Another Top 5 segment from The MacGuffin. This time Allen and Edward share their top 5 film scores.

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No other genre evokes a sense of place better than the western. You have vast rolling hills, expansive barren deserts, horses, hats and pistols, and sleepy towns where sheriffs and robbers shoot it out to the death. It’s a world long since passed, where those with gold and guns dictated the law. What I find so fascinating about westerns is that they are a representation of a place that once was—with people who perhaps lived lives that were similar to the ones we read about in folk stories, or watch in the movies. Survival and the hope of prosperity drove people toward these places, and motivated those who wanted to steal their way to a better life. There are a handful of great movies set in the Wild West, but very few have reached the plateau of Sergio Leone’s epic, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).

It is arguably the quintessential “spaghetti western,” shaping the look and sound of the subgenre, and influencing countless films and filmmakers that came after it. Most recently, Quentin Tarantino would create his Kill Bill franchise (particularly Vol. 2) based off of what Leone and his contemporaries helped establish. There is a difference between the kind of western you have here and the ones that would come out of the Hollywood system. While John Ford may have captured his films with a kind of grand beauty, where the landscapes provide an inviting backdrop for his characters to live in, Leone’s westerns were far more rugged and dangerous. This is not a place one would try to escape to in search of peace—the mountainous regions and long stretches of desert are danger zones. They are unrelenting and harsh, easily devouring the weak with heat exhaustion or starvation. The people who live here show the signs of wear and tear: their skins scorched by the sun, their clothes tattered and unclean, and their faces sweaty with grime and dirt. It’s a place you want to avoid.

Not only is the environment a dangerous place, so are the people who inhabit it. While the film is titled The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, none of the main characters are really that “good.” Each has an agenda of their own, having to work with the others not because they like one another but because they have no other choice, and if they had a chance would kill each other in the blink of an eye. Deals are constantly made and then broken; each character has a plan up his sleeve but gets double crossed in some sort of fashion; death is always a heartbeat away. It also doesn’t help that the story is set in the middle of the American Civil War. Not only do our characters have to avoid killing one another, they also have to avoid stepping right into the middle of a fierce battle between the Northern and Southern soldiers. This makes the movie far grander in scope than what we would first believe. Sure, one of the main story threads involves our characters’ search for hidden gold, but there’s also another level involving Leone’s thoughts about the horror of warfare.

The “Good” character of the film is played by Clint Eastwood. While his character is nicknamed “Blondie” in this film, he actually is The Man With No Name, the character who is the lead in Leone’s Dollars/Man With No Name Trilogy, with this being the epic final entry (the first two being 1964′s A Fistful of Dollars and 1965′s For a Few Dollars More). The man in the hat and poncho has become one of Eastwood’s iconic characters, rivaled only by his turns in the Dirty Harry films. Blondie (in this film) is a man of very few words. Very rarely does he ever say more than a few sentences at a time or noticeably move in desperate actions. In all honesty, there are few times where Blondie even needs to run. But through his performance, Eastwood gives Blondie an attitude that says that he doesn’t need to talk a lot or move around. With a cigar in his mouth and a gun tucked neatly in his holster, Blondie is a person who moves and talks at his own pace, because he’s well aware that he’s good enough to take down any man that would threaten him. He makes a living capturing criminals, turning them in for the money, and then shooting them off of the hangman’s noose just before their necks are broken. So to say that he’s a good shot is an understatement. Blondie’s background isn’t delved into, and it doesn’t have to be. Everything we need to know is on the surface; we understand his motivations simply by Eastwood stoic, star-making performance.

The “Ugly” of the film is Blondie’s off-again/on-again accomplice/enemy Tuco, played with irreverent energy by Eli Wallach. While Eastwood is in the center of every poster made for this film, it can be argued that Tuco is the true main character of the movie. We follow his story the most, and we learn more about his background and his strained history. Wallach plays him as funny and brutish at the same time, to amazing effect. In one of the best scenes in the film, Tuco encounters his brother, Father Pablo Ramirez (Luigi Pistilli), and their conversation about how Tuco abandoned their family is surprisingly touching. While Blondie is a quiet man of action, Tuco is a non-stop freight train of banter, constantly trying to talk his way into and out of situations. Tuco and Blondie’s relationship in the film is a unique one. They first start out as business partners, and then one turns on the other, and vice versa. At one point, Blondie leaves Tuco out in the desert to starve to death, and then at another Tuco watches Blondie almost die of dehydration from the comfort of his horse with water canteen in hand. Only when the two learn of a hidden stash of gold in a cemetery do they become accomplices once again, with Tuco knowing the name of the cemetery and Blondie knowing the name of the grave it’s buried under.

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Ask me what it is about movies I love so much, and I’ll tell you to see Cinema Paradiso (1988) for your answer. This Italian film, written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, is one of the great showcases for the magic that movies can provide. It’s not so much a film that you should see if you are a movie lover; it a film that you must see. We follow a young boy in a small village, witness his friendship with a sweet and kind projectionist, and understand how this child’s love affair with the movies would eventually shape who he would become as a man. It is lovely, nostalgic, and dripping with sentiment, but in the best way possible. All the fun, enjoyment, thrills, and amazement that come with falling in love with the movies is captured in almost every frame. The movie was made for movie fans, and to not find joy in it would be to turn against everything they stand for.

When the film was first released, it received a number of negative reviews for being too sentimental, too nostalgic, and too romantic about the movies. Only when it was bought by Harvey Weinstein at Miramax and distributed in a shorter cut would it receive the recognition that it rightly deserved. It would go on to be one of the most highly praised films of the year, winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. The word “sentimental” has been given a slightly negative undertone when describing films today, but in regard to this there is no better way to give it a more positive label. No apologies are needed for a film that so easily wants us to fall in love with its subject matter. This is not something where one must be cynical to critique it like any other mediocre project. Instead, we find ourselves letting go, allowing it to wash over us, having the director make us feel the same way he does about the content of his story. We watch it like a child, completely absorbed in the images and romance on the screen, just like the lead character.

The hero of our story is Toto, played by three different actors: Salvatore Cascio as a child, Marco Leonardi as a teenager, and then finally by Jacques Perrin as an adult. We first find Toto as a grown man living in Rome. He is a successful and popular film director, but inside there is something missing. It’s never said what that element is, but when news arrives that his good friend Alfredo (Philippe Noiret) has passed, something in Toto is triggered. Something that makes him look back to his youth in the small village of Giancaldo, where he first met Alfredo and fell in love with the movies. The majority of the film is told in flashback, where we learn of Toto’s upbringing. He had a father who went to fight in WWII but has never returned, and a mother who tries desperately to provide for her children with whatever little means they have. Toto’s life is one of little money and not much to do, and as a result the one resort he had to fill his time was his own imagination. Luckily for Toto, that imagination would be further developed in a place where imagination and creativity is celebrated—the movie theater.

Giancaldo is depicted as a place that is roughly made up of small buildings circling a large, old, cobbled town square. There is not much to do there, other than go to school or go to church. There is, however, one place where everyone can go to escape and find enjoyment, and it is the movie theater, Cinema Paradiso. The time that the movie is set is right before the emergence of television, a time when people had to go to the movie theater to see their favorite actors or actresses, follow up on world news, and to see other people from all walks of life. The Cinema Paradiso is the epicenter of the town, and there are countless scenes where we find the main hall overcrowded with townspeople, all watching and reacting together as if the experience of watching movies was a required group effort. It is not a coincidence that Tornatore would have his set designers construct the inside of the theater much like that of a church, signifying that going to the movies was like a religious experience. After the theater is tragically burned down in a fire, it is rebuilt bigger and better than before. And who would be the first person to step inside of it? The town priest, with holy water in hand ready to bless everything and everyone inside.

While the theater is the center of the town square, the heart of the theater is Alfredo, the film projectionist. Alfredo is a character that is so kind, so charming and lovable, that he could scream at the top of his lungs, but we know he would never hurt a fly. Philippe Noiret plays him wonderfully—with his long droopy face, thick mustache and big eyes, the image of Alfredo is difficult to forget. Toto can see this man’s gentleness easily, which would explain why he would sneak in to the projection room time and time again, even when Alfredo threatens to kick him out. Their friendship is sparked during the scene when Toto’s mother learns that he has used their milk money to buy a movie ticket. Watch as Alfredo so gracefully comes to his rescue, sneaking his own money to them like a slight of hand card trick. From there on out, Alfredo and Toto would develop a bond that would last throughout the rest of Toto’s youth, involving him working with Alfredo in the projection booth, and of course watching movies.

The beautiful thing that Tornatore captured with this movie was how well it showcases the people that come to the theater. Cinema Paradiso must be the one of the best movie theaters ever seen, as it plays films from all over the world from many different times. We see Charlie Chaplin and John Wayne, films by Luchino Visconti, horror films, melodramas and silent films, to name a few. A poster of Casablanca (1942) adorns the projection room. Alfredo constantly quotes lines from movies to help teach Toto about life. The characters that frequent the theater are just as entertaining as the films themselves. We see them at different stages of the story, and although they may be a little exaggerated in their characteristics, they all contribute to the film’s overall effectiveness. There’s the rich, quiet man who sits in the balcony and spits at the people below, and the two lovers who catch each other’s eye from across the room and eventually will become married. An elderly gentleman cries his heart out while a drama plays, quoting every line before they’re even said. The village idiot screams out how he hates every movie that plays, and young boys watch eagerly as a beautiful woman dances on screen, their hormones raging out of control.

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There is a kind of mood in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978) that draws us in without ever explicitly revealing itself. A kind of feeling, or a certain kind of tone, pervades every moment of the film; we can sense it without really specifying what it is. Could it be the result of the great cinematography by Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler? Or is it the haunting score by Ennio Morricone? Perhaps it is the philosophical approach Malick takes toward this material, regarding man’s relationship with man, or man’s spiritual relationship with nature? Maybe it is a combination of all these factors, but what makes this film brilliant is how, while having the ability to draw us in, it still keeps us at arm’s length. We watch the story unfold at a distance, like a silent voyeur. And in this way, Malick crafted a film resembling that of a loving memory; like a time and place that has long passed that we wish to somehow return to.

The key to achieving this tone lies in the perspective of the person telling us its story. Yes, the main action involves the adults, but the heart of the film revolves around the young character of Linda (Linda Manz). An eccentric, quirky, and intelligent kid, Linda is always around, even if the events happening do not involve her. In a kind of isolated voice, we hear Linda (through voiceover narration) describe everything she thinks, sees, and feels throughout the film’s duration. This is a fine line to walk; narration that only tells us what is happening on screen serves as a useless tool, but Linda’s narration is thoughtful, whimsical, and wise beyond her years. She enhances what we see on screen instead of simply describing it. We regard moments in the film with more clarity, because through her eyes we see a world presented through a filter of youth and naïveté. In a way, the emotional detachment we feel from the story is because its narrator witnessed it from a detached point of view. What we see has the mood of a memory, because it feels as though Linda describes it long after the events took place. To put it simply, this is a film of Linda’s very own memory.

The movie takes place at the turn of the twentieth century. The opening credits are fascinating to see. Separate from the actual storyline, Malick starts the film with a slide show of pictures taken during this time frame. We see young men, women, and children, inhabiting a world that is moving very quickly toward industrialization. We see buildings, factories, and automobiles in the photographs, and although he never explains it to us literally, we soon get a sense of Malick’s appreciation of nature against the rise of the technological age. These pictures harbor countless stories of American life in a changing world, the characters of the film acting only as a small portion. Those characters are Bill (Richard Gere) and Abby (Brooke Adams), two lovers who, along with Linda, who is Bill’s younger sister, work and scrap to survive on the rugged streets of Chicago. Early on, we see Bill working in a steel mill, and during an altercation with the mill’s foreman, he accidentally kills him. Desperate, Bill, along with Abby and Linda, escapes by train southward to the Texas panhandle, where they find work harvesting the wheat fields of a wealthy farmer, played by Sam Shepard.

Interestingly enough, Bill and Abby decide to tell everyone that they are siblings as well. Very quickly, suspicions arise about the relationship between Bill and Abby, with one scene involving a fight between Bill and another field worker who was quick to throw out an insult about the two. This presents us with an interesting question: why exactly do Bill and Abby decide to describe themselves as siblings? According to Linda, “you know how people are.  You tell ‘em something, they start talking.” Is it because they wanted to avoid any authorities that were looking for a couple and a young girl responsible for the foreman’s death? That seems to be the likely answer, but Bill and Abby surely do not do a good job of hiding their true identities, as we see them in a number of lovely and tender moments. This mild attempt at deception, with two lovers trying to pretend that they aren’t, sets up the main tension of the film.

The farmer (who is actually named “The Farmer”) soon becomes attracted to the beautiful Abby, even inviting her to stay with him after the harvesting season is over. Here is where the story takes an interesting turn. Bill, while attempting to steal some medicine from a visiting doctor’s coach, overhears a conversation between the doctor and the farmer. The farmer is ill, there is no cure, and the doctor predicts he has only about a year left to live. Sick of living meal to meal and dreadfully fighting to earn a living, Bill suggests that Abby accept the farmer’s offer: she will pretend to fall in love with him, even going so far as marrying him, and when he dies, the two will live happily ever after with his wealth. Of course, in movies, things never go as planned, and as the farmer continues to live, Abby soon becomes enchanted by the wealth and romance of her new life, to the point of actually falling in love with the farmer. “Instead of getting sicker,” Linda explains, “he just stayed the same. The doctor must of give him some pills or something.” The rest of the film involves the love triangle between these people, with Bill increasingly growing with jealousy and impatience, Abby torn between two men she loves, and the farmer slowly coming to the realization that the two may not be who they say they are.

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