All Movie Guide
The hugely influential A Fistful of Dollars launched the careers of star Clint Eastwood, director Sergio Leone, and composer Ennio Morricone. Essentially a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, the film was one of the first low-budget, Italian-made "spaghetti westerns" to reap a significant amount of money and develop a cult following in the U.S. marketplace. Though John Ford's 1956 film The Searchers marked the of end the traditional western, Leone's "Man with No Name" trilogy ushered in a new, highly stylized version of the genre, revitalizing it in the late 1960s. Dollars and its companions, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, are raw portrayals of suffering and violence which blur the lines of good-versus-bad. Eastwood's cold, squinting, anti-hero is at the heart of the new amorality; it would be a role that would influence the rest of his career. For Leone, the trilogy would be a training ground for his masterpiece, the big-budgeted Once Upon a Time in the West. Morricone went on to become one of the most prolific, instantly recognizable composers in movie history.
A Fistful of Dollars
Director: Sergio Leone Cast: Clint Eastwood , Marianne Koch , Gian Maria Volonté , Wolfgang Lukschy , Mario Brega , Carol Brown , Antonio Prieto , Josef Egger , Benny Reeves , Pepe Calvo , Margarita Lozano , Raf Baldassarre , Carla Calo , José Calvo , Bruno Carotenuto , Sieghardt Rupp , Daniel Martin , Richard Stuyvesant , Aldo Sambrell , Benito Stefanelli , Victor A. Catena , Roberto Cinquini , Arrigo Colombo , Massimo Dallamano , Sergio Leone , Ennio Morricone , Giorgio Papi , G. Schock , Carlo Simi , Duccio Tessari
- Release Date: 05/22/2018
- UPC: 0738329217396
- Original Release: 1964
- Rating: R
- Source: Kl Studio Classics
- Sound: [Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
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By the time Sergio Leone made this film, Italians had already produced about 20 films ironically labelled "spaghetti westerns." Leone approached the genre with great love and humor. Although the plot was admittedly borrowed from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), Leone managed to create a work of his own that would serve as a model for many films to come. Clint Eastwood plays a cynical gunfighter who comes to a small border town and offers his services to two rivaling gangs. Neither gang is aware of his double play, and each thinks it is using him, but the stranger will outwit them both. The picture was the first installment in a cycle commonly known as the "Dollars" trilogy. Later, United Artists, who distributed it in the U.S., coined another term for it: the "Man With No Name" trilogy. While not as impressive as its follow-ups For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), A Fistful of Dollars contains all of Leone's eventual trademarks: taciturn characters, precise framing, extreme close-ups, and the haunting music of Ennio Morricone. Not released in the U.S. until 1967 due to copyright problems, the film was decisive in both Clint Eastwood's career and the recognition of the Italian western.