Cool Macho Italian Style (Fistful Of Dollars, A (DVD))

Member Name: berlioz II

Product:	Fistful Of Dollars, A (DVD)
Date:	23/03/09 (118 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stylish, cool, and fun as hell...

Disadvantages: ...Prototypical as it is.

The birth of the Italian western came right at the heels of the waning interest in the previously popular sword and sandals films, as many of those films were not only Italian made, but also many Hollywood spectacles like Ben-Hur and Quo Vadis were also filmed in Italy. With this shift in popularity, the new genre of completely Italian produced westerns, spearheaded by Michael Carreras' "Savage Guns" in 1961, provided a fertile and interesting breeding ground for a new genre of films that up until then had not gathered enough popularity to prosper. In the early 1960s, the Italian western still lacked several of the specific traits that made later films in the genre uniquely identifiable, and outside of the general production values of shooting locations, many were rather copies of their American counterparts. That is until a man named Sergio Leone came to the scene. Now Leone by the early 1960s had only been credited as director of only one full-length film, a sword and sandal film called "Il Colosso di Rodi" which by all accounts was a rather dismal film, and he had worked a lot as a second unit director for films such as Ben-Hur and Helen of Troy, and writer of screenplays. But in September of 1964 Leone blasted his way on to the map when he released his first western, A Fistful of Dollars.

Having been taken in by Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, and being enamoured by the ideals and myths of the American western he grew up with, Leone's A Fistful of Dollars is essentially a remake of that previous film, only exchanging samurais for cowboys, and which consequently proved to be a popular plot device of many other westerns that followed. The plot is quite simple with a mysterious drifter wandering into a Mexican bordertown overrun by two feuding families and decides to take advantage of them by double dealing with both for best financial benefit. So much a copy was Leone's film, in fact, that Kurosawa successfully took the matter to court and got a handsome settlement from it, though Leone also sited a few other sources as inspiration as well. But what the film loses in originality, it certainly more than makes up in style, which truly made the film the success that it was on many fronts. Starring Clint Eastwood, then fresh off from the TV series Rawhide, A Fistful of Dollars is heavily steeped in a stylish treatment of its performances, the way it is shot, and the way it uses sound to its advantage. While the film is still well identifiable as a western, it is also distinguished by a certain air of nihilism, a trait that was to become a spaghetti western trademark above the more morally straight US westerns of the past, and the style of which eventually seeped into the American western as well.

Eastwood's little-speaking drifter character, who barely had a name past the generic Joe, proved to be a career defining role for ol' Clint, and his husky delivery was just right to bring out as much cool from the character as possible. He was just the kind who didn't flinch at anything and kept it cool at all times, while retaining a morally ambiguous air of questionable heroics as a specific trait to take advantage of other people, while on the other showing at times masculine humanity toward the small people in a plight as shown in his interest in helping the captive Marisol, played by Marianne Koch, escape her captors for a better life. The two factions he goes up against are both clearly nasty and opportunistic in comparison, a reason why Eastwood's character so easily slits into their graces, but they still are different enough to provide a bit of contrast in the cutthroat world all the characters inhabit. The Baxter family is considerably more up-straight and honourable than the Rojo's gang led by Gian Maria Volontè's Shakespearian maniac Ramón. It is Ramón that makes the greatest impact of the straight villain characters as a man devoid of morals and who cares not an inch for others' lives, as he rather lets his shotgun do the talking, a point that is made clear many times in the film.

And, in the sidelines of all the mayhem and death, is then the lone innkeeper Silvanito (José Calvo), an observer who doesn't want to get involved in the feud, but unwittingly ends up befriending Eastwood's loner to the extent that even he will come to terms in doing something else than just watch. The actual performances of all these characters range from side to side, but all are executed with an unfaltering sense of stylish grittiness. Helped a lot by extreme close-ups of the faces of his band of actors and really getting in the details of each person's facial features and details, which are on the other hand offset by extensive vista shots, the film oozes an aesthetic of both solitary loneliness of the old west and the ugliness that the world contains within the details of the morally bankrupt men, while women come across as generally weak and innocent, or conversely inconsequential in the end. Even the rather strong matriarch of the Baxters, Consuelo (Margarita Lozano), in the end can do nothing really to save her family from the more conscienceless men of the Rojos. And still one can't lay to rest the thought that neither of the two families, regardless of their fates, are really deserving of much sympathy, even if the other seems to be less bad overall.

Another aspect that makes this film work extremely well with its own identity is the way sound is used. According to Leone, a film consists of 40% of sound, and this truly shows in all its sound elements used. The guns crackle with loud bangs, the bullets ricochet all over the place, the horses gallop with big thumping noise, and this is all complemented with the front-and-centre music of Ennio Morricone, whose score leaves behind the standard lush symphonic orchestral scores in favour of more pop-influenced and sparsely orchestrated counterparts. Suggested by Leone after having heard some of Morricone's more pop-based music, particularly his arrangement of the old Guthrie song "Pastures of Plenty" which, with little alterations, became the main title music for A Fistful of Dollars (pretty much replacing the singing of Peter Tevis with whistling and changing one bridge passage), Morricone's music became the template to many of the composers that followed with these sort of films. Employing whistling, little flute trill punches, electric guitar, the elemental voices of the I Cantori Moderni, whip-cracks, bells, etc. on top of a few traditional instruments of a small complement of strings and trumpets, the score truly defines a lot of the atmosphere and intent of the film, more so than almost any other aspect of the entire production, and it is no wonder why the same players would end up performing on just about all the subsequent other westerns, whether they had Morricone or not.

A Fistful of Dollars isn't a perfect film and it may not be really original in the plot department, but regardless of this the pure sense of style permeates the entire film in a way that one easily forgets the rip-offs and similarities and weaknesses. It was the first to truly begin the process of the western deconstruction from the morally high westerns by the likes of John Ford and presented a reality that was altogether more violent and down-trodden. The case of the dubbing may seem a bit alienating for some, as well as the acting in other parts, but one must remember that A Fistful of Dollars was made with very little money with mostly non-professional actors who came from several different countries with little means to get a lot of training. Therefore it goes to reason that some of the more rudimentary aspects can be a little limping and, as was the Italian custom of not recording anything in direct sound, all the dialogue and other sound elements were dubbed in post-production, while all the actors would simply talk their own languages on set, leaving lip synching at times seeming a bit silly. However, what A Fistful of Dollars benefits from in this aspect is that Eastwood could provide his own English voice to his character, thus lessening the impact of all the voices somehow feeling off-key. So, A Fistful of Dollars is the prototypical Italian western which, as spurred by the success of this film, Leone would subsequently improve on the concept a great deal the following year. Still, this remains perhaps the best of the Yojimbo copy films and still stands well on its own amongst its other brethren in the spaghetti western camp.

© berlioz, 2009

Summary: Spaghetti Westerns Vol.1