Matching John Ford with five films in the Top 100 Sergio Leone adds to #90
Duck, You Sucker!, #18
For a Few Dollars More, and #16
A Fistful of Dollars with the top two Westerns as voted by MovieForums.com users with
Once Upon A Time in the West and
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly taking the second and first spots, respectively.
"Keep your lovin' brother happy."
After the success of the three Dollars pictures starring Clint Eastwood Leone was ready to never make another Western ever again. He began trying to adapt the gangster novel
The Hoods. That would eventually become
Once Upon a Time in America but wouldn’t be released until 1985. What he was being offered money to do by the American studios was of course more Westerns. When he found that Paramount would give him not only a big budget but Henry Fonda, Sergio agreed. He and two filmmaking friends and countrymen, Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento, helped him write an epic that would call upon all of their favorite American Westerns like
High Noon and
The Searchers. What they devised had a former prostitute (Claudia Cardinale) arrive on the frontier to meet her new family only to find they have all been murdered. A gunman (Henry Fonda) has killed them for their land, land that a rich railroad tycoon (Gabriele Ferzetti) needs. Fonda and his men have framed a notorious local bandit (Jason Robards) for the killings, and all parties are shadowed by a mysterious stranger who plays a harmonica (Charles Bronson). Frank Wolff, Keenan Wynn, Lionel Stander, Jack Elam, and Woody Strode round out the main cast. Though shot mostly in Spain, the same as most other Spaghetti Westerns, several key sequences were filmed right in the heart of John Ford’s own Monument Valley, Utah adding to the blending of the Spaghetti and traditional Westerns.
"You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig."
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was the grandest of the three so-called Dollars pictures, again following Eastwood’s anti-hero the Man with No Name and for the second time bringing along Lee Van Cleef, though this time he is not playing his Colonel Mortimer from
For a Few Dollars More. Adding humor and energy is the wonderful Eli Wallach. It is technically a prequel to the other two films as they are both post-War stories and we see Eastwood’s character find his iconic poncho toward the end of
GB&U. During the Civil War the three men, all living outside of the law, individually learn of a buried box of $200K in Confederate gold and form uneasy alliances or try to outdo the others in making their way to the treasure. Eastwood, who is called Blondie, Van Cleef, who is known by the misnomer Angel Eyes, and Wallach’s Tuco Benedicto Pacífico Juan María Ramírez all need information the others have which is the only thing keeping them from killing each other outright. They are ruthless, scheming, charming, and deadly and wind up impersonating officers and becoming involved in a battle for a bridge before the final showdown. Filled with a ton of dark humor and the most iconic of all of the recently departed Ennio Morricone’s scores, Leone’s gigantic production was a big hit, a fantastic culmination of the subgenre he made a phenomenon.
In the end the voting wasn’t even close.
Once Upon a Time in the West was on an astounding forty-six ballots led by ELEVEN first place votes, more than any other movie! It also had six second, three third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, two seventh, two eighth, two ninth, and three tenth place votes. That all added up to 848 points, a decisive 48 more than
Unforgiven. But as impressive as that was,
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was on
fifty of the sixty-seven ballots, which unless my calculator is failing me is 75%!
GB&U had fewer first place votes than
OUATITW or
Unforgiven with “only” seven but a stunning forty of its fifty votes were all top ten choices! Seven first place, four second, seven third, three fourth, six fifth, four sixth, one seventh, two eighth, two ninth, and four tenth place votes! That pushed it an extra hundred points higher than
Once Upon a Time… and made it far and away the consensus choice as the best of the best Westerns!
The Sons of Katie Elder squeaked in at #100 with 35 points on two ballots.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly bested it by 913 points. While only 49 points separated #13 through #7 the top six were in a different league. The top three of those were the elite choices, and
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly became untouchable.
The Sons of Katie Elder, North to Alaska, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Shootist, Red River, The Cowboys, El Dorado, True Grit, Stagecoach, Rio
Bravo, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Searchers, Two Mules for Sister Sara, Pale Rider, High Plains Drifter, For a Few Dollars More,
A Fistful of Dollars, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
With two of the final three films starring Clint Eastwood that gave him eight on the countdown to John Wayne’s twelve. As a percentage of the total number of Westerns they made Eastwood had more hits in fewer at bats, but this exercise should reinforce why they will both forever remain the two icons of the Western genre.
In terms of decades the 1960s ruled with
25 entries, followed by 18 from the 1970s and 18 from the 1950s, 11 from the 2010s, 9 from the 1990s, 6 from the 1940s and 6 from the 2000s, 4 from the 1980s, 1 from the 1930s, 1 from the 1920s, and 1 from the 1900s.
Thank you again to everyone who turned in ballots, and to everyone who participated in this countdown portion, too. Happy trails, MoFos!
Reply to Topic
Again though my omission made absolutely no difference to its placing on the countdown. I did remember to tag most fillums though and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly was my #5.
