Screen Picks

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly/Duck, You Sucker! (Fri., Sept. 24, 7 p.m., Sat., Sept. 25, 1 p.m./Sat., Sept. 25, 7 p.m., $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542) Which came first: the wide screen or the wide-brimmed hat? Either way, few filmmakers have found an image better suited to the wide, narrow strip of a 'scope screen than Sergio Leone's iconic close-up of a man's eyes shaded by the sweep of his hat, staring through creased and cracked sockets in a manner that suggests all talk will soon become superfluous. The characters in Leone's Westerns, two of which screen in restored and expanded versions this weekend, are archetypes so large they start to overlap: The credits to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly identify which of Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach is which, but you'd be forgiven for thinking the terms apply equally to all three. Leone's flair for the grandiose sometimes got the better of him—his Once Upon a Time in the West is schematic to the point of self-parody, though occasionally more powerful for it. But The Good is bigger than any screen, a wave of emotion that threatens to engulf the spectator in prairie dust and stage blood.

The scenes restored to The Good, complete with new dubbing by Wallach and Eastwood, clarify some plot points, but it's nothing like the 20 minutes (and opening Mao quote) restored to Duck, You Sucker!, which also goes by A Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon a Time É the Revolution. Set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, Duck features Rod Steiger as a bandito and James Coburn as an IRA munitions ace who's drifted way south of the border. No advance screening was available for the latter, but more Sergio Leone is always a good thing.

Misc. Picks Speaking of excess, Exhumed queues up a double feature of glorious and ghastly rock 'n' roll: The Decline of Western Civilization and Pink Floyd The Wall (Fri., Sept. 24, 9:30 p.m., Broadway Theatre, Pittman, N.J.). The Broadway also doubles up on Chaplin Mutuals with The Count and The Adventurer, complete with organ accompaniment by Michael Xavier Lundy (Sun., Sept. 26, 3 p.m., $8).

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