Other mistake: In the very last scene of the movie, and just before Blondie shoots the rope that is holding Tuco on the grave's cross. You can see a car moving in the background, screen right of Tuco's head.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Directed by: Sergio Leone
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef
Continuity mistake: When Blondie abandons Tuco in the desert, watch the rope around Tuco's neck. It changes between shots, sometimes over his left shoulder, and sometimes hanging down in front of him. It is not due to the camera angle.
Other mistake: When Blondie and Tuco are talking about telling each other the location of the money, a car drives by in the background. In the shot where both Blondie and Tuco are visible, watch the top right in the trees in between the pillars supporting the bridge.
Trivia: There is no dialogue in the first 10 minutes of the film.
Trivia: When the camera crew were rigging the bridge to be blown up, the supervisor in charge of the detonation who didn't speak any foreign language thought he had been given the instruction to blow up the bridge and proceded to do it. Trouble was, the camera crew hadn't finished setting everything up and it was not filmed at all. Sergio Leone was (according to Clint Eastwood) the angriest anyone had ever seen him. As a result, the army agreed to rebuild the bridge for free and it hired a detonator who did speak the right language. This time they got the shot.
Trivia: Eli Wallach actually did get a black eye during his torture scene (but thankfully nothing more).
Man With No Name: The way I figure, there's really not too much future with a sawed-off runt like you.
Tuco: I'll kill you.
Man With No Name: If you do that... You'll always be poor... Just like the greasy rat you are.
Tuco: Hurrah! Hurrah for the Confederacy! HURRAH! Down with General Grant! Hurrah for General... What's his name? Lee! LEE! Ha ha. God is with us because he hates the Yanks too. HURRAH!
Man With No Name: God is not on our side because he hates idiots also.
Question: At the end of the film Blondie, sitting on the horse, turns around, aims his rifle, fires, and severs the rope with a single shot. Lets face it, that rope would be a very small target, and difficult to hit with precision, even from ten or twenty feet, and Blondie is now so far from Tuco that he would no longer even be able to see the rope. Could anyone hit such a small target from such a distance with such incredible accuracy?
Answer: Probably not, but remember...this is a movie, a western at that and they typically have over the top action to excite audiences. Kinda like how it's impossible to shoot someone's hat off without harming them. It's all for show.
Question: If Tuco seriously thought that The Man with No Name would shoot him, why did Tuco voluntarily stick his head in the noose? Death is death. Why choose hanging over gunshot?
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Answer: There's a show called "Hollywood Weapons: Fact or Fiction" which dealt with this exact question (s01e03). Blondie is roughly 200 yds away. In the show the host didn't hit the rope, but only missed by an inch on his first attempt. I definitely think an expert Sharps Rifle shooter could make the shot. The issue however, is the bullet would most likely not actually slice the rope apart as seen in the film (they fired the Sharps at point blank and the rope remained partially intact still). They also tested shooting a hat off someone and (as expected) the bullet just goes right through the hat without lifting the hat at all.
Bishop73
That was another thing that puzzled me. On several occasions in this film, Tuco is suspended from a rope, and Blondie cuts the rope by firing a bullet at it, (I think Clint Eastwood repeated the trick in "The Outlaw Josey Wales"). But if you fired a bullet at a rope holding a (rather large) person like Tuco (or a similarly heavy weight), even at close range, would it really sever the rope? I will have to look out for "Hollywood Weapons Fact Or Fiction." I hope they only used a dummy or a model to re-create the shooting feats. I don't think I would have liked to have been hanging on a rope while somebody fired bullets at me to see if this would sever the rope, or to stand there while they fired bullets into my hat to see if they could lift it off my head.
Rob Halliday