Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo (Il) (SE) Dvd+Libro)

Big fan of this movie -- and guess what? -- my Italian is also awesome.

Hence I have long wanted to own a copy of this in its original language. How's that for a purist?

To this end I ordered the original, "Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo" from Amazon's Italian site and had it imported to the U.S. (This step proved unnecessary, as I wasn't aware that the Italian version is also being sold on Amazon's American site: to wit, the page you're on. The one I got from Italy is exactly the same as the one you're seeing on this page, although mine didn't come with a book.)

Anyhow. Here's why I'm confused. Although these were filmed in Spain, the cast, crew, and -- excepting the principals -- most of the actors were Italian. Weren't they speaking Italian? I had long assumed so.

Unfortunately, on even the best versions of this you can get in the U.S. ("Collectors' Edition, and so forth") you've still got that horrible dub, and no option to view the film in its original language, which I had long assumed was Italian.

Well -- I hope you're sitting down for this -- the version you get from Italy, this one, has been dubbed into Italian -- even though it's in Italian! What the heck is going on?

And the dubbing is obvious. The words you're hearing don't synch up with what the actors' lips are doing.

But several questions remain: what happened to the original audio? What language was it shot in? I'm mystified!

My best guess at this point is that the crew, on the set, recorded crud audio knowing that absolutely everything would be dubbed and remixed later. Hence the original audio for this was probably tossed.

I wish somebody could clarify.

By the way, although this Italian version doesn't have English subtitles or audio, one nice thing I can say is that if you turn on the Italian subtitles, they exactly, exactly match the words you're hearing. That's nice. I hate when you're reading something that is a slightly reworded version of what you're hearing.