Editor's Note: Cinematheque Ontario screens the extended, restored version of Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly from July 2nd-July 4th, 2003. Consult Cinematheque Ontario online for up-to-date scheduling, ticket, and venue information.

Perhaps it had been too long between screenings, or perhaps my mind had been playing tricks on me, but my most recent viewing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly wasn't as good as the others. There was still much to admire: the wild structure, which doesn't properly introduce its MacGuffin until about a half an hour in; the hilariously cavalier attitude towards human decency; the raw-meat attitude towards bodies and faces; and, of course, the idea of Eli Wallach playing a Mexican, which is always appealing. But all of this seems somehow only fitfully successful now, the film's conceptual high points surrounded by the same arid desert that nearly finishes off two out of three of the protagonists. Perhaps I should chalk it up to the distance of memory--even downgraded, the experience has something bizarre for just about everybody, whether their memories will be kind to it or not.

Still, the loss of a rating-star bothers me. This isn't some childhood favourite that maturity has cast aside, or some sniffy art masterwork whose thesis time and understanding has shown to be untenable--it's a juicy, infinitely inventive melange of leering close-ups and thrilling amorality that keeps coming up with image after zany image long after most other films have spent their limited imaginations. How could one not admire the "bad" Angel Eyes (Lee van Cleef), who kills two men who want each other dead purely out of professional considerations? Or not revel in the feral nature of "ugly" Tuco (Eli Wallach), a big-mouthed bandit who takes time out of eluding gunmen to hijack someone's bath water? Or not delight in the poise of the incomparable Clint Eastwood, as he assays his role as the just-barely "good" Man with No Name? Where do you get the right?

And how to look askance at the film's blasé attitude towards human life in general, so refreshing in a medium normally awash in bush-league moralism. It doesn't really matter that there's a Civil War happening, and that people are dying for some noble cause or another: there's money to be made, and the niceties of politics are mere stumbling blocks on the road to outrageous wealth. You have to listen when a dying man named Bill Carson directs you to a massive stash of gold, and you have to cling parasitically to whatever enemy might have a piece of those directions; thus the Man and Tuco--whose bad history makes up the first part of the movie--must stick together as they make their way to monetary glory. The odd-couple pairing of Zen-calm Eastwood and frenzied Wallach makes for such bad behaviour and so much overacting that resistance should not only be futile but impossible.

The problem lies in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly's tendency towards random digression, at once its greatest strength and most maddening limitation. On the one hand, it serves as brilliant riposte to the sweeping master narratives that Sergio Leone lived to demolish: our anti-heroes scavenge at the edge of a fantasy West, immune to the American dream and taking what they can from whomever they can take it. (So, too, does Leone, whose tendency towards the grotesque steals from bystanders and ruins dignity as much as the protagonists do.) But while this allows for some magnificent plums, the pudding itself can run a little thin. There's a start/stop feeling to much of this movie, and a frantic sense of filmmakers wondering what to do next: a sense of arbitrariness takes over in sections, while some points are belaboured--and the 20 minutes of (largely expositional) footage that's been restored only adds to that sense. But who in their right mind would want to straighten out one of cinema's most deliciously crooked classics? How could you make a good citizen out of such a delicious delinquent? Am I crazy? Is there no pleasing me? Have I finally lost it?

The fans of this film are legion, and I recommend they seek out their chance to see this film as it is meant to be seen: in 'scope, on a big screen, with a rowdy audience. As for me, I'm off to have my head examined. If The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is wrong, nobody wants to be right--and neither do I.-Travis Hoover