A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

A wandering gunfighter plays two rival families against each other in a town torn apart by greed, pride, and revenge.

Director:

Sergio Leone (as Bob Robertson)

Writers:

Adriano Bolzoni (story) (as A. Bonzzoni), Mark Lowell (dialogue)

Stars:

Clint Eastwood, Gian Maria Volontè, Marianne Koch

1 win & 3 nominations.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Clint Eastwood	...	Joe
Marianne Koch	...	Marisol
Gian Maria Volontè	...	Ramón Rojo (as John Wells) (as Johnny Wels)
Wolfgang Lukschy	...	John Baxter (as W. Lukschy)
Sieghardt Rupp	...	Esteban Rojo (as S. Rupp)
Joseph Egger	...	Piripero (as Joe Edger)
Antonio Prieto	...	Don Benito Rojo / Don Miguel Rojo
José Calvo	...	Silvanito (as Jose Calvo)
Margarita Lozano	...	Consuelo Baxter (as Margherita Lozano)
Daniel Martín	...	Julián (as Daniel Martin)
Benito Stefanelli	...	Rubio (as Benny Reeves)
Mario Brega	...	Chico (as Richard Stuyvesant)
Bruno Carotenuto	...	Antonio Baxter (as Carol Brown)
Aldo Sambrell	...	Rojo gang member (as Aldo Sambreli)

Storyline

An anonymous, but deadly man rides into a town torn by war between two factions, the Baxters and the Rojos. Instead of fleeing or dying, as most other would do, the man schemes to play the two sides off of each other, getting rich in the bargain.

---

Plot Keywords:

yojimbo plot | arizona territory | new mexico territory | sonora mexico | chihuahua mexico | 

---

Taglines:

A Fistful of Dollars is the first motion picture of its kind. It won't be the last!

---

Genres:

Drama | Western

---

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for violence

Details

Country:

Italy Spain West Germany

Language:

Italian Spanish

Release Date:

18 January 1967 (USA)

Also Known As:

A Fistful of Dollars

Filming Locations:

Aldea del Fresno, Madrid, Spain

Box Office

Budget:

$200,000 (estimated)

Gross USA:

$14,500,000

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$14,516,248

Company Credits

Production Co:

Jolly Film, Constantin Film, Ocean Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

99 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

When Clint Eastwood arrived on the set, he was struck by how little the Italian crew and writers knew about the American West they were filming about. For example, he had to point out that coonskin caps were worn by frontiersmen and trappers in the Davy Crockett era, circa the 1820s, not by gunfighters and townsmen in the American West and Mexico of the 1870s, as the scriptwriters had written.

---

Goofs

When the Rojo gang ambush the Mexican army unit the gun Ramon uses to kill all the troops is a Mitrailleuse volley gun. Each barrel had to be laboriously loaded by hand before all barrels were fired together in a single volley. However, the film shows the volley gun being used as a form of machine gun. The only machine gun around at the time was the hand-cranked Gatling gun which the soundtrack also seems to depict.

---

Quotes

Joe: [He's hiding in an empty coffin outside the coffin-maker's shop] Come here.
Piripero: I can't see anybody.
Joe: Come here!
Piripero: [Goes over to a coffin on a wagon; Joe is inside] Dios mio!... What are you doing in there?
Joe: Never mind. Get me out of here.
Piripero: But, you're not dead yet.
Joe: I will be, if you don't get me out of here, quick. Get that lid down!

---

Alternate Versions

When the film first aired on American TV (ABC) in August 1977, a network executive ordered the creation of a new prologue (directed by Monte Hellman) to give a moral justification for the lead character's killings: a prison warden (Harry Dean Stanton) commutes "The Man With No Name's" sentence if he goes to San Miguel and restores order to the town. Neither Eastwood or Leone participated in this new sequence ("The Man With No Name" is seen only from the rear), and this distortion of Leone's creative vision has reportedly been dropped from subsequent presentations. This prologue can be found on the Special Edition DVD and later Blu-Ray release along with an interview with Harry Dean Stanton about its making and sourcing from a Betamax copy of the ABC American TV broadcast.

---

Connections

Referenced in Joe (2013)

---

Soundtracks

Sweet Betsy from Pike
(uncredited)
Written by John A. Stone
Performed by Clint Eastwood

User Reviews

The first of the three

'A Fistful of Dollars' is the first from Sergio Leone's trilogy about "The Man with No Name". The other two movies are 'For a Few Dollars More' and the famous 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'. Although 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' is considered the best this one comes pretty close. It is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 'Yojimbo' and it comes also pretty close to that movie. It was also the first real Spaghetti Western.

Clint Eastwood is "The Man with No Name" who comes to a small town where two families run the place. Both families hate each other and he thinks he can make a lot of money with playing both parties against each other. This is basically the main story. There are some sub-plots, one of them involves Marisol (Marianne Koch) who is taken by a leader of one of the families. Her husband and child still live in the town.

For me it was not the story that made this movie interesting. It was the whole atmosphere. I like all Leone's westerns for that reason. Of course some are better than others, but they are never boring. The way we see Eastwood kill four man early in the movie is simply spectacular.

This no '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.