Running time: 171 minutes
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef
Rating 10 out of 10
Clint Eastwood has never quite managed to shake off the image of the Man With No Name which he created under the eye of Sergio Leone back in the 1960s. Despite going on to play Dirty Harry and becoming an Oscar-winning director with his own Western Unforgiven, Eastwood will forever be associated with the poncho-wearing stranger who punctuated Leone's masterful wide shots of the desert. Such has been the impact of Leone's three masterpieces A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly that generations of film-makers have been influenced by them, not least Quentin Tarantino, whose Kill Bill Volume 2, (coincidentally released this week), blatantly pays homage to the Italian's spaghetti westerns.
Collectors and fans should therefore rush to buy MGM's sumptuous new re-release of the film on DVD, along with all the extras you could hope for. The start of the show is of course the film itself, now fully restored to the complete cut that Leone wanted. Due to contractual demands at the time, the film was more or less eviscerated for each territory upon release, and only now can the 171-minute version be seen. From the classic opening shot, a close-up of a bandit on Eli Wallach's trail, the unique colours and majestic landscapes that Leone painted still amaze.
The extras provide a fascinating background to the film itself. Film critic Richard Schickel delivers an authoritative commentary on the film, taking the origins of Leone's ideas back to the Japanese samurai films that themselves were heavily influential. There are two interesting documentaries on Leone's style, both featuring contemporary interviews with Eastwood and Eli Wallach. Both stars talk fondly about the film and drop a surprising number of interesting anecdotes, not least the story of how the bridge explosion - a central sequence in the film - went disastrously wrong.
As well as a more sombre documentary on the politics of the period, there's an interesting account of the film's recent restoration, which required Eastwood to redub his own voice from nearly forty years earlier. Film buffs will appreciate the inclusion of the legendary but missing Socorro sequence, in which Leone followed the story of a separate Civil War soldier. To round everything off, there are two features on Ennio Morricone, whose theme music for the film has now become the stuff of legend.
Watching Eastwood talking in such an excitable manner about the film even today simply adds to the experience - it's extraordinary to look at him now and to realise this is an actor who appeared in films with Ginger Rogers and Maureen O' Hara in his early career. But it would be hard for anybody not to get excited about this perfect DVD.
Collectors and fans should therefore rush to buy MGM's sumptuous new re-release of the film on DVD, along with all the extras you could hope for. The start of the show is of course the film itself, now fully restored to the complete cut that Leone wanted. Due to contractual demands at the time, the film was more or less eviscerated for each territory upon release, and only now can the 171-minute version be seen. From the classic opening shot, a close-up of a bandit on Eli Wallach's trail, the unique colours and majestic landscapes that Leone painted still amaze.
The extras provide a fascinating background to the film itself. Film critic Richard Schickel delivers an authoritative commentary on the film, taking the origins of Leone's ideas back to the Japanese samurai films that themselves were heavily influential. There are two interesting documentaries on Leone's style, both featuring contemporary interviews with Eastwood and Eli Wallach. Both stars talk fondly about the film and drop a surprising number of interesting anecdotes, not least the story of how the bridge explosion - a central sequence in the film - went disastrously wrong.
As well as a more sombre documentary on the politics of the period, there's an interesting account of the film's recent restoration, which required Eastwood to redub his own voice from nearly forty years earlier. Film buffs will appreciate the inclusion of the legendary but missing Socorro sequence, in which Leone followed the story of a separate Civil War soldier. To round everything off, there are two features on Ennio Morricone, whose theme music for the film has now become the stuff of legend.
Watching Eastwood talking in such an excitable manner about the film even today simply adds to the experience - it's extraordinary to look at him now and to realise this is an actor who appeared in films with Ginger Rogers and Maureen O' Hara in his early career. But it would be hard for anybody not to get excited about this perfect DVD.
