A Fistful Of Dollars

A few months ago I wrote about Yojimbo, and mentioned that it was remade as A Fistful Of Dollars, Sergio Leone's Western. It wasn't the first spaghetti Westen, but was the first big hit in the genre, becoming the highest-grossing Italian film at that time. It was also the first starring role for Clint Eastwood, who got the role after many actors passed, including Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson. This meant that after the "Dollars Trilogy" was complete,  Eastwood was a huge international star.

The plot closely mirrors Yojimbo--a stranger rides into a town and finds that two rival gangs control things. The busiest man in town is the coffin maker. Eastwood plays the two sides against each other, taking money from both gangs while staying in the middle. As these films would show, though, The Man With No Name may have been it for the money, but he has also has a bit of the knight errant in him, so we root for him.

There was a lot of killing in this film. It includes the massacre of soldiers with a machine gun, and one of the gangs is wiped out when the other gang sets fire to their house and shoots them all as they run out. This excessive violence was pretty new for 1964, and the film did not receive good reviews in Italy. It was released in 1967 in the U.S. after a lawsuit by Akira Kirosawa for stealing the plot of his film was settled out of court. Leone had claimed that both films were based on Dashiell Hammet's novel Red Harvest, but Leone didn't credit him, either.

The U.S. critics were much kinder, recognizing Leone's bold visual style. He favored lengthy closeups and strong colors. He also used basic American Western tropes, such as the final showdown on the main street. The music by Ennico Morricone (here credited as Dan Savio) was iconic, very similar to his most famous score of The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, utilizing whistling and a chanting chorus.

While the film isn't as good The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly or Once Upon A Time In The Wvst, it's fun, with a great hero and sinister villains. There's also a pretty woman (Marianne Koch) whom Eastwood rescues from the clutches of one of the gangs, who stole her from her husband and child.

The Man With No Name is today one of the premiere Western heroes, and I think that Eastwood deserves a lot of the credit. He's laconic, stingy with words, but treats the whole situation with a mordant humor. For much of these films he's invincible, like Bugs Bunny, but does get the tar beaten out of him. But even when he can only crawl, he manages to escape confinement. Audiences like to know that their heroes are going to win in the end, no matter the odds.