A Fistful of Dollars

Looked back on as the perfect antidote to the encroaching staleness of the western genre, A Fistful of Dollars (1964) is oft-hailed as the premiere spaghetti western - Sergio Leone's one-man revitalisation of a dying genre, the first of his three westerns with a then-unknown Clint Eastwood, and the beginnings of what would perhaps become some of the most famous of western trademarks that are still being used today. By setting the story south of the border, and abandoning the usual cast of cliched characters, Leone managed to invent an entirely new kind of western - a less romanticised, more realistic representation that utilised a heightened level of violence to make 60s audiences take notice.

In contrast to the usual Hollywood conventions, Eastwood's nameless character is little more than a mercenary, playing the town's villains off against one another in an ammoral and machiavellian bid for cash. Put simply - the usual codes of honour don't apply here, and the film is better for it. A Fistful of Dollars is as sharp, edgy and gritty now as it was then... the protagonist may lack integrity but the film itself does not. Eastwood's character is the height of cool, playing his adverseries for chumps, and it's impressive to think that the actor pretty much materialises here in his film debut as the fully formed icon he would forever be remembered as.

One character remarks "It's like playing cowboys and indians" - calling to mind the discarding of usual Western stereotypes and conventions, and Eastwood instead plays games with death itself. This trailblazing isn't just to be found in the story itself either, Leone's style of direction is probably more famous than the director is himself. Leone's use of musical cues, realisticly brutal violence, extreme close-ups of scrutinising eyes and establishing shots of characters in profile, are all now well-known hallmarks of the genre, and were an astoundingly fresh approach at a time when directors favoured long-shots and obscured, blood-free shootings.

I say this a lot on this blog, but this is another MUST-SEE for any serious film fan. Watch it for Eastwood's 'man with no name', watch it for the cool lines and hardened characters facing off, and watch it for the refreshing lack of morals that frees the story up for all sorts of sideways trickery. The ending is awesome.

TRIVIA: The plotline is directly lifted from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. Kurosawa's successfully sued Leone for breach of copyright.

Leone and Eastwood followed up A Fistfull of Dollars with the equally influential and memorable A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (widely cited as one of the best westerns of all time).

When the film was sold to American TV the networks added a new beginning to the film to give Eastwood's character some sort of moral upstanding. Both Eastwood and Leone denounced the TV edition.

The protagonist's role was originally offered to both Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda. Leone couldn't afford them though and had to settle for Eastwood, who was a minor television actor at the time. Both Fonda and Bronson would later star in Leone's epic classic, Once Upon a Time in the West.

One of the film's stuntmen had to act as an interpretor between Eastwood and the rest of the production crew (who all spoke Italian or Spanish, including the director).

DIRECTOR: Sergio Leone
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Victor Andres Catena, Jaime Comas Gil and Sergio Leone, with extra story input by A. Bonzzoni, based on the film Yojimbo.
KEY ACTORS: Clint Eastwood, Gian Maria Volonte, Antonio Prieto, Sieghardt Rupp, Wolfgang Lukschy, Marianne Koch

RELATED TEXTS:
- Based on the Akira Kurosawa samurai film Yojimbo, with similarities close enough to attract legal action!
- Sergio Leone followed A Fistful of Dollars with two more films featuring Eastwood as an identical character - For a Few Dollars More and The Good The Bad and The Ugly. These are often referred to as either the 'Dollars' trilogy or the 'Man with No Name' trilogy.
- Leone claimed both his film and Yojimbo were both influenced by the Dashiell Hammet crime novel Red Harvest, which features a similar plot and mysterious man with no name as the protagonist.
- Remade as a prohibition-era gangster/action flick in 1996 as Last Man Standing, starring Bruce Willis and Christopher Walken.
- The influence A Fistful of Dollars has had on modern pop-culture is huge, with references in TV shows, films and literature far too numerous to mention.
- Aside from the Dollars trilogy Sergio Leone made two other westerns - Once Upon a Time in the West and A Fistful of Dynamite.