Pre-production After the success of
For a Few Dollars More (1965), executives at American distribution company
United Artists approached the film's screenwriter,
Luciano Vincenzoni, to sign a contract for the rights to the film and the production of its sequel. Along with producer
Alberto Grimaldi and
Sergio Leone, Vincenzoni pitched an idea about "a film about three rogues who are looking for some treasure at the time of the American Civil War". An agreement was struck with United Artists for a million-dollar budget, with the studio advancing $500,000 upfront and 50% of the box-office takings outside of Italy. The total budget was eventually increased to $1.2 million. As Leone developed Vincenzoni's idea into a script, he built upon the screenwriter's original concept to "show the absurdity of war... the Civil War, which the characters encounter. In my frame of reference, it is useless, stupid: it does not involve a 'good cause'," saying, "I had read somewhere that 120,000 people died in Southern camps such as
Andersonville. Many shots in the film were influenced by archival Civil War photographs taken by
Mathew Brady and
Alexander Gardner. As the film took place during the Civil War, it served as a prequel for the other two films in the trilogy, which took place after the war. The three main characters all contain autobiographical elements of Leone.
Sergio Donati contributed additional screenplay material and dialogue, although he did not receive screen credit. Film director
Alex Cox suggested that the cemetery-buried gold hunted by the protagonists may have been inspired by rumors surrounding the
anti-Communist Gladio organization, who hid many of their 138 weapons caches in cemeteries. The film's working title was
I due magnifici straccioni (
The Two Magnificent Tramps). It was changed just before shooting began, when Vincenzoni thought of
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (
The Good, the Ugly, the Bad), which Leone loved. In the United States, United Artists considered using the original Italian translation,
River of Dollars, or
The Man With No Name, but decided on
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Casting After Leone offered Clint Eastwood a role in his next movie, traveling to
California to persuade him, Eastwood agreed to make the film, playing Blondie, upon being paid $250,000 and receiving 10 percent of the profits from the North American markets—a deal with which Leone was not happy. The director originally considered
Gian Maria Volonté (who portrayed the villains in both the preceding films) for the role of Tuco, but felt that the role required someone with "natural comic talent". In the end, Leone chose Eli Wallach, based on his role in the "Railroads" scene of
How the West Was Won (1962). Upon meeting Leone, Wallach was skeptical about playing this type of character again, but immediately agreed after Leone screened the opening credit sequence from
For a Few Dollars More. The two men got along well, sharing the same bizarre sense of humor. Leone allowed Wallach to make changes to his character in terms of his outfit and recurring gestures. Both Eastwood and Van Cleef realized that the character of Tuco was close to Leone's heart, and the director and Wallach also became good friends. They communicated in French, which Wallach spoke badly and Leone spoke well. Van Cleef observed, "Tuco is the only one of the trio the audience gets to know all about. We meet his brother and find out where he came from and why he became a bandit." For the role of Angel Eyes, Leone originally wanted
Enrico Maria Salerno (who had dubbed Eastwood's voice for the Italian versions of the
Dollars Trilogy films) or
Charles Bronson, but the latter was already committed to playing in
The Dirty Dozen (1967). Leone eventually wished to work with Lee Van Cleef again, saying, "I said to myself that Van Cleef had first played a romantic character in
For a Few Dollars More. The idea of getting him to play a character who was the opposite of that began to appeal to me."
Filming , with Tuco seen on the left, Angel Eyes in the middle, and Blondie on the right. The scene is accompanied by Ennio Morricone's "The Trio". Production began at the
Cinecittà Studios in Rome mid-May 1966. It then moved on to Spain's northern plateau region near
Burgos, which doubled for the
Southwestern United States, and again in southern Spain's
Almería. The production required elaborate sets, including a town under cannon fire, an extensive prison camp, and an American Civil War battlefield; for the climax, several hundred Spanish soldiers were employed to build a cemetery—
Sad Hill—with several thousand gravestones and wooden crosses to resemble an ancient
Roman circus. A scene where a bridge was blown up had to be filmed twice because the explosion destroyed all three cameras in the first take. Italian cinematographer
Tonino Delli Colli was brought in to shoot the film and was prompted by Leone to pay more attention to lighting than in the previous two films. The score was once again composed by Ennio Morricone, and for the final
Mexican standoff scene in the cemetery, Leone asked Morricone to compose what felt like "the corpses were laughing from inside their tombs". Filming concluded in July 1966. Eastwood was displeased with the script and was concerned he might be upstaged by Wallach. "In the first film, I was alone," he told Leone. "In the second, we were two. Here we are three. If it goes on this way, in the next one I will be starring with the American cavalry." As Eastwood played hard-to-get in accepting the role (inflating his earnings up to $250,000, two
Ferraris, and 10 percent of the profits in the United States when eventually released there), he was again encountering publicist disputes between Ruth Marsh, who urged him to accept the third film of the trilogy, and the
William Morris Agency and
Irving Leonard, who were unhappy with Marsh's influence on the actor. Eastwood banished Marsh from having any further influence in his career, and he fired her as his business manager. Wallach and Eastwood flew to
Madrid together, and between shooting scenes, Eastwood would relax and practice his
golf swing. Wallach was almost poisoned during filming when he accidentally drank from a bottle of acid that a film technician had set next to his soda bottle. Wallach mentioned this in his autobiography and complained that while Leone was a brilliant director, he was very lax about ensuring the safety of his actors during dangerous scenes. For instance, in one scene, where he was to be hanged after a pistol was fired, the horse underneath him was supposed to bolt. While the rope around Wallach's neck was severed, the horse was frightened a little too well. It galloped for about a mile with Wallach still mounted and his hands bound behind his back. The third time Wallach's life was threatened was during the scene where he and Mario Brega—who are chained together—jump out of a moving train. The jumping part went as planned, but Wallach's life was endangered when his character attempted to sever the chain binding him to the (now dead) soldier. Tuco placed the body on the railroad tracks, waiting for the train to roll over the chain and sever it. Wallach, and presumably the entire film crew, were not aware of the heavy iron steps that jutted one foot out of every box car. If Wallach had stood up from his prone position at the wrong time, one of the jutting steps could have decapitated him. The bridge in the film was constructed twice by
sappers of the Spanish army and rigged for on-camera explosive demolition. On the first occasion, an Italian camera operator signaled that he was ready to shoot, which was misconstrued by an army captain as the similar-sounding Spanish word meaning "start". Nobody was injured in the resulting explosion. The army rebuilt the bridge while other shots were filmed. As the bridge was not a prop, but a rather heavy and sturdy functional structure, powerful explosives were required to destroy it. Leone said that this scene was, in part, inspired by
Buster Keaton's silent film
The General (1926). Various reasons have been cited for this: Leone often liked to play Morricone's music over a scene and possibly shout things at the actors to get them in the mood. Leone cared more for visuals than dialogue (his English was limited at best). Given the technical limitations of the time, recording the sound cleanly would have been difficult in most of the extremely wide shots Leone frequently used. Also, it was standard practice in Italian films at this time to shoot silently and post-dub. Whatever the actual reason, all dialogue in the film was recorded in postproduction. By the end of filming, Eastwood had finally had enough of Leone's perfectionist directorial traits. Leone insisted, often forcefully, on shooting scenes from many different angles, paying attention to the most minute of details, which often exhausted the actors. Leone, who was obese, prompted amusement through his excesses, and Eastwood found a way to deal with the stresses of being directed by him by making jokes about him and nicknamed him "
Yosemite Sam" for his bad temper. After the film was completed, Eastwood never worked with Leone again, later turning down the role of Harmonica in
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), for which Leone had personally flown to Los Angeles to give him the script. The role eventually went to Charles Bronson. Years later, Leone exacted his revenge upon Eastwood during the filming of
Once Upon a Time in America (1984) when he described Eastwood's abilities as an actor as being like a block of marble or wax and inferior to the acting abilities of
Robert De Niro, saying, "Eastwood moves like a sleepwalker between explosions and hails of bullets, and he is always the same—a block of marble. Bobby [De Niro], first of all, is an actor, and Clint first of all is a star. Bobby suffers and Clint yawns." Eastwood later gave a friend the
poncho he wore in the three films, and it was subsequently displayed in a Mexican restaurant in
Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Cinematography In its depiction of violence, Leone used his signature
long drawn and
close-up style of filming, which he did by mixing extreme face shots and sweeping long shots. By doing so, Leone managed to stage epic sequences punctuated by extreme eyes and face shots, or hands slowly reaching for a holstered gun. Leone also incorporated music to heighten the tension and pressure before and during the film's many gunfights. == Themes ==