Director: Sergio Leone
Screenplay: Sergio Leone
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Marianne Koch, Josef Egger, Wolfgang Lukschy, Gian Maria Volonté, Daniel Martín, Bruno Carotenuto, Benito Stefanelli
Country: Italy, Spain, West Germany
Running Time: 99m
Year: 1965
A nameless stranger (Clint Eastwood) rides into the Mexican border town of San Miguel and quickly finds himself in the middle of a bloody battle for power between two rival families, the Baxters and the Rojos.
Cannily realising there’s money to be made from playing each side against the other, the Man with No Name soon finds himself caught in the crossfire as the body count escalates, his only chance of escape a standoff against the Rojos’ mercilessly cruel leader, Ramón (Gian Maria Volonté).
Cinema has a habit of eating its own tail, especially the populist brand peddled by Hollywood. If it worked once, do it again until it stops working. If someone else made it work, steal it. This is nothing to be cynical about; The Maltese Falcon was a remake. So was Scarface. It’s a paradox that when film is at its most pure and dangerous, it might be on the second go-around.
And so step up Sergio Leone, who would remake Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo so blatantly he would be sued. Even so, A Fistful of Dollars, might be one of the most important films ever made. The first in an astonishing trilogy, a star-making role for Clint Eastwood, and Leone’s first collaboration with composer Ennio Morricone.
The 1960s started well with Hitchcock’s Psycho taking advantage of a waning studio system, but the masters were rejected for anti-establishment film. I’ve never been a fan of the esoteric, mumbling Easy Rider. Nothing wrong with that, but cinema needs a bit of grit to stay relevant. Towards the end of the decade, there was a void and a thirst for something new, something violent. Along with Arthur Penn’s seminal Bonnie and Clyde, somehow there was room for a dubbed, scrappy Italian b-movie. The mavericks of the 1970s beckoned and cinema would never be the same again.
Yojimbo was only released on UHD by the BFI just last month, so it’s a great opportunity to compare the films. It really is incredible how close A Fistful of Dollars sticks to Kurosawa’s screenplay. And yet, everything about Leone’s version remains extraordinary despite the familiarity. Just as there was no denying Tarantino’s talent in Reservoir Dogs despite blatant similarity with City On Fire.
The opening titles with gunshots like whip cracks; Ennio Morricone’s score for a generation; shots so close you can almost taste the blood and sweat. And that sound, with its typically clumsy dubbing, just adds to the character (even if you choose the Italian track, it’s still dubbed). Slight departures from the original narrative betray the Italian predilection for the macabre, and a sense of theatrics born of neo-realism. Meanwhile, Eastwood reveals an even dodgier set of morals than his progenitor Toshiro Mifune. Weaving throughout is Morricone’s timeless score; despite the violence, there’s more than one moment where the mise en scene is so potent it could be used for ASMR clips.
Nevertheless, A Fistful of Dollars was not the first Spaghetti Western. We know Leone was a bona fide genius, smuggler or not, but it was Clint Eastwood’s genre and career defining role as the Man with No Name that made the film viable in the States. It tells you something about the state of cinema in the 60s that Clint Eastwood himself had given up and abandoned TV’s Rawhide on a Spanish punt. That he is perfect in the role of the mysterious stranger should elicit nothing more than a shrug these days. Of course he was, he’s Clint bloody Eastwood. But in 1967, his home audience probably couldn’t believe the clean-cut Rowdy Yates could be this damn cold.
It’s his stillness that’s striking. Other characters move around him, not realising he is largely in control. Mifune is magnificent in the nearly identical role in Yojimbo, yet Eastwood is his own man with a mischievous glint and wry humour. As with Mifune’s Sanjuro, the “man with no name” is a misnomer, but certainly Clint too is a wandering masterless Samurai cowboy.
Eastwood would continue wandering through two more Leone films before helping to kick-start exploitation via Dirty Harry, the modern action movie from Magnum Force and rebuild the Western genre. He’s enjoyed one of the longest and most influential careers in film, all from taking a chance on an Italian pirate.
It wouldn’t have taken much for Leone’s film to have not made it out of the desert, but it did. And now it’s in glorious 4K in your living room for just a… ahem… fistful of dollars (sorry). Its formidable energy hasn’t dimmed and the long-awaited UHD release from Arrow is a delight.
VIDEO
There’s no getting away from it. A Fistful of Dollars was a mongrel of a film, so this 4K transfer courtesy of Arrow is a miracle. There’s a tangible gain in depth and detail and the sharpness can make it occasionally look brand new. The shots at dusk are gorgeous and, like Kurosawa, Leone understood there should always be movement in the image; dust, leaves, muzzle blasts, etc, are so sharp the film feels alive. Wider shots and occasionally softer light betray its age, but we don’t want this film looking perfect.
AUDIO
The English and Mono tracks have been restored, along with a remixed DTS track. It will never sound perfect due to the Italian mode of dubbing, but this edition is clear and punchy. The 5.1 remains heavy in the front, but Morricone’s score soars across your room; music full of character and eccentricity. Dialogue is sharp and bullets have a satisfying whizz.
EXTRA FEATURES
All of Leone’s films have been well served in home video releases, but even if you discount the wonderful 4K presentation, Arrow pull out all the stops.
Restored versions, outtakes, new making of material; there’s lots of new stuff, beautifully curated. Also, valuable archival material and commentary from Sir Christopher Frayling (no-one else has so thoroughly documented the Spaghetti era) is included. And I was pleased to see the weird TV version prologue with Harry Dean Stanton has survived another version.
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella
- Perfect bound collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Henry Blyth, Bilge Ebiri, Pasquale Iannone and Eloise Ross
- Double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella
- New 4K restoration from the original 2-perf Techniscope negative
- 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
- Original English and Italian front and end titles
- Newly restored original lossless English and Italian mono audio
- Optional newly remixed lossless English and Italian DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for the English soundtrack
- Optional English subtitles for the Italian soundtrack
- Audio commentary by film historian and Leone biographer Sir Christopher Frayling
- Audio commentary by film historian and critic Tim Lucas
- Trailers, TV spots and radio spots
- When It All Started, a newly filmed interview with film historian and critic Fabio Melelli
- Four Fingers Four Picks, a newly filmed interview with guitarist Bruno Battisti D’Amario
- Wind & Fire, a newly filmed interview with Morricone biographer Alessandro de Rosa
- A Night at the Movies, a newly filmed interview with filmmaker Paolo Bianchini
- A Fistful of Outtakes, highlights from the original rushes
- The Day the Soundtrack Changed, a new visual essay by musician and disc collector Lovely Jon exploring the film’s iconic score
- Marisol: Leone’s Madonna of the West, an archival interview with co-star Marianne Koch
- The Frayling Archives and A New Kind of Hero, two archival interviews with Sir Christopher Frayling
- A Few Weeks in Spain, an archival interview with Clint Eastwood
- Tre Voci, an archival featurette with Leone collaborators Mickey Knox, Sergio Donati and Alberto Grimaldi
- Opening scene with Harry Dean Stanton filmed for the film’s US TV debut in 1975, plus an archival interview with the prologue’s director Monte Hellman
- Restoration Italian Style, an archival featurette on the film’s remastering for DVD
- Location Comparisons 1964-2004, an archival featurette
- Alternate credits sequences
- Three comprehensive image galleries: A Fistful of Pictures, On the Set and Promoting ‘A Fistful of Dollars’
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