Long Duration, Too Long..

While watching Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966), I noticed there were many stylistic details that could have been done differently to make the viewing even better. One of the elements that took away from my experience watching the film was the long duration of shots. This coming from my personal view and not an audience as a whole, obviously there are some people who enjoyed the film as is.

In this film, when a scene was intended to portray suspense or anticipation, the duration of shots seemed to be carried out for too long. The very first scene of the movie shows Angel Eyes and a man staring at each other. This seemed to go on for at least 5 minutes if not longer. To me, I would understand there is a conflict whether they show people staring at each other for 1 minute rather than 5. Another time they do the same thing is when Tuco is looking for the grave. They film him running in circles and they show this for about 7 minutes straight. I don’t know about everyone else, but watching someone run in circles isn’t very enjoyable. It makes me dizzy and annoyed.

Though I know many viewed this film as a “masterpiece” and one of the greatest films, I really don’t think any film, no matter how good it is, needs to be nearly 3 hours long. No doubt I love The Pirates of the Caribbean movies and the Harry Potter movies, but I still don’t watch them a lot because of there length. If only the director cut out some of the extremely long and unnecessary shots, I think I would enjoy this film a lot more.