A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

The first of Sergio Leone's "spaghetti westerns" is now overshadowed by its superior successors, but remains an exciting introduction to this peculiar genre. Clint Eastwood redefined the notion of a hero in this film, a man who seems to operate by a code but doesn't feel the need to explain it. Although the U.S. advertising campaign billed Eastwood's character as "The Man With No Name," a name is one thing he does have - Joe - but almost everything else about him is a mystery except for his deadly proficiency with a gun. Leone's style would be more pronounced in later films, but this one provided the template. Eastwood is superb, of course, as is Gian Maria Volante (billed as Johnny Wells) as his deadly opponent, Ramon Rojo. If it's slow moving at times, the music of Ennio Morricone always takes up the slack.

Fmovies: A FISTFULL OF DOLLARS is a spaghetti western and an unofficial remake of the Akira Kurosawa film "Yojimbo". This film has revived the genre and topics that include a ghostly small town, evil and greedy antagonists and a mysterious anti-hero.

A cynical gunfighter 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. A mysterious gunfighter has strange plans and he will outwit them both. However, everything has its price...

Mr. Leone has managed to create a special style, which has returned the seriousness in the genre. The tempo is variable, but almost perfect. A stranger appears out of nowhere and quickly adapts to a smuggling game in a small town. It sounds familiar, but again, that is very interesting and exciting. The atmosphere is cold and morbid while the characters are dirty, evil and greedy. Simply, it had to come to the moral redemption at one point. After this turning point in the story, we, finally, can make some sort of distinction between good and evil in this movie.

Mr. Leone has skilfully disguised relationships between the protagonists, so it is very difficult to determine interests or emotions in this film. Of course, all those who has watched "Yojimbo" will try to connect the dots. A few supporting characters will bring a little humor and empathy in an cruel conflict.

Clint Eastwood as the Stranger is ruthless, cruel, and yet realistic and fascinating at the same time. Mr. Leone has set up a trap in his character. How will the audience react to a charming and exciting anti-hero? I guess we all know the truth. Mr. Eastwood has created an iconic character, in which humor bursts through an ice seriousness.

The sound effects are superb. I am delighted with the soundtrack. Close-ups, in addition to an unique style, give a tension and severity of a coming conflict. I do not justify an enormous amount of violence in this film, but again, I think that westerns do not need to be a sweet fun for the whole family. This subgenre has brought something new.

Although "A Fistful of Dollars" was not the first Spaghetti Western, it was the first to bring the genre to international attention. "Spaghetti Western" was originally an insult coined by US critics who were offended by the temerity of Italian film-makers in daring to tackle this quintessentially American genre, but later became a more neutral description of Westerns made in Europe. Actually, as most of these films were Italian/Spanish co-productions, and many of them were filmed in Spain, the title "Paella Western" would have been just as appropriate.

This was also the film that made a major star of Clint Eastwood. It was the first film in Sergio Leone's "dollars trilogy"; Eastwood was to star in the other two, "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". His character in all three films is billed as "The Man with No Name", although here that is not quite accurate as he is referred to in the film itself as Joe, and represents a new breed of Western hero.

Most previous Western heroes, as played by the likes of John Wayne, Alan Ladd or Gregory Peck, were heroic in both senses of the word. They were not only physically courageous but also morally virtuous, standing up for ideals of honour and justice against the villains. Some films had heroes who were morally flawed, such as Howard Kemp, James Stewart's character in "The Naked Spur", but the films themselves still took a moralistic line, with these flaws condemned as moral weaknesses. By the end of "The Naked Spur" Kemp has undergone redemption though a change of heart.

The Man with No Name, by contrast, was deliberately presented as an amoral anti-hero. He is courageous, but does not stand for any idealistic moral principles. He is occasionally capable of altruism, but most of the time is motivated by self-interest. He is a hard-bitten, mercenary, laconic loner. Eastwood also gave him a distinctive physical appearance, characterised by his trademark poncho and cigar. He also sports a beard or stubble, whereas most earlier Western heroes had been clean-shaven.

The plot of "For a Fistful of Dollars" is said to be based upon the Japanese film "Yojimbo", although I cannot comment as I have never seen that film. Joe arrives in the Mexican border town of San Miguel. The town is dominated by two rival families, the Rojos and the Baxters, who make their money out of a lucrative trade in smuggling contraband into the US. Joe, a skilled gunfighter, sees this as a business opportunity, and plays the two sides off against one another, undertaking various jobs for both families while showing loyalty to neither. His mistake comes, however, when he for once performs a good deed. Ramon, the most violent of the Rojo brothers, has taken as his mistress a young married woman named Marisol, forcing her against her will to abandon her husband and young child. Joe helps her and her family to escape, and Ramon vows vengeance.

"A Fistful of Dollars" is one of those films which is perhaps better remembered for its influence on later films than for its intrinsic merits. It is one of the first "revisionist "Westerns", marking the start of a trend towards not only moral ambiguity but also a more realistic depiction of violence, shown not only in the shoot-outs, more messy and less clean-cut than those in many previous films, but also in the scenes where Joe is tortured by Rojos' thugs. This revisionist lin

A Fistful of Dollars fmovies. The epitome of the S.W. is violent , beautifully crafted and exaggerated . This was the first S.W. to receive a major international release . It is a remake of Yojimbo (1961), which itself was based on 1929 novel "Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett . It pits ¨Man with no name¨ against two families that are feuding over business : the Baxter (Wolfgang Lukschy , Margarita Lozano) and the Rojo (Gian Maria Volonte , Antonio Pietro , Sieghardt Rupp) . Meanwhile , Eastwood saves a damsel in distress (Marianne Koch) , her husband (Daniel Martin) and son . ¨Man with no name¨ is helped by Silvanito (José Calvo) and an old gravedigger , Piripero (Joseph Egger).

This classic Western contains slow and deliberating filming , elaborate shoot-outs , and portentous close-ups of grime-encrustred faces with bloodbaths included . A remake to Yojimbo by Akira Kurosawa , in fact he sued the filmmakers for breach of copyright . The impact of this Spaghetti opened the gate for the huge numbers of Italian-Spanish Western which made fortune for their producers and directors in the sixties and early seventies . This has been described as the first "spaghetti western", but when this film was made , there had already been about 25 such westerns produced in Italy . This one made Eastwood an international star and previously better-known for his running character in TV series ¨Rawhide¨. Leone did revive his career almost instantly on the strength of this film , though the role was formerly offered to Charles Bronson , Frank Wolff , Rory Calhoun , Steve Reeves and Richard Harrison . In fact , Richard Harrison was the one who suggested Clint Eastwood to Sergio Leone when the famed director was looking for the main actor , as Harrison said : Maybe my greatest contribution to cinema was not doing Fistful of Dollars , and recommending Clint for the part . Leone came to the set of ¨Rawhide¨ intending to recruit Eric Fleming for the lead in the upcoming "A Fistful of Dollars" , due to Fleming's off putting personality, Leone looked elsewhere , director Charles Marquis Warren suggested Eastwood as an alternative . As all of Eastwood's later Western and his ¨Dirty Harry¨ movies owe a considerable debt to Leone . Furthermore , here appears Leone's habitual secondaries , acting as ominous hoodlums , such as : Mario Brega , Aldo Sambrell , Antonio Molino Rojo , Lorenzo Robledo , Jose Canalejas , Frank Braña , among them.

It's a slick remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo , the plot is mainly ripped off from classic Japanese , as Kurosawa wrote to Leone reclaiming the copyright . Ultimatelly , the Toho (Yojimbo's producer) obtained the rights of exhibition and received 15% of the film's worldwide gross and exclusive distribution rights for Asian countries . ¨Fistful of dollars¨ was filmed in low-budget during seven weeks on location in Golden City (Sierra of Madrid) , and Almeria : Albaricoques and Tabernas ; besides , interiors located on Roman Cinecitta studios . In the premiere the main cast and technicians were replaced by American names as John Welles (Gian Maria Volonte) , master of arms Benny Reeves (Benito Stefanelli), Dan Savio (Ennio Morricone who composed a groundbreaking and streaking soundtrack) , designer production by Charles Simons (Carlo Simi) and even Bob Robertson (Sergio Leone) ; nowadays , justly stay the true names . For Leone enthusiastic with his usual trademarks , it's full of which made his films so memorable, others might find it a bit long but no one can deny it

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")

When Per un pungo di dollari, or A Fistful Of Dollars, was released in the mid-1960s, the term "Spaghetti Western" was coined as a putdown to these brazen new films that dared to recreate the Wild West in a place as far away as Italy. However, the last laugh was shared by the Italian directors, whose new style of portraying Colonial America in a realistic style rather than the romanticised way that was characteristic of John Wayne and his contemporaries will be remembered long after the films of the romanticised style are no more.

The plot is indescribably simple, as Clint Eastwood simply wanders into a town where gang warfare has stripped the economy to the point where only the local undertaker makes a profit and turns the two warring families against one another. Sergio Leone's best-known trademark, his dynamic use of widescreen ratios, comes to the fore here as Clint shares a film frame with no less than four of his enemies, all of whom have plenty to say to him and vice versa. This is one film where a pan and scan transfer is purely and simply vandalism. Some of the dialogue that is included here absolutely takes the cake for cleverness and wit, too. Asking four gunslingers to apologise to a horse, well, if it wasn't a man as famous for playing a gunslinger as Clint Eastwood, it'd be ridiculous.

Transplanting old Samurai legends into the Wild West works well, as you can see here. Simply having an old mercenary who travels the land in search of wrongs to right and battles to be fought makes the story a lot more compelling than the Westerns where we are told every iota of the characters' motivations in the hope that it will give them some depth. The element of the main hero not getting involved in every scuffle that the bad guys cause, our semi-nameless hero's ignoring a drunken thug shooting at a little boy being the most obvious example, was another master stroke, one that got Eastwood involved in doing the film to begin with. The confrontation at the end of the film works well, too, with pyrotechnics exploding all over the picture in a bright display that keeps the film powerful and yet focused at the same time.

All in all, Per un pungo di dollari gets nine out of ten from me. The lack of any interesting support characters does dull the story a little, but this mistake was quickly rectified in the two sequels. The addition of Lee Van Cleef also worked well, but in this effort, it's all Clint Eastwood, and while the rest of the cast are nowhere near as interesting, it's all a better watch than anything the Americans were lumping out at the time.