Year of Release: 1964Country of Origin: Italy, Spain, Germany
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Marianne Koch, Gian Maria Volontè, Wolfgang Lukschy
Plot outline: A mysterious stranger plays dueling families against each other in a Mexican border town (IMDb).
From this tiny germ of a story was established the mythic persona of The Man With No Name who would become indelibly identified with Clint Eastwood and rocket him to stardom. As the prototype of Sergio Leone's westerns, A Fistful of Dollars shows the embryonic growth of Leone's vision, Morricone's scoring, and Eastwood's acting. Leone's widescreen compositions of the bleak and dirty West are decent and the beginnings of his claustrophobic cutting between the characters' eyes can be seen. Leone also switches viewpoints with his lens showing the death throes from the point of view of dying villain Gian Maria Volontè after being shot by Eastwood. Ennio Morricone, sounding heavily influenced by veteran composer Elmer Bernstein, scores an eclectic number of snippets of spare solo instrumentation, ranging from guitar, harmonica, piano, Jews harp, and whistles, occasionally breaking into crescendos of fully orchestrated music. Morricone's efforts resulted in very memorable musical ideas that would be more fully developed in his later works. Eastwood was the only recognizable actor in the bunch, at least from an American viewpoint. Most of the other performances ranged from fair to middlin. As the father of his success, Eastwood dedicated his 1993 masterpiece Unforgiven to Sergio Leone and Don Siegel - Dirty Harry (1971). (GC)
My judgement: *** out of 4 stars
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