie is probably a little more familiar -- at least he knows what the generals are called -- but still only really invested in keeping himself out of it.

Of course, they sure do get caught up in it anyway. Off to prison camp!

Batterville

Time for the war to start to get a lot more prominent!

The wide shot of the camp as they're marched in shows gallows in the background, just where the framing draws the eye, with a man still hanging from a noose. We don't see any executions happening at the camp but we're sure incidentally shown that those also happen.

Love that moment of Wallace reading out "Bill Carson" and Angel Eyes turning around to reveal his face. We had no idea he'd be here, but the moment he shows up, it's what we've been waiting for all this time, and then he goes on to deliver by being magnificently striking in the whole camp sequence. Angel Eyes is somewhat underused in the movie overall, in terms of screentime and development, but half of the bits he does feature in just go so hard.

Kind of insane that he's a Union sergeant now; presumably he got promoted quickly for being amazingly competent, I guess (and I suppose once again it's very hard to actually get a grasp on the timespans involved).

Tuco, again, clearly has a bit of ambiguous history with Angel Eyes, compared to how Blondie and Angel Eyes are only really indicated to know of each other. I kind of enjoy that the movie doesn't get into exactly how any of these guys know each other at all and just leaves it up to implication and the viewer's imagination.

Tuco doesn't seem to have noticed and pointed out Angel Eyes until after he's turned around, so they probably have no reason to think Angel Eyes knows anything about Bill Carson. So when Blondie then suggests Tuco be Bill Carson, I think what he's thinking is that the guards are trying to identify who the prisoners are for purposes of arranging prisoner exchanges later, and that their best shot at getting out of here is to be identified as actual soldiers that might be exchanged -- obviously the Confederacy is hardly going to actually choose to exchange prisoners for people who were not actually soldiers. Bill Carson is the one name they know that's definitely not going to turn out to be somebody else present (and Tuco's already wearing his eyepatch while Blondie could never pass for him if there were any kind of physical description involved), so Tuco had better pretend to be him, and Blondie will cross his fingers for a different name coming up on the manifest later that no one else responds to that he can assume.

The other possibility for what's going on here, though, is that they do catch Angel Eyes reacting to Bill Carson specifically, and Blondie is gambling that Angel Eyes taking an interest could be a ticket out of here for both of them. That's a very interesting possibility, but I can't get it to make quite as much sense -- surely, if Blondie knows anything about Angel Eyes, he would probably know that being somebody Angel Eyes is looking for is probably a bad thing, and if he and Tuco know each other, then Angel Eyes presumably knows Tuco is not actually the Bill Carson he's looking for, so pretending to be Bill Carson doesn't seem like a super productive idea in that case. I can still see it being the intended reading, though -- notably, Blondie doesn't actually suggest Tuco be Bill Carson until after Tuco points out Angel Eyes even though Wallace had read out the name several times, which is the main evidence in favor of this, but that could also just be due to taking a moment to think and evaluate.

Either way, we cut briefly to Angel Eyes smirking at Wallace punching Tuco in the stomach for not saying "Present." Whatever sympathy he might have had for the soldiers back at the fort, it definitely does not extend to Tuco even a little bit. I think their ambiguous history might have something to do with that smirk.

On the other hand, he does then tell Wallace that that's enough when he's getting ready to beat on Tuco some more; probably he wants to save it for the actual interrogation. Angel Eyes enjoys violence but only really employs it in the service of his agenda, rather than pointlessly for the hell of it, as the plainly sadistic Wallace does.

(Blondie looks rankled at Wallace's abusiveness, and smiles a little as Tuco fires back at him.)

Tuco sounding earnestly excited about Angel Eyes saying they should get "good treatment" is painful. Blondie is decidedly less excited about it, and when Tuco sees that his expression changes as well -- enjoy him taking that cue from Blondie.

Angel Eyes justifies his treatment of the prisoners to the commandant first by saying there are too many prisoners and he needs to have respect and then by saying well, our men aren't treated well at Andersonville camp. I doubt either of these things actually has much to do with it; really he's probably torturing prisoners mostly because he wants info on Bill Carson and the treasure, and is obviously robbing them simply for monetary gain, but to his superiors he'll coolly rationalize all this with something that sounds less self-serving. I went down a bit of a Wikipedia rabbit hole about Civil War prison camps, and it sounds like "Confederate prison camps keep prisoners in terrible conditions, so we should be equally cruel" was genuinely an argument used to push for abusive treatment of PoWs in the North.

The poor gangrenous Union commandant is such a good, decent guy, bless him -- "I don't give a God damn what they do in Andersonville." Most genuinely moral person in the movie, probably. Unfortunately, though, although he is nominally in a position of power, he's basically confined to his room, and all he can really do about the malicious takeover of the camp by Angel Eyes and his abusive cronies is giving him stern talks that he blithely ignores.

When he says the prisoners are not to be tortured or cheated or murdered, Angel Eyes just says, "That an accusation?" Obviously he's been doing all that, but he knows the commandant can't prove it. Technically he just takes prisoners into his cabin while the band plays some lovely music! Maybe the injuries they walk out with are because they just happened to have a fall.

"But as long as I'm the commandant I won't permit any such trickery. Am I clear?" "Yes, sir. Just as long as you're the commandant." A lot of people seem to interpret this as Angel Eyes planning to kill him, but the way I read it is that he's making an oblique reference to how the commandant is not really commanding anything at this point; Angel Eyes is already, for all intents and purposes, running things. He doesn't need to kill him. I think that aligns with the fact we then see Angel Eyes just wish him luck on proving his abuses (God, he's such a smug bastard), leave, and then tell his men to lay low for a few days -- just don't give the commandant the chance to find the evidence he's hoping for, the gangrene will take him eventually anyway, and then probably Angel Eyes might get to officially take over after him, without all the potential complications of actually murdering him.

Angel Eyes truly marks his return to the story in style. Him being effectively in charge of the camp, and thus having absolute power over our now-imprisoned protagonists, while Tuco's blissfully impersonating the very man Angel Eyes has been after, is just such a delicious, exhilarating development and creates an enormous amount of dread and tension for this whole sequence.

Tuco's interrogation

Tuco's clearly nervous being brought in to Angel Eyes' cabin. Then Angel Eyes is being friendly, just offers him food -- so he excitedly sits down and brings a spoonful to his mouth, only to stop, suddenly worried that it's poisoned. So Angel Eyes spoons some off his plate and eats it himself, and Tuco smiles and laughs, going, "I knew it! I knew it!" We may never learn exactly in what capacity the two of them knew each other, but this progression tells a lot, delightfully: Tuco thinks Angel Eyes is somebody who might poison his food, but also goes "I knew it!" when he's shown he didn't, as if he'd never had any doubts. Odds are Tuco does have good reason to be distrustful of Angel Eyes, but once again he likes to live in his best world where people actually like him, so if Angel Eyes is acting friendly, and hasn't poisoned his food, then sure, Tuco will act as if they are the best of friends and he trusted him completely all along. Enjoy this being established implicitly via Tuco's reactions, without having to exposit anything.

The minute he saw him, he said to himself that Angel Eyes never forgets a friend! (He plainly did not say this to himself the minute he saw him.)

"It's good to see old friends again. Especially when they've come from so far away and have so much to talk about. And you do have a lot to talk about, haven't you?" I love the way Angel Eyes does these pre-interrogations, so surface-level friendly yet distinctly threatening. Tuco has a lot to talk about, doesn't he? If he talks enough, Angel Eyes might even not torture him. (But he'd probably still send him to be executed. No reason not to claim that $3000 bounty!)

Tuco smiles and chuckles about how hard it was crossing the desert, especially with nothing to drink. It sure was a hard time for somebody but it wasn't you, Tuco.

Tuco deflects the question about why he's using the name Bill Carson into simply a general rule of not using your own name, which is funny when Tuco is the one main character here who does explicitly go by his actual legal name and also routinely refers to himself in third person.

Enjoy Angel Eyes clapping his back just a bit too hard, as the tiniest taste of what is to come. At this point Tuco's definitely starting to have some creeping doubts about where this is going; we see his eyes flick to the side at it.

Tuco's eyes also shift distinctly back and forth after saying music's very good for the digestion. Definitely catching on that Angel Eyes is driving at something very different and trying to work out what, for all that he answers in a friendly and cheerful way. (Tuco started to question this a little bit when Angel Eyes asked why he's using the name Bill Carson, then a bit more so at the back-clap, then this.)

Once again, once Tuco starts actively refusing to answer Angel Eyes' questions, that's when he casually shifts into torture-mode, stands up to signal for the music to start, and then offers him tobacco only to clamp down on his fingers. The very smooth shift, without much of a real change in demeanor, is part of what makes Angel Eyes so striking as a villain. What a memorably fucked-up guy.

Tuco tries admirably to fight back against Wallace at the start, even with the disadvantage of being handcuffed to a chair the whole time. When Blondie was being tortured he was very calculated about quietly going along and taking it until he believed he had an opportunity; Tuco being tortured is so much messier, full of screaming and struggling, though as it goes on he becomes less able to fight back.

I love the buildup of this scene: the timing of the music swelling before Tuco's first scream; the way you gather the music is to drown out the noise, but the distraught looks of the musicians gain new meaning when the old man tells Blondie how so many of them have had a session in there; the violin player on the verge of tears suddenly cutting out and looking away and being snapped at to continue; all intercut with the movie's bloodiest scene. And, of course, the dissonance of the song they're singing itself, which sounds almost like a lullaby (only if you actually read the mostly-unintelligible lyrics, it's actually about war and all the pointless death involved: Loud roar the cannons till ruin remains / Blue grass and cotton burnt and forgotten / All hope seems gone, so soldier, march on to die; There in the distance a flag I can see / Scorched and in ribbons, but whose can it be? / How ends the story, whose is the glory? / Ask if we dare our comrades out there who sleep). This whole scene is so striking and so good; lots of movies have torture scenes, but the way the band is used makes this one so much more memorable.

(Blondie is silent as ever, but doesn't seem super comfortable there lined up on the other side of the walls staring over towards the cabins, gathering Tuco is probably being tortured in there, that other prisoners already have been, that he might be next.)

Angel Eyes smiling and leaning in as Wallace puts his thumbs on Tuco's eyes is such a touch of sadistic bastardry. (Interestingly, this footage is apparently not in the Italian version, and we instead cut back to Tuco there and actually watch him with Wallace's thumbs on his eyes screaming that he'll talk -- it was reedited to be slightly less violent for the international market, and the Extended Cut kept the international theatrical version of this scene because the only available Italian prints had weird abrupt cuts in the music that presumably resulted from the original version of the scene there getting cut down post-music placement. I do always enjoy more torture, and it's a shame they felt the need to censor it, but I think this shot of how much Angel Eyes is enjoying this is actually very good and effective.)

The two instances of Angel Eyes torturing people for information (first Maria and now Tuco) both end with them giving truthful information, though in neither case is it obviously a violation of the character's deeply held principles or anything (we don't really know much about Maria or her relationship with Bill, but as much as Tuco wants the money, he has every legitimate reason to be more invested in keeping his eyeballs). On the other hand, in order to facilitate this, Angel Eyes kind of just magically knows exactly when they've told all they know and their "I don't know" has become genuine (we can see on his face that he can tell immediately that Tuco means it this time). In real life, torturers generally have no actual idea when their victims are lying even if they think they do, which is one of the several reasons torture is a terrible way to obtain information. But I suppose I will file this with other instances of Angel Eyes being implausibly competent to make him scarier.

Tuco keeps muttering Blondie's name in a bit of a choked-up way after giving him up, which gives the sense that he feels a bit guilty at this point for condemning Blondie to what he assumes is the same fate -- though he's not going to show it later, of course, filing it away where he probably locks all other times he might have felt kind of bad for a thing.

All in all, what a good, brutal, memorable torture scene, A+. The whump as whump is one thing and not necessarily my favorite whump ever or anything (many of the strikes here don't look super convincing, for instance), but as a scene it's just such effective filmmaking, and the particular bloody brutality of it compared to all the sanitized gunshots we've had is such a stark and evocative contrast.

The war is over for you

I love the cut to Blondie being shoved in there just after Tuco has given him up (though alas, he will not be tortured this time), and then the bundle of clothes getting thrown at him from offscreen. The old prisoner told Blondie what goes on in the shack, so as he was sent in there he was fully expecting to be about to get beaten bloody for several minutes. Instead he's… being told to put on some clothes? Huh.

Blondie is amused when Angel Eyes announces he knows the name of the cemetery now and Blondie knows the name of the grave. Here we go again! I think initially he assumes maybe Tuco had just freely told him after all, looped him in on the treasure in exchange for letting them go. After all, Angel Eyes does not seem inclined to torture him at all, they couldn't hear much of anything over the band, and it gets implied later that at some point Tuco told Blondie he and Angel Eyes were old friends, which Blondie obviously would not have put any stock in initially but might seem to check out now…

…But then, as he's taken his hat off, getting ready to just shrug and comply, he eyes the blood on the floor, verifies with his foot that it's still fresh. An uncomfortable confirmation that no, Tuco did not in fact just casually spill the beans.

He asks, "You're not gonna give me the same treatment?", because that seems genuinely odd. If Angel Eyes did get the cemetery out of Tuco by force, why isn't he trying to get the grave out of Blondie? But he's noticeably feeling a bit for Tuco and what he implicitly suffered here; the lingering on the blood on the floor and his expression are pretty telling.

Angel Eyes notes that he figured Blondie wouldn't talk, not because he's tougher than Tuco but because he's smart enough to know that talking won't save him. Very true -- Blondie's calculated enough to figure once he gives up the information he's given up his only leverage, and by that point Angel Eyes would have zero reason to keep him alive anyway. Tuco, though, isn't quite as stupid as Angel Eyes thinks -- he does in fact end up both living and keeping his eyes, simply because talking when he did ultimately paid off by buying him time and opportunity to get free and kill Wallace later (though at the ostensible cost of giving up the money and probably getting Blondie tortured too, of course). Tuco couldn't have known that was likely to work out for him, but while he's there in agony and Wallace is threatening to put his eyes out, he'll take that chance, play it by ear and see what happens. That's not really how Blondie operates: he figures the information is the one thing what makes him valuable and if he wants to survive he needs to safeguard it at absolutely any cost. Angel Eyes understands that, and so he doesn't bother with trying to beat it out of him and just skips straight to the taking him along -- once again, his violence is in the service of his agenda, so if it wouldn't accomplish anything, why try?

(Of course, Blondie being smart enough to know talking won't save him is also why Blondie's smart enough not to lead them to the correct grave later. Foreshadowing!)

Blondie asks if Tuco's dead, hesitant, stopping before the last word. Perhaps this is the moment he realizes he actually hopes he's not.

Angel Eyes is in friendly mode with Blondie. It'll be easier with two of them! Even gives him back his gun -- Angel Eyes presumably figures he's not in danger from Blondie because, with Tuco gone, Blondie needs Angel Eyes to get the money, and obviously he wouldn't just squander that opportunity for no reason, right? Even so, when Blondie unholsters his gun, Angel Eyes slows down as he's putting on his jacket, watching him, probably prepared to react if Blondie were to point it anywhere unexpected.

But he doesn't, of course. Blondie is always one to wait for the best possible chance; if he were to shoot Angel Eyes in the middle of the prison camp he runs, it'd just alert the guards and get him killed. And of course, usually he wouldn't do it until such a time as Angel Eyes is getting ready to shoot him.

(Angel Eyes insists he's not greedy and only taking half, as an incentive for Blondie to actually come along and guide him to the correct grave, but once they do get to the grave, he of course just pulls a gun on Blondie -- he never actually intended to keep that promise.)

When someone at the train station (another injured soldier, missing an arm) asks where Wallace is taking Tuco, and Wallace says to Hell with a rope around his neck and a price on his head, Tuco adds, "Yeah. $3000, friend! That's a lot of money for a head. I bet they didn't even pay you a penny for your arm." It's extremely Tuco that as he's being taken to be hanged, with no Blondie to shoot him down, he's choosing to live in the world where this just makes him impressive and important.

Man, Wallace is so pointlessly violent with Tuco even when he's not even being ordered to torture him specifically. Very understandable how much utter loathing Tuco has for him in particular.

Wallace calls Tuco lucky compared to the Confederate spy who has been tied to the front of a train, because at least he's going to go relatively quickly. Jeez. Striking background elements.

Wallace also makes a quip about how there isn't any partner this time to shoot Tuco down -- he must've heard about the con he ran with Blondie from Angel Eyes, who witnessed them doing it together that one time during the second hanging.

All in all, we've just had yet another shift in the situation! Angel Eyes is now taking Blondie along with him towards the cemetery, while Tuco has been sent off to be executed. We've still got two guys who each know half of the secret -- but at this point, we're all rooting for Tuco to escape, aren't we. We've also got some very important signals here about Blondie's growing empathy for Tuco: the lingering look at the blood on the floor, how he hesitates asking if Tuco's dead. One way or another, he's grown to care for the guy, in spite of everything.

The perfect number

Blondie sleeps with his hand by his pistol, of course he does.

We see his eyes flick open briefly at the sound of footsteps, then he closes them again, and then a few seconds later after the camera has panned back to his hand, when the footsteps have already gone quiet, he suddenly grabs the gun and shoots. This suggests he wakes up at the noise but only decides to fire a bit later, after pretending he's still asleep for a bit. Initially I took it he'd just shot basically on reflex after hearing something in his sleep and then put together that it's someone Angel Eyes instructed to follow them, but on a closer look it doesn't actually look like that's what's going on. Instead, presumably Angel Eyes had told his guys to stay hidden, and this guy only stepped out into the open because Blondie was asleep -- only Blondie is a light sleeper, noticed, took a moment to think, and then decided to go for it.

I think his thought process must be essentially this: first he deduces this guy must be working for Angel Eyes -- either recognizing him from Batterville or just noting that he seems totally unsurprised to see him and Angel Eyes sleeping there. And while traveling to the cemetery along with one guy gives Blondie a pretty good chance of making it out of this alive, Angel Eyes having hidden cronies following them in the shadows is plainly designed to stack the deck hopelessly against him. Blondie is never going to survive this if there's going to be a hidden assassin or more lying in wait (obviously he's not buying that Angel Eyes is doing this just to fairly split the gold with Blondie and then let him go). So he makes a snap judgement to take down at least this one and call Angel Eyes out, knowing once again that because he knows the grave he's too valuable to kill right now.

(This is definitely the most unprompted murder Blondie does in the movie, though -- this guy definitely wasn't drawing his gun, just existing as a future threat to Blondie. RIP.)

Either way, "If your friends stay out in the damp, they're liable to catch a cold, aren't they? …Or a bullet," is a fun one-liner. Blondie shooting them is just something unfortunate that might happen, the way catching a cold happens. (But really, he's warning Angel Eyes that he's on to him with the hidden assassins and he will shoot if he catches any more sneaking around.)

Angel Eyes just looks amused and impressed that Blondie just killed one of his men. Normal reactions that normal people have.

Presumably Angel Eyes tells his men to come out because Blondie just threatened to kill them if they stay hidden, hoping to pacify him. But Blondie still has his leverage, so he just as good as announces airily that he's still planning to kill them all. Angel Eyes may laugh, and be willing to call his bluff as far as his own self is concerned due to the Blondie also can't get the money without him thing, but his poor lackeys must be sweating -- Blondie is running around with a gun, he's just promised to kill them all, and Angel Eyes almost certainly wants the money, and thus Blondie alive, more than he cares about the lives of any of them.

I guess the lackeys aren't too keen on their prospects if they were to attempt to disarm Blondie right now, and if anyone actually dared to shoot him before Angel Eyes' say-so, they could expect his wrath. It's sort of surprising none of them attempt to just get the hell out of there at this point, though -- everyone just shrugging after this while Blondie is there with his gun and a designated bullet for each of them sure is something.

Blondie may in fact have been going for trying to scare off the lackeys. He does not actually think he has much of a chance alone against six men -- hence why he doesn't in fact make a move until he manages to team back up with Tuco later.

He does also say, "Since we're all going in the same direction, might as well go together," which vaguely suggests he's not planning to murder them all right now or anything -- which gives them a bit of time to desert Angel Eyes, if they're going to.

Sometimes the phrasing of lines in the English dub is kind of funny or off, and I just write it off because it's a live-action dub trying its best to vaguely match the lip flaps (sometimes pretty successfully, sometimes a lot less so). But Blondie explicitly spelling out that six is the perfect number because it's the number of bullets in his gun is one instance where I feel like the writing itself is legitimately just kind of clunky in a distracting way. The line about six being the perfect number is good and fun, if the audience is trusted to infer what he means; the spelling-out is unnecessary and exacerbates the sense that Angel Eyes and his men are kind of idiot balling here (you mean to tell me that Angel Eyes, the picture of hypercompetence and master of threatening insinuations, heard him go, "Six. Perfect number :)))", just after shooting one guy and then reloading his revolver with another bullet, and couldn't tell what he meant?).

(Also, why does Blondie say he has six more bullets in his gun. That would imply it's six in addition to the one he's just fired, but no, the one he fired left him with five and that's why he just had to replace that one. Surely the sensible line would be to just say he has six bullets in his gun, no more.)

Incidentally, six really is what is called a perfect number in mathematics (it equals the sum of its integer divisors). Obviously this is not what either Blondie or Angel Eyes is talking about. It might have made at least somewhat more sense if Angel Eyes had said something about the actual concept called a perfect number of which six is genuinely an example (it would still be implying Angel Eyes is somehow enough of a nerd about math, and thinks Blondie is enough of a nerd about math, to think of that first, but at least it would be an explanation for him taking it to be anything other than a reference to the number of bullets in a revolver), but no, saying three is the perfect number rules out that Angel Eyes knows about perfect numbers, because three is not a perfect number. Terrible.

All in all, "Isn't three the perfect number?" "Yeah. But I got six more bullets in my gun," is definitively by far the worst bit of dialogue in this movie on several different levels, thank you for coming to my TED talk.

This one's another Italian/Extended Cut scene, and while it has a couple of fun lines, and fun implications about Blondie's normal paranoid existence, I think it kind of raises more questions than it answers. I suppose the reason it's there originally is that without it, Angel Eyes explicitly says to Blondie that there's going to be two of them at Batterville only to have five additional guys there next time we see them with no comment; we can pretty easily infer that these are the same crooks he was working with for the smuggling operation at the camp either way (that bit isn't even mentioned in this scene anyway!), but the explicit presentation of it initially as a two-person operation becomes a little strange if a bunch more people then appear for it with no explanation at all. That's a valid concern, I suppose, but meanwhile this scene has that straight-up bad bit of dialogue, and while its implications for the metaphorical chess match between Blondie and Angel Eyes and his men are interesting (I kind of enjoy how confidently both Blondie and Angel Eyes call each other's bluffs here), they're a little nuts, and the movie is probably more coherent if we skip this scene and are left to assume Blondie's simply biding his time and Angel Eyes and his men fully assumed he was willingly cooperating and on board with accompanying them all to the cemetery, even if Blondie's initial reaction to Angel Eyes going, "Oh, by the way, these five guys are coming along too," somewhere offscreen is left to the imagination.

Tuco escapes

This is another bit of Tuco being very resourceful and thinking on his feet. Originally he was trying to reach for the gun in Wallace's holster, but when Wallace catches him he immediately comes up with wanting to take a leak. Gun doesn't work to shoot the chain? Try using it as a hammer, and then a different rock, and then try using a train as a bolt cutter, and then jump onto the train while he's at it.

Wallace already looks unconscious by the time they've rolled down the hill away from the train -- Tuco's just making sure he's very, very dead. The smashing his head into a visibly pointed rock several times is very brutal and also kind of drives home all that Wallace has done to him, which is clearly fueling Tuco in his fervor here.

I enjoy that Tuco briefly looks at the blood on his hand after doing it and then just dries it in the sand. I wonder if he's killed anyone quite so directly with his own two hands before. Either way, though, he is not one to linger on it.

"You made a lot of noise, my friend, huh?" he says, calling back to his little seething remark from the first scene where Wallace beat on him about liking how big, fat men like him make more noise when they fall and sometimes they never stand up -- another little bit tying it more directly back to Wallace's abuse.

I enjoy how Tuco is tangibly pretty scared to be up there so close to the moving train, but he sure is still doing it.

Most brutal fate in this movie is definitely Wallace. Pulled out of a moving train, head bashed several times into a pointy rock, then laid down on a train track where he gets dragged along the track for a bit. Eeesh. Certainly a very conscious choice that he's the most violently sadistic character here; Angel Eyes, again, may be an evil bastard, but all of his violence is serving some purpose for him, whereas Wallace has constantly been pointlessly violent just to be cruel.

The ghost town

This movie being very striking even in an incidental scene: the guy made to carry his own coffin to his execution. His crime is explicitly, according to the sign he's also been made to carry, just that he's a thief. What a horrid, awful little background event.

(In this movie, there are six different scenes involving executions or something resembling them in some form, legal or extrajudicial: Tuco's two hangings, Tuco trying to hang Blondie, Shorty's hanging, this guy being executed by firing squad, and Blondie hanging Tuco at the end. In addition to all this, there's how Tuco is going to be hanged when he escapes, and then there's the background gallows at the prison camp. As someone with a thing for executions in fiction, I am truly, shamelessly feasting here. There are many, many other reasons I enjoy this movie, 30k+ words' worth as I am currently demonstrating, but "several hangings and a firing squad" definitely does not hurt.)

Tuco has new clothes here, so clearly we've had some time in between where he managed to get new ones -- he didn't just step off that train he caught or anything. Very reasonably, I assume he ditched the Confederate uniform as soon as possible after what that got them into.

Man, this town really is shot to hell and back. Very tangible sense of how the war has just utterly destroyed it. And yet, once again it's not the main characters' biggest concern, really. It's just a place they're passing through.

Tuco, choosing to just casually use someone else's abandoned bathwater and pour the entire contents of several jars of different bath salts into it. Likewise with the multiple times he licks soap. What a madman.

I love that the purpose of the one-armed bounty hunter is just to be somebody for Tuco to shoot in this town so that Blondie can recognize the sound of his gun and come find him. That's literally all this means for the plot, but they just make a hilarious little sequence and continuity gag out of it, with Tuco being his delightful self with the "When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk!" line, and that's an iconic choice.

(Tuco, as ever, applies pretty different standards to himself -- he sure could've just shot Blondie on multiple occasions if he really wanted to, but first wanted elaborate revenge, then hesitated, took the time to say goodbye, and then ultimately got interupted. But it's all very personal with Blondie. Random bounty hunter #3? He's just shooting. Bet it was very personal on random bounty hunter #3's end too, though.)

Likewise, Blondie has befriended a tiny stray kitten, who probably just happened to wander into his hat, and calls the kitten 'large one'. It's adorable, and instantly makes Blondie 500% more charming, and also its actual purpose is that there is no way Blondie would explain out loud for the benefit of the audience here why he's standing up to find Tuco unless he had someone to say it to who isn't Angel Eyes' men. Solution? He says it to a random kitten who's there now. A completely shameless approach that totally serves its purpose and adds to the characterization in the process: like Tuco's religiosity, it doesn't mean anything for the plot per se that Blondie is somebody who would see a stray kitten climbing into his hat, gently lift it and pet the kitten and address it by a cute ironic moniker and tell it what he's thinking, but it just adds a little bit of charming extra dimension to him. (And it reinforces the capacity for empathy that he has but has been very quiet about showing so far.)

(Incidentally, even though he was genuinely speaking English on set, you can tell Clint Eastwood's lips aren't totally in sync here, and I gather the Italian line here is just something closer to, "Every gun makes its own sound, and I recognize that one." Is "large one" a product of Mickey Knox doing a rewrite but trying to match it to the lip flaps of a line that originally ended in "that one"? If so, truly the best dubbing choice of all time. The kitten is already adorable, but Blondie calling them large one, my heart.)

That's not to say they couldn't possibly have conveyed that point in a different way, mind. We could see Blondie look up silently and walk away and then tell Tuco when he shows up that he followed the sound of his gun (definitely wouldn't be unreasonable or out of character for Tuco to ask about that). It would have been a little awkward, though, since the actual trigger for him silently getting up would have been taking place a little before the cut to him doing so (and we can't cut straight after the gunshots, because then we would lose "When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk!", which we definitely cannot). Instead, kitten. Excellent.

(On the other hand, I am very sad for this stray kitten wandering around a ghost town as all the people are leaving. Noooooo please tell me Large One is okay)

(If Tuco has the same gun as before, that must mean Wallace had and was carrying Tuco's gun, and then he took it with him before catching the train, after initially throwing it away in frustration? I don't know guns well enough to tell if it's genuinely all the same gun.)

Angel Eyes sending only one guy after Blondie really makes considerably less sense with Blondie having explicitly threatened to kill all of them in the perfect number scene, doesn't it. Without that scene, it checks out that Angel Eyes wants to keep an eye on Blondie but doesn't immediately have any particular reason to think he's about to betray them or liable to attack anyone; with it, it's a wonder Clem doesn't protest.

RIP Clem. Blondie may jump him when he turns a corner, but even he has his hand on his gun before Blondie actually shoots him, though he freezes and stops drawing it before Blondie actually shoots. (Would he have even gone on to actually shoot Blondie if he'd gotten the chance? Well, Angel Eyes still wants him alive… but perhaps Clem might have tried to shoot him somewhere debilitating but not fatal, which is a thing that generally never happens onscreen in this movie but is clearly something that hypothetically can happen, what with all the injured soldiers with lost limbs.)

Things were once again looking pretty bleak for Blondie here. It was always extremely unlikely he could take out six men on his own, even if he did threaten to do so. He could create an opportunity with Clem, because Angel Eyes sent one guy after him, but it's doubtful he'd ever have been able to pull that more than once; all in all, all roads seem to lead to inescapably getting killed at the cemetery while outnumbered. But then he recognizes Tuco's gun. And if there were two of them, maybe they would have a chance at whittling down Angel Eyes' men. Regardless of anything else, he can easily assume that Tuco will agree to join him: that gets Tuco back in the race for the money.

So why was hearing Tuco's gun perfect timing, anyway? I'm enjoying the thought that Blondie was actually starting to consider attempting something foolish on his own by the time those shots rang out. If what I think I read about the Italian line is accurate, perfect timing is an English dub only thing, but it does create some fun potential implications.

Reunion

Love Tuco playing with the bubbles in the bath; what a ridiculous lovable problem man. Sometimes he's not only naïve but outright childlike.

"Just give me a little time to get dressed and I'll open up!" says Tuco, presumably assuming it's more people here to kill him and hoping he can get the jump on them if they think he's oblivious and are expecting to wait. Instead, it's Blondie on the other side of the room, pointing a gun at him, having distracted Tuco with the front door while coming in from the back -- much like Tuco did to him back at the inn. Parallels!

Blondie opens by telling him to put his drawers on and take his gun off. Instead, Tuco takes his gun off but then gets distracted by wait, how is he here, so he just stands there stark naked for this whole bit and Blondie just takes it in stride without comment. Amazing.

Presumably, Tuco's assumption here was that after Wallace took him away from Batterville, Angel Eyes would have had Blondie tortured as well, and then either killed him too or just kept him locked up. (Naturally, though he seemed to be feeling a bit of guilt about giving up Blondie in the wake of the torture, by now he has suppressed any sense of guilt or regret for this.) Blondie instead being seemingly alive and unscathed and out of there is suspicious.

Blondie says he's here with "your old friend, Angel Eyes". We didn't actually see Tuco talk to Blondie about Angel Eyes on-screen, only "Hey, Blondie, isn't that Angel Eyes?", but it tracks that Tuco would have told him they were old friends, because of course he did because they were definitely friends, and of course Blondie makes a little ironic jab at it now, after Angel Eyes cold-bloodedly had Tuco tortured.

Tuco sounds legitimately angry at the thought that Blondie talked, despite that he himself talked, and gave up Blondie specifically. Very Tuco moment. As ever, he just applies very different standards to himself, who will just do whatever he needs to do, than to others. And I think he legitimately hadn't expected Blondie to talk. How dare he give Angel Eyes the secret when he wouldn't give it to him?!

Blondie could so easily make at least a bit of a jab at the fact Tuco not only talked but obviously gave up Blondie specifically, too. But instead he chooses to completely ignore that bit and just say nah, he didn't talk, and I love that. Blondie does not want to get on his case for whatever he said under torture, and the blatant hypocrisy is just Tuco being Tuco, something that he understands and expects and tunes out by now.

Tuco is so happy when he realizes Blondie is the only one who knows his half of the secret and he's choosing Tuco, and it kind of breaks my heart. In his naïve way, he just figures Blondie wanted to find the treasure with him rather than Angel Eyes, and he's just over the moon about it -- Blondie likes him! Actually went out of his way to come find him!

I love "I get dressed, I kill him, be right back." Obviously if Blondie came here with Angel Eyes and then ditched him and came to Tuco instead, Angel Eyes has got to be seeing red and looking for Blondie right now, and he's a loose end generally, and in Tuco's elation about being Blondie's preferred partner, going out and casually killing Angel Eyes just seems like a simple no-big-deal task! He'll be right back!

When Blondie says there's five of them, Tuco's face falls, because oh, that's not quite a simple no-big-deal task even in his current state of inflated confidence. And then, when Blondie confirms… his eyes narrow a bit. "So that's why you came to Tuco." In other words, not because he just likes Tuco better and wants to share the treasure with him instead, but because if Blondie tells them or shows them the correct grave, he is absolutely 100% dead if he's up against five guys. It's a practical calculus after all, when Tuco so plainly wanted it to be because Blondie just likes him better.

But then he just goes, "It doesn't matter! I'll kill them all!" He's going to prove his worth to Blondie, by singlehandedly killing those five dudes, and thus render himself irreplaceable again. He can totally do that. Definitely.

This may be one of my favorite scenes? I love Tuco playing in the bath, Blondie sneaking up on him in the same way as Tuco snuck up on him at the inn, the way Tuco starts at the sound of his gun cocking, the delightful comic energy of Tuco forgetting that he's still standing there naked for this whole conversation, Blondie quietly choosing to let "You traitor, you talked!" go, Tuco's emotional progression and Eli Wallach just being an absolute joy in his portrayal of him as usual. It's so revealing how thrilled Tuco is about thinking Blondie would just rather find the treasure with him and how he shifts when he realizes that's not actually why -- but Blondie genuinely does kind of like this ridiculous man in spite of himself, even though there are cold, practical reasons behind why teaming up with Tuco again is his best bet. I love this complicated, fucked-up, utterly fascinating character dynamic and how we're still adding more delightful layers to it two thirds in.

Two against five

Angel Eyes is still maintaining he wants Blondie alive to his men, but they're free to kill Tuco.

Blondie lets Tuco go out there, determined to do this on his own, before actually joining him. When Tuco notices him, he's watching him there and just smiling, marveling at this guy. Tuco really is fully planning to just go and singlehandedly confront Angel Eyes and four other men. Plainly something Blondie himself would have been too methodical and careful to even attempt under most any circumstances (which is indeed why he came to Tuco), and yet Tuco's just unquestioningly doing it, choosing to live in the world where this isn't almost certainly going to get him killed.

"Were you gonna die alone?" is just cute. Blondie really wasn't expecting him to go do it alone -- the whole point was they'd have a chance if it was the two of them together. It's pretty likely that they'll die anyway, but they really do have the best shot working in tandem.

I enjoy how you can see how it takes a moment for Tuco to even parse what he means, but then comes that cautious bit of a smile and the theme music kicks in, and awww yeah! Look at them, working together!

Tuco gets the first guy before Blondie notices him, and Blondie gives him this slightly impressed look, and Tuco crosses himself because of course he does and then moves on, and we see Blondie smile a little bit at that too before they continue. Just Tuco things. Blondie's missed him a bit, hasn't he.

I can't believe the two guys who are behind them with a pretty clear line of sight but don't shoot, and then a rogue cannonball kicks up dust so they can't see and then Blondie and Tuco take them out in succession by drawing their attention and then shooting. I guess they were too distracted hearing the cannonball falling by the time the camera made them fully visible.

Tuco's little wink after that one is a delight. He's just having fun.

In terms of the actual action, this sequence isn't that interesting -- Angel Eyes' men are not really characters and don't feel very competent or threatening at all, there's never a real sense that Blondie and Tuco are in serious danger, they barely even actually get shot at, and every time they shoot they just instantly kill the other guy, with not much real tension about it. But really it's a sequence about Blondie and Tuco genuinely working well together. First Tuco kills one Blondie didn't notice, then they each get one in a coordinated effort, then Blondie gets one Tuco didn't notice. They make equal contributions, compensating for each other's weaknesses, and it all works out smoothly, where they cover each other and enhance each other's skills rather than getting in one another's way.

Tuco says Angel Eyes is his and Blondie just says, "All right," a little sign of respect. Angel Eyes did have Tuco tortured, so it seems only right. (Later, though, when it really matters, he will absolutely not leave Angel Eyes to Tuco -- too careful.)

Love Tuco stumbling over reading the word "idiots". He grew up in poverty and probably had zero formal education; he's obviously learned the alphabet and can theoretically read, but for anything but the most common words it clearly takes him a bit of trying to sound things out. Another character trait that's not necessary for anything but it's just fun and adds even more flavor and texture to him, like his religiosity.

Blondie reading it for him and then going "It's for you" and handing it to him is a great gag and also reads fully as good-natured ribbing at this point and it's great -- Tuco doesn't even react to him making that joke, just tears up the piece of paper.

(On the other hand, the Doylist reason he doesn't react is that, as Christopher Frayling's commentary points out, you can tell from Clint Eastwood's lips that on set he said, "It's for us." Again, I love "It's for you"; it's definitely a funnier line, and the comic timing with Blondie handing Tuco the paper is perfect, and the sense of friendly ribbing is great. But what I do enjoy about "It's for us" is that it calls back to the other time Blondie called the two of them collectively idiots, namely, "God's not on our side, 'cause he hates idiots also," and I really do enjoy Blondie calling them both idiots as a pair being not just a somewhat ambiguous one-off thing but a habit. I will take on board the fun implications about his character while considering "It's for you" canon.)

One sequence and the movie has successfully sold us on Blondie and Tuco collaborating in a perfectly genuine way. Last time, we ended on the delightful moment where these two guys who hate each other are going to have to set it aside and work together anyway; by now, an hour later, I was sincerely rooting for them to both make it out of this alive and actually split the treasure together, and that's a marvel after how the entire first half of this movie went. It's just an all-around delight and their dynamic is so much fun. I love them.

(Concluded in part three! Thanks for reading if you have been.)

#the good the bad and the ugly #ramble #review #character analysis #blondie #the man with no name #tuco ramirez #angel eyes #sentenza #movies #my buttons

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