A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
Directed by Sergio Leone

Film Review

A Fistful of Dollars (originally released in Italy under the title Per un pugno di dollari) may not have been the first spaghetti western, but it is the first that counts.  Taking his inspiration (and virtually the entire plot) from Akira Kurosawa's samurai masterpiece Yojimbo (1961), director Sergio Leone not only reinvented the western at a time when it had degenerated into a sad morass of tired clichés, but also established the international reputation of his lead actor Clint Eastwood, who was at the time known only for his fairly undistinguished appearances in the American television series Rawhide. Whilst it is far less polished than Leone's subsequent westerns - including the sequels For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) - A Fistful of Dollars was something of a cinematic revolution.  It kicked the old clichés into the dust and pumped gallons of badly needed fresh blood into the veins of a dying genre (spilling quite a bit of it on the set).

Kurosawa may be the most obvious influence (enough of an influence to prompt the Japanese director to take Leone to court for breach of copyright) but it is not the only one.  The classic westerns of John Ford and Howard Hawks are referenced in Leone's tongue-in-cheek portrayal of the lone hero nonchalantly facing up to adversity and also in the inclusion of the landscape as a dynamic element of the drama, rather than just a pretty backdrop.    Clint Eastwood's unnamed character (referred to as Joe in this film but better known as The Man With No Name) is the amalgam of every western action hero before him, every bit as enigmatic, cool and deadly as Toshirô Mifune's anonymous samurai in Yojimbo. 

Unlike what we find in previous westerns (for example, George Stevens' Shane, 1953), the gunslinger we are invited to identify with is not a true hero; he does not wear his morality on his sleeve.  He is neither good, nor bad.  Whatever moral code he abides by is strictly his own, and it is hard for us to define just what that may be.  We struggle to understand just why the laconic stranger feels impelled to orchestrate the massacre of an entire town.  Is he an angel of judgement, on a personal crusade to punish the unworthy?  Is he a psychopath who delights in watching people suffer and die?  Or is he just what the film's title implies, a cold-hearted mercenary who acts purely for financial gain, extorting a few paltry dollars from the misery of others?  One of the charms of this film, and its two sequels, is that we never get to discover just who is The Man With No Name.  He is a force of nature, mysterious, wild and unfathomable.

When it was first seen, A Fistful of Dollars was widely criticised for its depiction of physical violence, in particular the drawn-out sequence in which Eastwood's character is brutally tortured by his enemies.  Today, Leone's film is judged to be considerably more honest about violence than previous American westerns, which tended to gloss over the fact that getting shot is a rather painful and unpleasant business.  In the classic western, one cowboy pulls a trigger and another instantly drops dead, sometimes with a muted grunt.  In Leone's film, and virtually all subsequent westerns (not to mention other genres), the act of taking a human life is shown to be a far nastier business, and so it should be.  Whilst other filmmakers (notably Sam Peckinpah) stole much of his thunder, Sergio Leone was one of the first film directors who had the guts to portray the suffering caused by violence in his films.  Far from being a sadist, Leone simply wanted to show that violence hurts, otherwise it is just meaningless spectacle.

Leone also broke new ground with his use of close-ups - long, lingering close-ups which give the spectator the chance to divine the intent that hides behind the impassive facades of his protagonists.  The dialogue tells us nothing about what the characters are thinking or feeling; what we learn about them comes entirely through what we see in their eyes or on their lips - hatred, fear, insecurity, cunning, contempt and lust for revenge.   Dialogue is so superfluous to A Fistful of Dollars that it could legitimately have been made as a silent film.  What dialogue there is serves merely to keep the plot moving, it adds nothing to the characterisation.  The characters reveal themselves not by what they say but by the subtle clues that are etched on their faces.  Eastwood is particularly adept for this kind of cinema; he is one of a rare breed of actor who finds it far easier to communicate with an audience through his eyes rather than his mouth.  It is no accident that most of Eastwood's subsequent screen roles would be variations on the one he portrays in this film - he was born to play the tough taciturn mystery man.  The film's other iconic performance is supplied by Gian Maria Volonté (here credited as Johnny Wels), who is superb as Eastwood's sharpshooting nemesis Ramón and would subsequently enjoy a high profile career in mainstream Italian cinema.

Another important element of the film is Ennio Morricone's distinctively jaunty score, which combines various cultural influences into a memorably haunting sound that is eerily reminiscent of Masaru Satô's score for Yojimbo.  Like the rest of the Italian cast and crew, Morricone is credited under a more American-sounding name (Dan Savio) and was a virtual unknown when he worked on this film.  Through this and his subsequent collaborations with Leone, he became one of the most sought-after and most highly paid film composers in the world.  His theme for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is arguably the best-known and most iconic in cinema history, so perfectly evocative of the film it accompanies.  Without a doubt, the phenomenal success of the spaghetti western owes as much to Ennio Morricone as it does to Sergio Leone.  The western would never be the same again.

Film Synopsis

A stranger rides into a small Mexican border town on a mule and is surprised to find the town almost deserted.  An innkeeper, Silvanito, tells him that two rival families are fighting to take control of the town - the Rojos and the Baxters.  Having shot dead four of the Baxters to prove he can use a gun, the stranger offers his services to the Rojos, but withdraws his offer when he realises they are not to be trusted.   He then watches in amazement as the Rojos set about massacring a party of Mexican and American soldiers as they exchange gold for guns.  Seeing an opportunity to make money, the stranger pretends to ally himself with the two rival families whilst calculating that they will slaughter each other in a bloody shoot out.  The stranger underestimates the cunning and ruthlessness of the Rojos, and pays a far higher price than he bargained for...