A Fistful of Dollars

The Western genre changed forever with the release of Sergio Leone's landmark Spaghetti Western "A Fistful of Dollars," but not necessarily for reasons you might think when it comes to a movie deemed a "classic."

The story is weak, most of the acting bordering on comical and there's no depth to speak of, but the Akira Kurosawa-inspired style of "A Fistful of Dollars" makes it entertaining and a rather fascinating watch from a stylistic perspective. Leone did things with a camera that Hollywood hadn't seen before (probably … I admit I wasn't there), an approach that made the Western more entertaining yet more dramatic and tense.

Clint Eastwood stars as Joe, or more popularly, "The Man with No Name," in the role that launched the "Rawhide" star's film career. When he comes upon the Mexican border town of San Miguel – where you either get rich or get killed – the anonymous gunslinger puts himself at the center of a bloody feud between the Baxters and the Rojos, playing them off of each other for his financial gain.

The Man with No Name is essentially the Western's first true anti- hero. That's the primary contribution "Fistful of Dollars" makes to the genre – it pushes past the black-and-white cowboy heroes and wanted bandits dynamic. "Joe" has one character-revealing moment when he takes pity on a woman named Marisol (Marianne Koch) and her family, who are captives, in a sense, of the Rojo brothers. Otherwise, he's a troublemaker with money on his mind; we just like the guy because he's a badass who is less slimy than the rest of the characters.

The script annoyingly drifts between too overt and not explicit enough, but eventually it becomes clear that the only dialogue worth paying attention to is the clever quips, and that it doesn't matter how a point of tension or violence is reached, but how it looks and feels when we get there.

Leone isn't at the peak of his powers here by any stretch, which should be obvious given this was his first foray into Western territory and second film ever, but he gets enough right to open the door to a shift in thinking about how these movies are made. "Fistful" is an experimental playground for camera angles and various perspective shots. Cinematographers Massimo Dallamano and Federico Larraya play a lot with lighting, incidentally creating Eastwood's trademark squint. You might argue that Leone and crew stumbled upon greatness and that this movie is a combination of stumbles and sure-footed landings.

The secret weapon is Ennio Morricone. The composer's score feels familiar to modern audiences, but it's his creativity using raw sounds and singular instruments in striking patterns that ultimately redefined the genre. He brings the tension, mystery and swagger to the film. He even recognizes when silence works better than anything he could write. In so many ways, his music really glues this experiment of a movie together.

Movies that rise to the top in spite of their weaknesses by means of style and creativity are extremely rare, and they're usually an indicator of a film that's a game-changer to the art form. "A Fistful of Dollars" qualifies. It's a film that is much more important than it is great.

~Steven C

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'A Fistful of Dollars' is the first from Sergio Leone's trilogy about "The Man with No Name". The other two movies are 'For a Few Dollars More' and the famous 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'. Although 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' is considered the best this one comes pretty close. It is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 'Yojimbo' and it comes also pretty close to that movie. It was also the first real Spaghetti Western.

Clint Eastwood is "The Man with No Name" who comes to a small town where two families run the place. Both families hate each other and he thinks he can make a lot of money with playing both parties against each other. This is basically the main story. There are some sub-plots, one of them involves Marisol (Marianne Koch) who is taken by a leader of one of the families. Her husband and child still live in the town.

For me it was not the story that made this movie interesting. It was the whole atmosphere. I like all Leone's westerns for that reason. Of course some are better than others, but they are never boring. The way we see Eastwood kill four man early in the movie is simply spectacular.

This no 'Once Upon a Time in the West' or even 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' but we have the same atmosphere, the same kind of score by Ennio Morricone and a Clint Eastwood at the beginning of a great career.

Clint Eastwood was best known to American audiences for his role as Rowdy Yates in the series Rawhide. The series had ended and he was offered this strange new and challenging role in this movie of the American West that was made in Italy! Eastwood said his wife read that script and liked it. She said it was really "wild" because it was written in Western "slang" by Italians who really didn't understand English. He did this picture almost as a lark, and then read that it had become one of the biggest hits in Europe and then when it was released in America it outgrossed even the most popular current American films and made Clint Eastwood both a star and a phenomenon. Its strange to me that the best films ever made about the American west should have been made by Sergio Leone, an Italian who couldn't even speak English. Clint Eastwood said that all he knew in Italian was "arrevadershi" and all Leone knew in English was "goodbye" and yet these two combined to make an awesome film. As the poncho clad "Man With No Name", Eastwood created a role that hit us like a punch in the face and really re-defined the definition of the true Western hero. Eastwood tore out pages and pages of the dialogue and reduced his character to the bare bones to make him more mysterious. Leone said that he clad Eastwood in that sweat stained serepe to give him a cloak of mystery and put the cheroot in his mouth as a pendant between his two cold eyes and it worked like a charm. He broke all the rules and re-defined screen violence. I read that Leone wanted to make a blood and guts Western and show to the audience "I want them to feel what the hell it is like to get shot" and he does it! The scene where Clint is beaten to a pulp is one of the most graphic that you will ever see. It would have killed most other men!

A one man vigilante enters town, proceeds to take four shooters down without a frown, the filling of, a feudal sandwich, allies to both, presents his own pitch, it's not too long before his masterplan is blown. As the barrels start to role and then cascade, cadavers keep the coffin man in trade, the bullets ricochet, will our Joe make his payday, or will the bandits and the smugglers have their say.

It's hard to believe this 1964 western is as engaging as it was when I first watched it as a kid growing up. I've enjoyed its company many times since, as well as that of Yojimbo upon which it was based; the timeless tale of one man doing the right thing, fighting the corrupt and the crooked, just for a fistful of dollars or, in modern parlance, a computer full of crypto - I know which I prefer.

A drifter gunman (Clint Eastwood) arrives in the Mexican village of San Miguel in the border of United States of America, and befriends the owner of the local bar Silvanito (Jose Calvo). The stranger discovers that the town is dominated by two gangster lords: John Baxter (W. Lukschy) and the cruel Ramón Rojo (Gian Maria Volontè – a.k.a. John Wells). When the stranger kills four men of the Baxter's gang, he is hired by Ramón's brother Esteban Rojo (S. Rupp) to join their gang. However, the stranger plots a scheme working for both sides and playing one side against the other.

"Per un Pugno di Dollari" is a milestone in the history of the cinema, since the genre of "Spaghetti Westerns" didn't really exist previous to this movie. Sergio Leone used the storyline of Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo", replacing the samurai without a master ("ronin") Sanjuro Kuwabatake performed by Toshirô Mifune and the scenario of the rural Japanese town in Nineteenth Century by the stranger without a name (Clint Eastwood) and a small Mexican town in the border of the Wild and Far West. The result is a magnificent and remarkable movie, and beginning of the trilogy of Clint Eastwood's character Joe, who proves that "a man with a rifle beats a man with .45", completed by "Per Qualche Dollaro in Più" and "Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo", . My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Por um Punhado de Dólares" ("For a Fistful of Dollars")