A Fistful of Dollars (, "For a Fistful of Dollars") is a 1964 spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood in his first leading role, alongside Gian Maria Volonté, Marianne Koch, Wolfgang Lukschy, Sieghardt Rupp, José Calvo, Antonio Prieto and Joseph Egger.Variety film review; 18 November 1964, page 22. The film, an international co-production between Italy, West Germany and Spain, was filmed on a low budget (reported to be US$200,000), and Eastwood was paid $15,000 for his role."Ennio Morricone" by Jerry McCulley, essay in the 1995 CD "The Ennio Morricone Anthology", Rhino DRC2-1237
Released in Italy in 1964 and in the United States in 1967, the film initiated the popularity of the spaghetti Western genre. It is considered a landmark in cinema and one of the greatest and most influential films of all time. It was followed by For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, both also starring Eastwood. Collectively, these three films became known as the Dollars Trilogy, or the Man with No Name Trilogy, after the United Artists publicity campaign referred to Eastwood's characters in all three films as the "Man with No Name". All three films were released in sequence in the United States in 1967, making Eastwood a national celebrity.
The film has been identified as an unofficial remake of the Akira Kurosawa film Yojimbo (1961), which resulted in a successful lawsuit by Toho, Yojimbos production company. Kurosawa wrote to Leone directly, saying, "Signor Leone, I have just had the chance to see your film. It is a very fine film, but it is my film. Since Japan is a signatory of the Berne Convention on the international copyright, you must pay me." He and Toho received 15 percent of the film's revenue. Kurosawa earned more money from this settlement than from Yojimbo.
Few spaghetti Westerns had been released in the United States at the time, so many of the European cast and crew adopted American-sounding stage names. These included Leone ("Bob Robertson"), Gian Maria Volonté ("Johnny Wels") and the composer, Ennio Morricone ("Dan Savio"). A Fistful of Dollars was shot in Spain, mostly near Hoyo de Manzanares close to Madrid, but also (like its two sequels) in the Tabernas Desert and in the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park, both in the Province of Almería.
Plot An unnamed stranger arrives at the little frontier town of San Miguel. Silvanito, the town's innkeeper, tells the Stranger about a feud between two smuggler families vying to gain control of the town: the Rojo brothers — Don Miguel, Esteban and Ramón — and the family of the town sheriff, John Baxter; his matriarchal wife, Consuelo; and their son, Antonio. To make money, the Stranger decides to play these families against each other. He demonstrates his deadliness to both sides by shooting to death with ease the four men who insulted him as he entered town.
The Stranger witnesses the Rojos massacre a detachment of Mexican soldiers escorting a chest of gold (to exchange for rifles) and comes up with a plan. He takes two of the dead bodies to a nearby cemetery and props them up to make them appear alive. He sells information to both factions, claiming two Mexican soldiers survived the attack. Each faction races to the cemetery, the Baxters to get the supposed survivors to testify against the Rojos, and the Rojos to silence them. They engage in a gunfight, with Ramón "killing" the supposed survivors and Esteban capturing Antonio Baxter.
While the Rojos and the Baxters are fighting, the Stranger searches the Rojo hacienda for the gold, and accidentally knocks out a woman, Marisol, whom Ramón is in love with and is holding captive. He takes her to the Baxters, who arrange to return her to the Rojos in exchange for Antonio. During the hostage exchange, Marisol's son, Jesus, and husband, Julio, approach her. Ramón orders one of his men, Rubio, to kill Julio, but he is deterred by Silvanito and the Stranger. The Stranger orders Marisol to go back to Ramón, and Julio to take their son home. He learns from Silvanito that Ramón accused Julio of cheating during a card game and took Marisol as collateral.
That night, while the Rojos are celebrating, the Stranger kills the guards, frees Marisol, and wrecks the house where she was held to create the appearance of an attack by the Baxters. He gives money to Marisol and urges her family to leave town.
The Rojos eventually discover that it was the Stranger who freed Marisol. They capture and torture him, but he escapes. Believing that he is protected by the Baxters, the Rojos set fire to the Baxter home, massacring everyone, including Baxter's wife, as they flee the burning building. With help from the local coffinmaker named Piripero, the Stranger escapes town by hiding in a coffin, and recuperates in an abandoned mine.
When Piripero tells him that Silvanito has been captured and tortured by the Rojos for the Stranger's whereabouts, he returns to town to confront them. With a steel chest plate hidden beneath his poncho, he taunts Ramón to "aim for the heart" as Ramón's shots deflect until Ramón exhausts his Winchester rifle's ammunition. The Stranger shoots the weapon from Ramón's hand and kills Don Miguel, Rubio and the other Rojo men standing nearby. He uses the last shot to free Silvanito, who is hanging from a rope by his hands.
After challenging Ramón to reload his rifle faster than he can reload his revolver, the Stranger shoots and kills him. Esteban aims for the Stranger's back from a nearby building, but is shot dead by Silvanito. The Stranger bids Silvanito and Piripero farewell, and rides away from town.
Cast
Additional cast members include Antonio Moreno as Juan De Dios, Enrique Santiago as Fausto, Umberto Spadaro as Miguel, Fernando Sánchez Polack as Vicente, and José Riesgo as the Mexican cavalry captain. Members of the Baxter gang include Luis Barboo, Frank Braña, Antonio Molino Rojo, Lorenzo Robledo and William R. Thompkins. Members of the Rojo gang include José Canalejas, Álvaro de Luna, Nazzareno Natale and Antonio Pica.
Development A Fistful of Dollars was originally called Il Magnifico Straniero ("The Magnificent Stranger"), before the title was changed to A Fistful of Dollars. The production and development of A Fistful of Dollars, from anecdotes, was described by Italian film historian, Roberto Curti, as both contradictory and difficult to decipher. Tonino Valerii alternatively said that Barboni and Stelvio Massi met Leone outside a theater in Rome where they had seen Yojimbo, suggesting to Leone that it would make a good Western. The actor Mimmo Palmara, a friend of Leone, told a similar story to Valerii, saying that Barboni had told him about Yojimbo, and he would see it the next day with Leone and his wife, Carla.
Adriano Bolzoni stated in 1978 that he had the idea of making Yojimbo into a Western, and brought the idea to Franco Palaggi, who sent Bolzoni with Duccio Tessari to watch the film and take notes on it. Bolzoni said that both he and Tessari wrote a first draft, which moved on to Leone, noting that Tessari wrote the majority of the script.
Fernando Di Leo also claimed authorship of the script, saying that both A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More were written by him and Tessari, and not Luciano Vincenzoni. Di Leo claimed that after Leone had the idea for the film, Tessari wrote the script and he gave him a hand. Di Leo would repeat this story in an interview, saying that he was at the first meetings of Tessari and Leone discussing what kind of film to make from Yojimbo. Di Leo noted that Leone did not like the first draft of the script, which led to him to drastically rewrite it with Tessari. Production papers for the film credit Spanish and German writers, but these were added to play into coproduction standards during this period of filmmaking, to get more financing from the Spanish and West German companies. Leone would suggest that he wrote the entire screenplay, based on Tessari's treatment.
Originally, Sergio Leone intended Henry Fonda to play the "Man with No Name".Frayling 2006, p. 141. However, the production company could not afford to employ a major Hollywood star. Next, Leone offered the part to Charles Bronson. He, too, declined, saying that the script was bad. Both Fonda and Bronson would eventually star in Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. Other actors who turned down the role were Henry Silva, Rory Calhoun, Tony Russel,Barnum, Michael The Wild Wild Interview: Tony Russell Our Man On Gamma 1 Video Watchdog No. 128 Dec/Feb 2007 Steve Reeves, Ty Hardin and James Coburn.Hughes, p.3 Leone said he wanted Coburn for the role, but he was deemed too expensive. Leone turned his attention to Richard Harrison, an expatriate American actor who had recently starred in the Italian Western, Gunfight at Red Sands. Harrison, however, had not been impressed with his experience in that film, and refused. The producers presented a list of available, lesser-known American actors and asked Harrison for advice. Harrison suggested Eastwood, who he knew could play a cowboy convincingly. Harrison would state, "Maybe my greatest contribution to cinema was not doing A Fistful of Dollars and recommending Clint for the part." Eastwood said "In Rawhide, I did get awfully tired of playing the conventional white hat... the hero who kisses old ladies and dogs and was kind to everybody. I decided it was time to be an antihero."Hughes, p.4
Eastwood said that he had a similar idea for adapting Yojimbo into a Western a few years earlier in Los Angeles, when a friend who was a fan of samurai cinema took him to watch Yojimbo at a Western Avenue theater that ran Japanese films. Eastwood recalled that he "remembered sitting there" and saying, "Boy, this would be a great western if only someone had nerve enough to do it, but they'd never have enough nerve." A few years later, after someone handed him the script for A Fistful of Dollars, "about five or 10 pages in" he "recognized it as an obvious rip-off" of Yojimbo, which he found ironic.
A Fistful of Dollars was an Italian, German and Spanish co-production, so there was a significant language barrier on set. Leone did not speak English and Eastwood communicated with the Italian cast and crew mostly through the actor and stuntman Benito Stefanelli, who also acted as an uncredited interpreter for the production, and later appeared in Leone's other pictures. Similar to other Italian films shot at the time, all footage was filmed silent, and the dialogue and sound effects were dubbed in post-production.Munn, p. 48 For the Italian version of the film, Eastwood was dubbed by the actor Enrico Maria Salerno, whose sinister rendition of the Man with No Name's voice contrasted with Eastwood's cocksure and darkly humorous interpretation.Christopher Frayling, For a Few Dollars More audio commentary. Retrieved 25 January 2016.
Visual style A Fistful of Dollars became the first film to exhibit Leone's distinctive style of visual direction. This was influenced by both John Ford's cinematic landscaping and the Japanese method of direction honed by Akira Kurosawa. Leone wanted an operatic feel to his Western, so there are many examples of extreme closeups of the faces of different characters, functioning like arias in a traditional opera. The rhythm, emotion and communication within scenes can be attributed to Leone's meticulous framing of his closeups.Frayling 2006. p. 100 Leone's closeups are akin to portraits, often lit with Renaissance-type lighting effects, and are considered by some as pieces of design in their own right.Sir Christopher Frayling, A Fistful of Dollars audio commentary (Blu-ray version). Retrieved on 15 September 2014.