A Fistful of Dollars (Italian: Per un pugno di dollari) 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.
[12] 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 composer Ennio Morricone ("Dan Savio").
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.
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.
With help from the local coffinmaker named Piripero, the Stranger escapes town by hiding in a coffin, and recuperates in an abandoned mine.
The Stranger shoots the weapon from Ramón's hand and kills Don Miguel, Rubio and the other Rojo men standing nearby.
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.
[14] 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.
[3] 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.
Other actors who turned down the role were Henry Silva, Rory Calhoun, Tony Russel,[16] Steve Reeves, Ty Hardin and James Coburn.
[21] Leone turned his attention to Richard Harrison, an expatriate American actor who had recently starred in the Italian Western, Duello nel Texas.
"[23] Eastwood would speak about transitioning from a television Western to A Fistful of Dollars: "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.
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.
He bought black jeans from a sports shop on Hollywood Boulevard; the hat came from a Santa Monica wardrobe firm; and the trademark cigars from a Beverly Hills store.
[32] On the DVD commentary for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, it is said that although Eastwood is a nonsmoker, he felt that the foul taste of the cigar in his mouth put him in the right frame of mind for his character.
[36] In 1962, expatriate American folk singer Peter Tevis, recorded a version of Woody Guthrie's "Pastures of Plenty" that was arranged by Morricone.
Some American critics felt differently from their Italian counterparts, with Variety praising it as having "a James Bondian vigor and tongue-in-cheek approach that was sure to capture both sophisticates and average cinema patrons".
Critic Philip French of The Observer stated: The calculated sadism of the film would be offensive were it not for the neutralizing laughter aroused by the ludicrousness of the whole exercise.
If one didn't know the actual provenance of the film, one would guess that it was a private movie made by a group of rich European Western fans at a dude ranch... A Fistful of Dollars looks awful, has a flat dead soundtrack, and is totally devoid of human feeling.
Written and directed by Monte Hellman, it featured an unidentified official (Harry Dean Stanton) offering the Man With No Name a chance at a pardon in exchange for cleaning up the mess in San Miguel.
[54][55] This prologue opened television presentations for a few years before disappearing; it reappeared on the Special Edition DVD and the more recent Blu-ray, along with an interview with Monte Hellman about its production.
[56][57] The retrospective reception of A Fistful of Dollars has been much more positive, noting it as a hugely influential film in regard to the rejuvenation of the Western genre.
Film historian Howard Hughes, in his 2012 book, Once Upon a Time in the Italian West, reflected by stating, "American and British critics largely chose to ignore Fistful's release, few recognizing its satirical humor or groundbreaking style, preferring to trash the shoddy production values...."[58] A Fistful of Dollars has achieved a 98% approval rating from 55 critical reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 8.3/10.
The website's critical consensus reads: "With Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo as his template, Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars helped define a new era for the Western and usher in its most iconic star, Clint Eastwood."
[59] The 67th Cannes Film Festival, held in 2014, celebrated the "50th anniversary of the birth of the spaghetti Western... by showing A Fistful of Dollars".
He claimed a thematic debt, for both Fistful and Yojimbo, to Carlo Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters — the basic premise of the protagonist playing two camps against each other.
"[65] Leone also referenced numerous American Westerns in the film, most notably Shane[66] and My Darling Clementine, both of which differ from Yojimbo.