Editing in Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) and Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969)

Abstract

In the first part of this paper I establish the centrality of editing to cinema as an art form, with specific reference to Rudolph Arnheim, Andre Bazin, Jean-Luc Godard, and Gilles Deleuze. I then examine the approaches to montage editing taken by Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah, in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) and The Wild Bunch (1969). While both filmmakers use highly visible editing techniques there are also significant differences, particularly regarding the build-up to an action sequence and the sequence itself, their preferred shots and combinations of shots, and their use of music.