14/09/2012: A Fistful of Dollars [1964]

Westerns are one genre I have watched very little of. I've seen a few but in general I have little knowledge of the genre beyond visuals of cowboys and gun fights. So, in order to correct this and broaden my film knowledge I figured I should check out a healthy slice of westerns. I have however decided that that slice will be the Spaghetti Western sub-genre, and what better way than to start at the beginning of it all with Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars.

Before A Fistful of Dollars, westerns were primarily an American genre and as with any genre it had as set of well established conventions and styles that shaped how most American made westerns were. While westerns were not exclusively made in the United States, the genre was largely dominated by the American film industry until Sergio Leone made A Fistful of Dollars in 1964. Sergio Leone set out to make his movie at the time where the western genre was winding down and the Hollywood westerns had become nearly stagnant and lacked originality. While the western genre may have been dying in America, Leone saw that the audience was still there in Europe, and set out to revitalize the genre by inserting Italian film styles and subjects into a western setting. The result was the success of A Fistful of Dollars and the birth of the Spaghetti Western sub-genre.

Although, like most innovative genre redefining movies, A Fistful of Dollars was not entirely appreciated or accepted when it came out. However, it didn't take long for many other European directors to begin copying Sergio Leone's style to varying degrees of success. Eitherway, it seemed that Leone had successfully given birth to a sub-genre that would last for nearly two decades. While Spaghetti Western may have been a derogatory term first coined for the genre, as critics claimed that the Spaghetti Western was inferior to the American Westerns, it has since been embraced and the genre still has much influence today.

Real men wear ponchos.

There were quite a few defining elements to A Fistful of Dollars that created the sub-genre. First, the movies are typically low-budget productions in comparison to the Hollywood productions. This lead to the use of lesser known, multinational and multilingual casts as well as inexpensive filming locations. Literally hundreds of Spaghetti Westerns were filmed in the Tabernas Desert in Spain, because it was environmentally similar to the American Southwest and Mexico, where most Westerns are set and filmed. There were only three major studios in the Tabernas Desert, and so if one watches enough Spaghetti Westerns, they will undoubtedly recognize a few sets in a couple different movies. As for the cast, with so many people speaking different languages, most Spaghetti Westerns are dubbed over in post-production which leads to the typical out of sync and out of place sounding dialogue. However, these are all marks of the sub-genre.

It is because of they are low budget, Italian productions that I had never actually thought that any of Clint Eastwood's movies fell into the category of Spaghetti Westerns. I only really know Clint Eastwood for his iconic macho man reputation, and so I always assumed he was jut an American star. However, he is actually an international icon and got his big start in A Fistful of Dollars. It is interesting to think that such a star got his start on an Italian production where the only way he could communicate with the director and most of the crew was threw the stunman/unofficial translator. While Eastwood wasn't Leone's first choice, 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."" If you only take one thing from A Fistful of Dollars, it is that Clint Eastwood is a badass now, and he was a badass then.

One of the defining elements of Spaghetti Westerns was their use of anti-heroes and a lot more dark grittier grey areas than American Westerns which were predominantly cut and dry, black and white hero stories. In Leone's A Fistful of Dollars however, The Man With No Name is more of an anti-hero and when he rides into a town completely dominated by two warring factions he cunningly plays the two against each other for his own gain. Not much of a hero is he, but that's the point. In the American release, they actually added in a scene at the beginning where The Man With No Name is ordered to help the town in order to receive a pardon, but that is just because Americans apparently weren't capable of liking a movie where a man was simply driven by his own needs. In the end though, The Man With No Name does become something of a hero, as he saves a family and the town from both sides only to move on, and presumably be seen again in A Few Dollars More.

Also to be heard again is Ennio Morricone, who composed the soundtrack to A Fistful of Dollars as well as the rest of the trilogy and many other Spaghetti Westerns. The soundtrack to the film was an important part of the film for Sergio Leone, and the reason many scenes play out so long is because he didn't want the music to end. Some argue that A Fistful of Dollars plays out like an opera, and Sergio Leone himself has said that he wanted his western to have an operatic feel which is why you find yourself listening mostly to the music as the dubbed dialogue is rather sparse. The music is used extremely well to set the tone and and atmosphere and always triggers anticipation as the tension builds before action sequences, which are more violent than typical westerns.

I feel like some cast member did this as a joke and it just stuck.

Over the next couple months I will continue to watch my way through a dozen or so Spaghetti Westerns starting with Sergio Leone's The Man With No Name Trilogy. With A Fistful of Dollars I started at the sub-genre's beginnings, and by the end the genre will have dissolved into more of a comedic parody of itself as all genres tend to. However, while westerns aren't as popular today,
they still had a great influence on cinema, and we are about to see Quentin Tarantino's homage to the sub-genre in his upcoming film Django Unchained. Seems like a good time to take a look at the genre, as I tend to always watch the homages first, and then go back and look at their influences.

Link:
A Fistful of Dollars IMDb