The good always wins

[whenthechimesend..]

Just look:

-Fistful of Dollars: Joe is the good. Joe wins.
-For a Few Dollars More:Monco and Mortimer are the good. Monco and Mortimer win.
-The Good, the Bad and the Ugly:Blondie is the Good, literally. Blondie wins.
-Once upon a Time in the West:Harmonica is the good. Harmonica wins.
-My Name is Nobody (I consider it a Leone movie):Nobody and Jack are the good. Nobody and Jack win.
-Once upon a Time in America:Noodles is the good. Wait, is he? Forget it... Anyway he wins.

The only exception is Duck you Sucker. John is the good. John loses.

I know Leone's goods aren't particularly good but they are far above from the bads. But I'm just posting this because once I saw someone saying that Leone challenged the Hollywood good/bad white hat/black hat standards by not always making the good win, which isn't true.

[The Firecracker]

-Once upon a Time in America:Noodles is the good. Wait, is he? Forget it... Anyway he wins.

well Noodles was the cause in death of all his friends. He doesnt shoot the person responsible for his loss in life and loses all the cash...I dont think he wins at all.

[Tim]

  Cheyenne doesn't win, although I guess it depends on how you look at the character.  He's not really a good guy or a bad guy, kinda in between instead.

  And its not a Leone spaghetti, but I think a western titled The Great Silence doesn't have the good winning in the end.  Or so I hear....   

[dave jenkins]

The only exception is Duck you Sucker. John is the good. John loses.

Why do you think he loses? He defeats Gunther Ruiz, doesn't he? He wins Juan's everlasting friendship, no? He becomes a Great Grand Glorious Hero of the Revolution, wouldn't you say?

Sure, he loses his life, but everyone dies, and the manner in which you leave this life makes all the difference.

And when Mallory has his flashback/vision of the good life ("only at the point of dying"), isn't he, perhaps, anticipating his reward or final state?

I'd say Mallory wins, wins, wins.

[dave jenkins]

well Noodles was the cause in death of all his friends.

Noodles thinks this, but we find out that Max was really responsible.

The good do not win in OUATIA, because there is no "good" in it. The princpals are all gangsters, and Noodles is a seriously deluded gangster (that is, he's a total loser, by definition).

[noodles_leone]

FoD, FFDM, GBU:
Clint wins in the three dollar movies... But he IS NOT the good, he's only less bad than the others.
OUATITW:
most positive charachters (McBain, Cheyenne...) are dead. Harmonica and Jill are the only one to stay. Still, the point of the movie is the death of the wild west... That is why Harmonica did only win against Frank, but they both loose the real battle... against "other morton" who will be along. Jill is the only real good winner, but is she really good? And don't forget she has lost her husband...
Duck you Sucker:
Hum... who wins? John is dead... he won, but he's dead... even if he feels a little better about the death of his irish friend, he has definitivly lost his ideals because of Juan's speeches during the whole movie... Which means that his life was completly pointless. Concerning Juan: "what about me?" 
OUATIA:
How can you imagine a worse ending for noodles? whatever he discovers, he still has lost everything: friendship, money, love..... His whole life.

[noodles_leone]

I know Leone's goods aren't particularly good but they are far above from the bads. But I'm just posting this because once I saw someone saying that Leone challenged the Hollywood good/bad white hat/black hat standards by not always making the good win, which isn't true.

But you're right: i think that the real challenge by Leone was that his "goodies" are not reall goodies. That's the major point. Still, the goodies do not always win in his movies, but it was and is the case in many Hollywood movies...

[DJIMBO]

i think u guys are missing the point somewhat. To me the points seems to be its not as black and white as the good winning and the bad losing, after the Dollars Trilogy its always something of a pyhrric victory: Harmonica has no place in the world, Juan's lost his whole family, and Noodles is a withered old man with his memories. I think Leone's message is winning, but at a huge cost.

[cigar joe]

whenthechimesend is trying to tie Leone to the old school idealistic bent of story but its more complicated than that.

In Leone films Good & Bad are untidy.

[noodles_leone]

i think u guys are missing the point somewhat. To me the points seems to be its not as black and white as the good winning and the bad losing, after the Dollars Trilogy its always something of a pyhrric victory: Harmonica has no place in the world, Juan's lost his whole family, and Noodles is a withered old man with his memories. I think Leone's message is winning, but at a huge cost.

That's more or less what I think;)

[franksgrandson]

Cigar Joe is right on the nail here, Leone films humans as we are, no matter how good we may appear when the lure of somthing we covet like money, better Job , the woman we want, we will as humans stoop to some of the worst excesses, the devil is in all of us we all have a price