A supremely entertaining western from 1964!
I will say the dubbing nature of 'A Fistful of Dollars' is a little distracting early on, but by the time the opening portion concluded I was incredibly interested in what was happening onscreen. The pacing is excellent, thanks to some very fine cinematography, great action sequences and a top notch score.
Clint Westwood debuts as a leading movie star and is terrific throughout, portraying the wonderfully named J̶o̶e̶ "the Man with No Name". It's little surprise these are the films that truly made him. Away from Eastwood, I really enjoyed the trio that played the Rojo brothers - Gian Maria Volonté (aka Johnny Wels), Sieghardt Rupp and Antonio Prieto. They're just as important as the main man and play the roles superbly.
Bring on the sequels!
Clint Eastwood is great, he does a lot with just his facial expressions. The score is fantastic really sets the mood. I really liked the editing and all the close ups.
I was born a century late
This is not 'Once Upon a Time in the West' or even 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' but we have the same atmosphere, the same kind of score by Ennio Morricone and a Clint Eastwood at the beginning of a great career.
Here it is, the start of Clint Eastwood's ongoing career. He's just got it all in every scene. No matter what is going on, The Man with No Name is owning it all. Especially those smokes. Damn he smokes a lot in this movie. Of course, this soundtrack is wonderful. Ennio Morricone always knocks it out of the park with his music. Especially in the climax. The music just makes it sooooo much more tense.
Not to say that the climax, or any of it, would have been flat otherwise. The cinematography is wonderful throughout. Sergio is a great director, and this is a nice start to what would escalate even better down the road. I only have a couple minor issues that take it out of a higher rating. First, the start of the movie takes a bit of time to get into. What exactly is happening is tough to understand your first time through. And of course, the voices barely match the lips. You get past both of these issues after about 15 minutes or so, not a huge problem. If you like anything related to Westerns, I'd say watch this spaghetti for sure.
What a lovely score by Ennio Morricone
Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood team up for the first time and the partnership quickly bears fruit in this classic, scene-shaping western. While the plot is lifted almost verbatim from Akira Kurosawa's epic Yojimbo, the real devil is in the details as Leone challenges dozens of overplayed western tropes and instantly changes the genre's personality from a preachy, predictable windbag to a dirty, selfish, no-nonsense killer.
Eastwood is outstanding in his first outing as the Man With No Name, (curiously addressed as "Joe" in this chapter) bringing so much depth, certainty and silent substance to the role that it's tough to believe he hadn't been playing it for years. Although it's no comparison to the next two films in the trilogy, which really picks up when Lee Van Cleef enters the fray as Eastwood's dust-cloaked playmate, as warm-ups go it's second to none. At roughly half the length of its siblings, it's also much more digestible and straightforward. Whether that's a positive or a negative is entirely up to the viewer.
How often do you watch a movie where at some point you just say to yourself "holy s, this is a great movie". This happened to me recently while watching "A Fistful of Dollars". I know, I know.... like country music and rap, we all say we don't like westerns. Unlike those musical genres (my half-sincere apologies to fans) a western need not be void of quality and depth.
In case you aren't familiar with this movie, it is technically the first of a trilogy of westerns made by famed director Sergio Leone. We are are more familiar with the third movie in that trilogy - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - but the first two movies in the set are almost as highly regarded. While "Ugly" is one of my all-time favorites I have to say that "Dollars" was not far behind.
The movie start in classic Leone style. There are almost no words spoken for the first several minutes of the movie. Leone seemingly drops us right into the middle of the plot and the movie starts with a bang. And then there is Clint. Like Nicholson's laugh or Pacino's... well, demeanor.... it seems that Clint's sneer has become almost cliche. But in this movie we are reminded of just how brilliant and descriptive his glare can be. And when he did speak, there was meaning - not a wasted word anywhere in the movie. Some of his comments were downright funny.
Even though the movie starts with a bang there is a palpable build of momentum throughout the movie. The plot was clever and even though you could see the final conflict coming from the beginning of the movie it was still very rewarding when it came. One unique note about this movie and the series in general: Clint's character (nameless in all three but they may very well be the same character) straddles the line between good and evil, often from scene to scene.
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Honestly, I'm not enjoying this. I like the western visual style, and Clint Eastwood is cool, but the dubbed voices take me out of it, and I'm having a hard time even paying attention to what's going on in the story.
Pleasantly surprised! From the score to the plot to the characters everything was phenomenal.
The Dollars trilogy by Sergio Leone
A Fistful of Dollars - Part 1
For a Few Dollars More- Part 2
The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly - Part 3
If you're interested in the western genre in general, this movie is fantastic. What is there to add to what has already been stated about this movie? The Dollars trilogy is a fantastic narrative medium.
I know it's supposed to be a "classic Clint Eastwood western" but this was more "spaghetti" than "western". It had all the excitement of a Saturday morning Kung Fu theater production, complete with the out-of-sync dialogue. It was agonizingly slow to follow and confusing as anything I've ever watched. I love Clint Eastwood, but this was very early in his career (I believe?) and although HE wasn't bad in this movie, everything else about this movie was. So many storylines and the oddball, very loose way they attempted to tie off all these storylines just made no sense at all…not to mention the freedoms the producers/story writers took with the history of the American old west. (Women were hardly ever molested, and any man that would harm a woman usually died pretty quickly. It just wasn't something that happened back in that era.) I forced myself to sit through this only because it came "highly recommended" by another internet source, and suffice it to say I have since disregarded that source as being reliable. It's a shame that western movies aren't still produced today; with the leaps and bounds in technology and the ability to more deeply (and accurately!) research material, western movies could be tremendously fun to watch. As it is, we're relegated to this tripe.
The film is an international co-production between Italy, West Germany, and Spain. It is part of the "Dollars Trilogy", or the "Man with No Name Trilogy".
A Fistful Of Dollars; Per un pugno di dollari (1964) https://trakt.tv/movies/a-fistful-of-dollars-1964
For a Few Dollars More; Per qualche dollaro in più(1965) https://trakt.tv/movies/for-a-few-dollars-more-1965
The Good The Bad And The Ugly; Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966) https://trakt.tv/movies/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-1966
My least favorite of the "Dollars Trilogy", but always worth remembering for having introduced most of Sergio Leone's trademarks into western cinema (the camera indulging on epic closeups and wide compositions, the solemn pacing and music). It's definitely a slow starter but offers some interesting scenes in the middle and an epic showdown in the end.
The film is an unauthorized remake of Kurosawa's "Yojimbo", from which Leone borrows not only the plot, but a lot of traits that we would find in his later works: the moral ambiguity of the characters, the mysterious antihero without a name, the cynical tone and black humor, the dirty streets, etc. And here is how a Japanese director managed to indirectly renew westerns through an Italian director.
See this film for the first time after 60y it's not the same. We have already seen this kind of heroic stance in hundreds of movie. That's why just 7/10.
"a fine movie, but it was MY movie."
- Akira Kurosawa
Este filme do Sergio Leone é sem dúvida um bom filme, mas continuo a preferir o original, o Yojimbo (1961) do Kurosawa.
Leone é mito demais! Morricone mestre das trilhas sonoras
Cinema Paco 2: Sound and 3/5. Entertaining, many shots and little blood. Man of poncho 1. That music that would then be used in Kill Bill "
The first and one of the best of the spaghetti westerns
Review by schmenkyBlockedParent2017-05-05T15:13:32Z
This movie shows potential for both Eastwood and Leone, but is far from the height that either will reach in their carreer. The acting is pretty horrible other than Eastwood and Volonte (Ramon). Most of the supporting characters take you out of the movie as sson as they open their mouths. The score was ok, but incessantly annoying with the pan flute slide every two seconds throughout the entire movie.
From a technical standpoint, the movie was not enjoyable. It looked like a B movie in almost every respect. The editing is atrocious as the audio dialogue and video are matching for a couple words in each sentence. The directing highlighted every horrible performance instead of understanding what your cast is capable of, and working with it.
The movie may be the beginning of what some consider greatness, but it's riddled with amateur errors. I have nothing against old movies, this one was just done without much taste. To be fair, it's my first Leone movie, so maybe I just don't like spaghetti westerns.
1 / 2 directing & technical aspect
1 / 2 story
0 / 1 acting
0 / 1 pacing
1 / 1 dialogue
1 / 1 living up to its genre
0 / 1 originality
0 / 1 lasting ability to make you think
0.......misc enjoyment point (+/-)
4 out of 10