A Fistful Of Dollars marked the start of the spaghetti western genre and launched Clint Eastwood's career. Until this film, Eastwood had been a bit player in numerous forgettable potboilers and the star of the modest TV western Rawhide. But his ultra-cool performance in this atmospheric western really sealed his long and lucrative future. The film also marked the emergence of Sergio Leone as a masterful director - the ultimate evidence of his talent coming a few years later with the stunning Once Upon A Time In The West. Here, Leone uses a dazzling array of close-ups and long shots, and fits the terrific Ennio Morricone score around the action, with considerable skill.
The simplistic plot is basically a borrowing of the Japanese movie Yojimbo. A tough, stolid, resourceful drifter named Joe (Clint Eastwood) arrives in the border town of San Miguel. He learns that the town is controlled by two feuding families - the Baxters and the Rojos. One one side, John Baxter (Wolfgang Lukschy) acts as the town's ineffective and respectless sheriff; on the other side, the Rojos have murdered and bullied their way to mock-aristocratic status under the guidance of the psychopathic Ramon Rojo (Gian Maria Volonte). Aided by a reluctant bartender and a considerably over-worked coffin maker, Joe cunningly plays each side off against each other. For each family he carries out various killings and other such dirty jobs, pocketing increasing amounts of money for his lethal services while showing no loyalty to either party. But his plans come unstuck when he learns that Ramon has taken a girlfriend named Marisol (Marianna Koch) against her will, forcing her to leave her husband and son and forbidding her from seeing them again. That kind of bullying Joe just won't stand for.....
Dripping with atmosphere and suspense, A Fistful Of Dollars was a totally new slant on the tired western genre in 1964. The minimalist plot actually becomes a strength rather than a weakness, lending the film an air of enigmatic mystery (reportedly Eastwood, at his own insistence, had his scant dialogue cut further in order to make Joe come across as the archetypal man of mystery). Gian Maria Volonte is excellent as the villain, giving a performance of real menace and cruelty as the despicable Ramon Rojo. And Ennio Morricone's simple but energetic score has since become an iconic piece of western movie music. A Fistful Of Dollars is an important western milestone. Admittedly, it steals its story from elsewhere and is full of far-fetched gunfights, but it oozes style and is so cleverly put together that its influence on subsequent movies is almost beyond measurement.
The simplistic plot is basically a borrowing of the Japanese movie Yojimbo. A tough, stolid, resourceful drifter named Joe (Clint Eastwood) arrives in the border town of San Miguel. He learns that the town is controlled by two feuding families - the Baxters and the Rojos. One one side, John Baxter (Wolfgang Lukschy) acts as the town's ineffective and respectless sheriff; on the other side, the Rojos have murdered and bullied their way to mock-aristocratic status under the guidance of the psychopathic Ramon Rojo (Gian Maria Volonte). Aided by a reluctant bartender and a considerably over-worked coffin maker, Joe cunningly plays each side off against each other. For each family he carries out various killings and other such dirty jobs, pocketing increasing amounts of money for his lethal services while showing no loyalty to either party. But his plans come unstuck when he learns that Ramon has taken a girlfriend named Marisol (Marianna Koch) against her will, forcing her to leave her husband and son and forbidding her from seeing them again. That kind of bullying Joe just won't stand for.....
Dripping with atmosphere and suspense, A Fistful Of Dollars was a totally new slant on the tired western genre in 1964. The minimalist plot actually becomes a strength rather than a weakness, lending the film an air of enigmatic mystery (reportedly Eastwood, at his own insistence, had his scant dialogue cut further in order to make Joe come across as the archetypal man of mystery). Gian Maria Volonte is excellent as the villain, giving a performance of real menace and cruelty as the despicable Ramon Rojo. And Ennio Morricone's simple but energetic score has since become an iconic piece of western movie music. A Fistful Of Dollars is an important western milestone. Admittedly, it steals its story from elsewhere and is full of far-fetched gunfights, but it oozes style and is so cleverly put together that its influence on subsequent movies is almost beyond measurement.