A Fistful Of Dollars

UK Release Date. 12 September 1964
Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 39 mins
Director. Sergio Leone
Cast. José Calvo, Clint Eastwood, Marianne Koch, Gian Maria Volontè.
Rating. 82%

Review. 

The first of Sergio Leone's seminal Spaghetti Westerns is by definition a landmark. A Fistful Of Dollars helped define a new era for the western, because by 1964, the genre was starting to creak. Leading lights of the 'classic' western like John Ford and John Wayne were on the wane. Then along came the Spaghetti Western. With little deference to tradition, Leone unveiled a brash film with nihilistic disregard for morality and flooded the screen with genuine personality - extreme close-ups picking out every hair follicle and bead of sweat on faces as rugged as the Spanish landscape the director transformed into untamed America.

A Fistful Of Dollars and the other films in the trilogy - For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly - would inspire an entire canon of films that challenged the romantic and, at times, sanctimonious myth of the Old West. While subsequent films, including some of Leone's own, would advance the formula, A Fistful Of Dollars paved the way for a brand new genre to explode onto the big screen.

Unashamedly, Leone borrowed heavily from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, the epic samurai film featuring Toshirô Mifune as the enigmatic ronin, Sanjuro Kuwabatake. In A Fistful Of Dollars, Clint Eastwood stars as the anonymous lone gunslinger (dubbed 'Joe') who arrives in the quiet, run-down town of San Miguel where he finds himself caught between two warring families - the corrupt Baxters and the murderous Rojos. Joe, always looking for angles, proceeds to play both sides against each other. Indeed, the scenes where Eastwood is navigating the conflict between the two opposing factions are handled spectacularly, especially any of the gun-fighting sequences. Eastwood builds on Toshiro Mifune's characterisation but creates an iconic antihero all of his own - one who rides a mule, appears forever stubbled, chewing on a cheroot cigar, and wearing a threadbare poncho. Despite a lack of dialogue Eastwood produces an astonishingly fully-formed performance, one that set him on the road to international stardom and established a pattern that would yield many unforgettable reprises for the actor, who largely defined emotion by its absence.

The film is a masterclass in efficient storytelling; A Fistful Of Dollars never lets up, its is relentless and perfectly paced. This was the film that established Sergio Leone's style. Somehow, Leone makes the borders of the frame feel limitless, his camera moves unpredictably, as if, at times, he could barely contain himself. The action is shot with marvellous invention and combined with Ennio Morricone's indelible score, there is a well-placed confidence about A Fistful Of Dollars. Remarkably, I don't think the film has aged a day since its release.

Now, we are able to appreciate that A Fistful Of Dollars was the perfect storm. Sergio Leone's excess, Clint Eastwood's minimalism and the first of many brilliant scores from Ennio Morricone result in a timeless classic that defined a genre.