Who directed the 1966 Spaghetti Western 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'?

Who directed the 1966 Spaghetti Western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? The answer is Sergio Leone.

Leone directed this epic Western as the third and final film in the Dollars Trilogy, after A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. The story follows three morally complicated gunmen—Clint Eastwood’s “the Good,” Lee Van Cleef’s “the Bad,” and Eli Wallach’s “the Ugly—as they compete to find buried Confederate gold during the American Civil War.

The film’s large-scale landscapes, extreme close-ups, deliberate pacing, and stylized violence became signatures of Leone’s approach. Ennio Morricone’s score, especially its famous vocal-like main theme, is equally central to the film’s identity. Although the trilogy’s films share themes and Eastwood’s screen persona, they are not a continuous story with the same named character in every installment.

The title is sometimes confused with other major Westerns directed by American filmmakers, including John Sturges’s The Magnificent Seven and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. The 1966 film’s director, however, is firmly Sergio Leone.