Cinema Nirvana Presents: "A Fistful of Dollars"

The Master enters a battle gravely,

With sorrow and with great compassion,

As if he were attending a funeral.

--- Tao Te Ching

Okay, I’m going to go out on a limb here and state unequivocally, that Fistful of Dollars (along with its “sequel” For A Few Dollars More) are among my all-time favorite films!

AND, even if you think you don’t like ‘westerns,’ or ‘spaghetti westerns’ in particular, or (gasp) Clint Eastwood (who, again, I will gladly cop to thinking is one of America’s great filmic and cultural geniuses), I am going to go further out on that limb and say that I think I can impress you with the overwhelming cultural, social, moral, and dharmic significance of this revolutionary, simultaneously iconoclastic and iconic film.

Fistful of Dollars is the first of Sergio Leone’s stylized, cut-rate westerns (shot for $200,000 in Spain by Italians, with an American fairly unknown actor, and a pan-European cast). It is also often thought of as the first of its kind: a new genre, the spaghetti western. When shot in 1963, the western was fairly moribund. Leone created a revolution by taking a revisionist approach, reflecting the European love-hate relationship to America.

By the end of the 1950s, the American western had become a caricature of itself, with unreflective good guys (with white hats) dispatching Indians and bad guys (wearing war paint and feathers and black hats respectively), filled with a naïve heroism that had become more laughable than believable. Leone’s West has no room for such Boy Scouts, but its men were driven by greed, lust, revenge and not a little sociopathic sadism. Using the traditional elements of the conventional genre, Leone took a new angle – right down to filming the horses, rather than in noble, photogenic profile, but from behind, “up their asses,” as he put it!

Leone replaced the usual grandiose expansive and optimistic music of the conventional Western with the haunting, wistfully sad themes of Ennio Morricone; the frenzied accelerating action of stagecoaches and war-painted Indians of the typical Western climax with frozen, extreme close-ups, and the stark black and white morality with the moral ambiguity of its lead character symbolized by his brown hat.

One of the most interesting facts about this film is that Leone’s first choices for “The Man With No Name” were Henry Fonda, who they couldn’t afford, and then Charles Bronson who declined the role, arguing that the script was bad. Ironic, considering that this is the man who went on to star in the revenge-porn Death Wish series. Also, in the “who laughs last” department, it’s interesting that both Fonda and Bronson would later star in Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West in 1968. (See, I told you this film would go on to have cultural significance!)

Other actors who turned down the role were Henry Silva, Rory Calhoun, Tony Russel, Steve Reeves, James Coburn, and Richard Harrison. In desperation, the producers then asked Richard Harrison for suggestions of lesser-known American actors, and it was he who suggested Clint Eastwood, who had been playing a cowboy in the television series, Rawhide. Harrison later stated, “Maybe my greatest contribution to cinema was not doing Fistful of Dollars, and recommending Clint for the part.”

Eastwood, who received $15,000 for the job, was himself instrumental in creating the distinctive visual style of the Man With No Name. The blue jeans, hat and trademark cigars, along with props from Rawhide including the Cobra-handled Colt, a gunbelt, and spurs all came with him from California. Just about the only thing supplied by the European producers was the Spanish poncho! While Eastwood himself is a non-smoker, he said that the foul taste of the cigar in his mouth helped put him in the right frame of mind for this character.

Though Leone initially feared that Eastwood was too “light” for the role, he reportedly took to Eastwood's distinctive style quickly, and commented that "I like Clint Eastwood because he has only two facial expressions: one with the hat, and one without it."

Because A Fistful of Dollars was an Italian/German/Spanish co-production, there was a significant language barrier on the set. Leone, and most of the cast and crew, did not speak English, and Eastwood communicated with them mostly through stuntman benito Stefanelli, who also acted as an unofficial interpreter for the production and would later appear in Leone's other pictures. Similar to other Italian films shot at the time, all footage was filmed silent and the dialogue and sound effects was dubbed over in post-production. Interestingly, it has been suggested that this linguistic isolation lends something to the isolated, non-attached vibe Eastwood has throughout the film. He’s in the film’s world, but not of it.

 If you’ve not seen Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, please make every effort to see it sometime before seeing A Fistful of Dollars if at all possible. The similarities between the films are so telling that Yojimbo’s producers won a plagiarism lawsuit against Fistful of Dollars’ producers. Kurosawa insisted that he receive compensation, writing Leone: “It’s a very fine film, but it is my film.”

British critic, Christopher Frayling identifies three principal sources for A Fistful of Dollars: Kurosawa’s samurai film, Yojimbo; Dashiell Hammett’s novel, Red Harvest; and Carlo Goldoni’s 18th century play, Servant of Two Masters. Be that as it may, Kurosawa won the lawsuit, receiving 15% of the film’s worldwide gross and exclusive distribution rights for Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Kurosawa later said that he made more money from this film than he did from Yojimbo!

Please join me Saturday, January 21st at 7:30 PM for a screening of this contemporary classic, some free pop corn, dharma talk and discussion, and the dana offering to a local charity soon to be announced.

See you at the movies!

poep sa frank jude