Located just north of San Jose, less than two kilometers
from the Mediterranean Sea, this rural complex, which includes two main
single-story buildings, with wooden doors, also made of wood and large sills
protruding from the windows, was used in the first sequence of “Fistful of
Dollars” (1964) which was used to represent the farmhouse and small house used
to hold Marisol (Marianne Koch). It then appears in “Bullets Don’t Argue”
(1964) (for this film the cortijo is enriched with other structures: a wall
with an arch joins the two main buildings and represents the entrance to the
courtyard, in whose center is a fountain): “Johnny Yuma” (1966): “Day of Anger”
(1967) (in which it represents Bill Farrell's ranch). Realizing the great
tourist development of the area (which today is part of the Cabo de Gata-Nujar
Natural Park) in the 1990s, Cortijo El Sotillo was renovated and transformed
into an equestrian club. Only the main building, which has become an elegant
restaurant, has maintained its original forms: among other things, it preserves
the typical domed oven leaning against the northern outer wall. As for this
building, it maintains its original appearance a long rectangular room (and the
first, entering, on the left, with the fireplace on the north wall), used as a
set in "A Fistful of Dollars" to represent a kitchen in the sequence
in which Clint Eastwood, after having slaughtered the thugs of the Rojos, frees
Marisol.
The building
opposite, where, in the film, lived the husband and the son of the woman, has
been completely renovated. The location is also used in "Day of Anger”, in
the scene where Lee Van Cleef enters, finds a man hanged and is captured by
bandits. The next sequence of this film, in which Lee Van Cleef is dragged by
the bandits' horses around a characteristic "era" (a rotunda used for
threshing grain, in the Andalusian countryside), which is also part of the
Cortijo El Sotillo estate, and is just a short distance from the buildings
themselves.
“Fistful of Dollars” (1964)
“Fistful of Dollars” (1964)
“Johnny Yuma” (1966)
"Day of Anger" (1967)
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