Do you others agree with me about the cemetery scene?

[Cusser]

Do you others agree with me about the cemetery scene?  Blondie threw Tuco a shovel and let him keeping digging at the Stanton grave, full knowing that nothing was there, I think to flush Angel Eyes out.  Blondie EXPECTED Angel Eyes to show up as the  grave was being unearthed; Blondie shows no surprise when Angle Eyes appears, keeps 100% cool.

My guess is that Angel Eyes was a couple hundred yards away watching everything play out, until he felt the time was right to appear.  Maybe Angel Eyes was suspicious about that being the correct grave, or he likely would've simply shot Blondie and Tuco in the back instead of tossing a second shovel (and then being screwed when no money was in the Stanton grave).

[dave jenkins]

Your explanations seem plausible.

[titoli]

Blondie threw Tuco a shovel and let him keeping digging at the Stanton grave, full knowing that nothing was there, I think to flush Angel Eyes out.  Blondie EXPECTED Angel Eyes to show up as the  grave was being unearthed; Blondie shows no surprise when Angle Eyes appears, keeps 100% cool.

My guess is that Angel Eyes was a couple hundred yards away watching everything play out, until he felt the time was right to appear.  Maybe Angel Eyes was suspicious about that being the correct grave, or he likely would've simply shot Blondie and Tuco in the back instead of tossing a second shovel (and then being screwed when no money was in the Stanton grave).

Where could AE have been hiding? Behind a cross? Or in a empty grave (where he could have been found as he doesn't know where the good one is). Both Blondie and Tuco know he could be around and still he manages to get behind the both of them. And Blondie can even assume that AE may assume that Blondie is having fun having Tuco dig the wrong grave: but that's too much assuming.  And how can Blondie be sure that AE will show up before Tuco finds that the coffin is empty? What then? And how can he be sure AE will fall for the stupid bait of unwritten stone? No, for me it is all a matter of suspension of disbelief.

[cigar joe]

There is one mausoleum in the cemetery he and is horse could have been in that, you see it during Ecstacy of Gold (I think it really functions as a camera set up)

[titoli]

There is one mausoleum in the cemetery he and is horse could have been in that, you see it during Ecstacy of Gold (I think it really functions as a camera set up)

Of course, you noticed it and Blondie didn't.

[noodles_leone]

I always assumed AE came from behind the mausoleum.

[dave jenkins]

Where could AE have been hiding?

Wrong question, but I understand you're new to the board.

Ebert, stealing from Frayling, disposes of the issue here:

A vast empty Western landscape. The camera pans across it. Then the shot slides onto a sunburned, desperate face. The long shot has become a closeup without a cut, revealing that the landscape was not empty but occupied by a desperado very close to us. In these opening frames, Sergio Leone established a rule that he follows throughout "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." The rule is that the ability to see is limited by the sides of the frame. At important moments in the film, what the camera cannot see, the characters cannot see, and that gives Leone the freedom to surprise us with entrances that cannot be explained by the practical geography of his shots. There is a moment, for example, when men do not notice a vast encampment of the Union Army until they stumble upon it. And a moment in a cemetery when a man materializes out of thin air even though he should have been visible for a mile. And the way men walk down a street in full view and nobody is able to shoot them, maybe because they are not in the same frame with them. Leone cares not at all about the practical or the plausible, and builds his great film on the rubbish of Western movie clich?s, using style to elevate dreck into art.

Either that or . . . AE was hiding (with his horse) in the mausoleum.

Anyway, welcome to the board. I'm sure you'll find interesting things to read here.