It's great to see MGMDigitalMedia offering up "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" free on YouTube in a restored edition presented in its original Techniscope aspect ratio.
The only thing about this film that drives me nuts is that while Ennio Morricone's principal themes add to the Western genre, some of his slow-moving compositions -- especially the painfully lengthy stuff played by the soldiers in the POW camp -- just don't fit the time period.
This film isn't the only Western to suffer musically. The otherwise classic "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" subjects its audiences to Burt Bacharach's excruciatingly grinding 1960s car-commercial style a capella voices and the suitable-only-for-irony "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head."
Bacharach does somewhat redeem himself with his musical treatment for the montage of Butch, Sundance and Etta's days in New York City and their arrival in Bolivia.
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