For whatever reasons I was a reading a critical review of Chaucer's 14th century "The Pardoner's Tale" and I suddenly realized some wacky similarities with the ending of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

"The Pardoner's Tale" is credited as being the first English language story to present a plot device known as "the prisoner's dilemma". It's a 3-way battle of morality that typically ends up with everyone losing, due to greed. In Chaucer's story, 3 bandits find a treasure trove under a tree and agree to split it 3 ways. The problem is their individual greed ruins the deal as each plots to get the entire treasure for himself. As they wait for nightfall to move the treasure safely, one bandit says he'll go into town and get some wine & supplies, leaving the other 2 bandits to guard the stash. But bandit #1 secretly poisons the wine so he can keep the entire treasure to himself. Meanwhile, while he's away bandits #2 & 3 decide they'll kill bandit #1 on his return. What happens is bandit #1 comes back, bandits #2 & 3 kill him, then they celebrate by drinking the poisoned wine, thus killing them all on the spot. Nobody gets the treasure.

*** SPOILERS FOR TGTBTU BELOW ***

At the end of TGTBTU we have an epic illustration of the prisoner's dilemma, I'd say the most dramatic in film history. It's even more pronounced in the movie because, even though bandits #2 (Clint Eastwood) and #3 (Eli Wallach) have essentially formed a sketchy alliance against bandit #1 (Lee Van Cleef), we don't yet know it. To us, and to everyone except Clint Eastwood, it's an equal 3 way duel to the death.

Ima pause here to link to the scene because it's so amazing it bears re-watching: The Final Duel

The movie sets up the prisoner's dilemma perfectly. But Leone gives us a trick solution. Clint Eastwood has already unloaded Eli's gun and neutralized that threat. As we see at the end he's ok with sharing the treasure with Eli (after a little cruel snubbery). The only real threat is Lee. So Clint sets up the 3 way duel as a distraction for Lee, with every intention of shooting him which he does. In this scenario, bandit #2 wins by anticipating the prisoner's dilemma itself, knowing that none of them can be trusted.

A nice update to the 500 year old tale, wouldn't you say? Morricone's amazing score is icing on the cake ;)