A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS
Clint Eastwood in The Man with No Name Trilogy
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Clint Eastwood in The Man with No Name Trilogy
Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry Movies
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A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
CAST
The Man with No Name, Clint Eastwood; Marisol, Marianne Koch; Ramon Rojo, John Wells; John Baxter, W. Lukschy; Esteban Rojo, S. Rupp; Benito Rojo, Antonio Prieto; Silvanito, Jose Calvo; Consuelo Baxter, Margherita Lozano; Julian, Daniel Martin.
CREDITS
Produced by Harry Colombo and George Papi. Directed by Sergio Leone. Director of photography, Jack Dalmas. Music, Ennio Morricone. Screenplay by Sergio Leone and Duccio Tessari, adapted from Yojimbo, by Akiro Kurosawa. Color by Technicolor and Scope. Released by United Artists. Running time: 96 minutes.
A Tistful of Dollars was the brainchild of Italian director Sergio Leone, who had long admired films about the American West. For years Leone had felt that the storyline for Japanese director Akiro Kurosawa's epic film Yojimbo could easily be adapted to a setting in the old West. This idea had worked a few years before, quite successfully, when director John Sturges adapted Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai and reworked it as the western classic The Magnificent Seven.
Leone financed the modestly budgeted film by raising the necessary two hundred thousand dollars from German, Spanish, and Italian interest groups. Of this total, Clint Eastwood received a fifteen-thousand-dollar salary and a chance to see Europe for free. His experiences were both humorous and frustrating, as he found himself the only person on the set who could speak English. Yet despite these problems, the film wrapped in a very short time, and Eastwood returned to America to continue filming Rawhide episodes.
In 1967, A Fistful of Dollars was released to eager audiences in the United States, having been a hit three years earlier in Europe. Although it was fashionable to scoff at the cheap look of the film at the time, as well as its laughable dubbing, A Fistful of Dollars outgrossed some of the most famous westerns in history. Leone's style, while crude, was nevertheless effective. Unlike many films, Dollars becomes more interesting with each viewing. Leone proved to have the skill and talent required to fashion an exciting film that was often excessive in gore but never dull for a moment.
More importantly, it provided Clint Eastwood the chance to prove he was more than just a minor TV actor. If his acting here is not memorable, the general impression his character made is quite unforgettable. Critics had laughed that Eastwood was nothing more than a temporary fad with teenagers, but this film would prove them wrong. Eastwood was not only here to stay, but with A Fistful of Dollars, he was beginning to make some of the most influential changes in the film industry that Hollywood had ever seen.
SYNOPSIS
When a cigar-smoking, tight-lipped stranger with no name (Clint Eastwood) enters the Mexican border town of San Miguel, he is harassed and shot at by a group of men in the employ of Sheriff Baxter (W. Lukschy), the leader of a powerful gang of criminals who sell whiskey and guns to the Indians, as well as fight continuous battles with a rival gang led by a man named Rojo (John Wells).
In revenge, this man with no name guns down the entire group of men who have annoyed him, leaving several bystanders more than a little impressed by his lightning-fast draw. Rojo, also impressed, hires him as a member of his gang. The stranger feels no sense of loyalty to Rojo, however, and sees him as the cutthroat he is. This opinion is reaffirmed when he witnesses a spectacular ambush, orchestrated by Rojo, in which Rojo steals a fortune in gold from an army caravan.As part of a plan to steal the gold for himself, the stranger stages a battle between the Rojo and Baxter gangs. He then locates the gold but not before being spotted by Marisol (Marianne Koch), a beautiful woman whom Rojo is holding captive. The stranger takes Marisol to the Baxters and leaves her with them. Baxter plans to exchange her for his son, whom Rojo is keeping prisoner at his ranch.
This infuriates Rojo and leads to another war between the two gangs. When the Rojo gang emerges victorious, the stranger comes out of hiding and slaughters all of Rojo's men. In a final showdown with Rojo, the stranger uses a makeshift bullet-proof shield to distract the gang leader long enough to gun him down.
The stranger then rides nonchalantly out of town, leaving a path of destruction behind him.
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