A Fistful of Dollars

A stranger in San Miguel becomes involved in a vendetta between two families. Playing one family against the other, he rescues a beautiful woman from captivity., The original spaghetti western, which made a star of Clint Eastwood as the laconic ‘Man with No Name’ – a tough gunslinger who gets caught up in the feud between two rival families fighting over a small frontier town. Stylishly photographed, with a haunting score by Ennio Morricone, it drew inspiration from the Samurai film Yojimbo, by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa., A wandering gunfighter plays two rival families against each other in a town torn apart by greed, pride, and revenge., A deadly man with no name arrives in an Old West town ravaged by the brutal feud between two rival factions, and amid the deadly fray, comes up with a scheme to play the two sides perfectly and get rich in the process., By the time Sergio Leone made this film, Italians had already produced about 20 films ironically labelled “spaghetti westerns.” Leone approached the genre with great love and humor. Although the plot was admittedly borrowed from Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961), Leone managed to create a work of his own that would serve as a model for many films to come. Clint Eastwood plays a cynical gunfighter who comes to a small border town and offers his services to two rivaling gangs. Neither gang is aware of his double play, and each thinks it is using him, but the stranger will outwit them both. The picture was the first installment in a cycle commonly known as the “Dollars” trilogy. Later, United Artists, who distributed it in the U.S., coined another term for it: the “Man With No Name” trilogy. While not as impressive as its follow-ups For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), A Fistful of Dollars contains all of Leone’s eventual trademarks: taciturn characters, precise framing, extreme close-ups, and the haunting music of Ennio Morricone. Not released in the U.S. until 1967 due to copyright problems, the film was decisive in both Clint Eastwood’s career and the recognition of the Italian western., A lone drifter plays two rival families against each other in a town torn apart by greed and revenge.