Il Buono Il Brutto Il Cattivo (1966 Sergio Leone)

Such a great plot - the cat and mouse between Blondie and Tuco, the separate story of Angel Eyes and how they become intertwined. Twists just where you don't expect them (a shell falling on the hotel, Tuco handcuffed to corpse, blue uniforms not grey). Constant prevailing gallows humour. Film could have been called 'The Three Bastards'.

Luciano Vincenzoni came up with the story on the spot, slightly riffing on his own La Grande Guerra (1959, remade as The Best of Enemies 1961, Sordi and David Niven). Age and Scarpelli contributed not much, Sergio Donati also was involved. Sounds like Leone was like Hitchcock, putting the story through rewrites, adding his own unique spin...

Loved Q's joke after first hanging / rescue / reward: "Well it's one way to make a living".

In the final shoot-out, Angel Eyes is definitely the one who's going to get shot.

I spotted a lens flare in the desert scene - Tonino Delli Colli a year before Conrad Hall in Cool Hand Luke.

Greed specifically; Treasure of the Sierra Madre generally

We came up with the idea of a film about the making of the film, with Ryan Gosling as Clint, featuring such stuff as the Spanish-Italian translation mix-up that caused the bridge to be blown up too early!

Interesting later to read that Leone was inspired by artists such as Degas, Magritte, Dali and de Chirico:

Giorgio de Chirico 'The Myth of Ariadne'