This week on Breaking Waves, John and Riley take a deep dive into the world of cinema, starting with one of the most famous westerns ever made: Sergio Leone’s 1966 classic, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Starring Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef, the film follows three very different characters caught up in a search for buried treasure during the American Civil War. John and Riley explore the film’s three central archetypes: Blondie, the Good; Angel Eyes, the Bad; and Tuco, the Ugly. But the discussion goes beyond the familiar labels, asking why Tuco, despite being the least conventionally appealing character, might actually be the most human and relatable of the three.
The conversation explores the distinctive style of spaghetti westerns, including their Italian filmmaking roots, dubbed dialogue, heightened sound effects and larger-than-life characters. John and Riley also discuss the wider appeal of westerns, from their sense of adventure and open landscapes to the mythology of the American frontier. Along the way, they revisit films starring Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer, the Dollars Trilogy and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.
The discussion then crosses international borders with the Korean film The Good, the Bad, the Weird, which reworks similar character archetypes in the setting of Manchuria in 1939. Its more emotionally expressive central character prompts further questions about whether the most recognisably human qualities are sometimes seen as strange, flawed or even ugly.
In the second half of the conversation, John and Riley look at how the western genre changed over the decades. They compare the more psychologically focused westerns of the 1950s with the epic scale of spaghetti westerns, before examining the decline of the genre and the rise of darker, more morally ambiguous films in the 1960s and 1970s.
Join John and Riley for a thoughtful, entertaining conversation about cinema, human nature and the enduring stories we tell about heroes, villains and everyone in between.
