Why Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns came to define the
genre, and how today's audiences need to revisit the iconic Clint Eastwood
films.
Screen Rant
By Luke Parker
January 04, 2020
Italian auteur Sergio Leone's iconic trio of Spaghetti
Westerns\ with Clint Eastwood — unofficially dubbed "the Dollars trilogy" —
have become an essential piece of the Western film
landscape. Although they were not released as a trilogy, the films are
connected to each other, and there's a best order to watch them in. Comprised
of 1964's “A Fistful of Dollars, 1965's For a Few Dollars More,
and 1966's “The Good, the Bad and Ugly”, the Dollars trilogy
helped change filmmakers' approach and the aesthetic style of the entire
Western genre. Leone's influence continues today, as seen with titles
such as “The Hateful Eight” and ‘The Mandalorian’.
Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy founded the
Spaghetti Western genre, largely because of Leone's masterful direction. The
scope often felt larger than life, the music, courtesy of iconic movie score
composer Ennio Morricone, was instantly iconic, and the stories, while perhaps
not as singularly spectacular as something like John Ford's “The Searchers” or “Stagecoach” were episodic and grand.
According to the filmmaker, his films were not meant to spark a cinematic
revolution; even so, they inspired 200 additional Spaghetti Westerns, and half
of them contained the word "dollars" in the title.
Leone's professional relationship with Clint Eastwood came
to be after the director spotted the up-and-coming actor in the television
series ‘Rawhide’. After being offered the lead role in “A Fistful of
Dollars”, his first in film, Eastwood took the low-paying gig out of
interest in visiting Europe. Through
production, a hazardous process which included a fairly large language barrier,
they concluded their unofficial remake of Akira Kurosawa's samurai thriller
“Yojimbo”, and Eastwood returned to ‘Rawhide’ totally ignorant to the monstrous
success “Fistful’ had become overseas. Overnight, Eastwood had turned into an
international star, and "Spaghetti Western" had become a household
term. Following “A Fistful of Dollars”, Eastwood and Leone would go on to
collaborate on two additional films together, each using the experience
to evolve as filmmakers.
What the Dollars
Trilogy Is
The Dollars Trilogy is the unofficial,
overarching name assigned to Leone's trio of films. While A
Fistful of Dollars, one of the best Westerns of all time, was
an instant smash hit overseas, American audiences had largely grown tired of
the Western genre. Though there was the occasional standout production – see
John Ford's “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” in 1962, John Sturges’ “The
Magnificent Seven” in 1960, or Howard Hawk's “Rio Bravo” in 1959 – most of
the Western films that jogged out of Hollywood in late 1950s and
early 1960s were products seen as self-parody. Critics, filmmakers, and
big box office names had more or less distanced themselves from the genre.
With Leone's films, however, American distributor United
Artists sought a strong angle to help boost the release of the pictures in the Americas. They
were the first to come up with the notion of "The Man with No Name" –
the mysterious character portrayed and immortalized by Eastwood – and
therefore, the notion of corralling these films as a trilogy.
The marketing campaign was based around the fact that
Eastwood's character in all three films donned the same clothes, and acted,
roughly, in a similar manner. In reality, much of the character's costume,
including the iconic poncho and sheepskin vest, were brought overseas by
Eastwood as part of his own wardrobe from the set of Rawhide. And
in terms of the performance, his low-key presence, relying heavily on the
physicality of his character over the drawn-out mono or dialogue, perfectly
matched Leone's sought-after style; as a result, the Dollars trilogy
are among Clint Eastwood's best movies. But even so, the actor had to
regularly combat the director over reducing the amount of spoken lines his
characters had throughout the series.
The Unofficial Order
Of The Dollars Trilogy
While Leone himself had never intended his three films to be
packaged as a trilogy, there are events in the movies that establish a
timeline. The unofficial order is “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” is at
the forefront, acting as a prequel to “For a Few Dollars More”, and
then finishing with “A Fistful of Dollars”. Remarkably, despite the
director's intentions, or lack thereof, the three films do not contain any
major continuity errors when viewed as a continuous series.
Given its expansive reliance and commentary on the American
Civil War, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” is firmly set at the beginning of
these three films, despite being the final one to be made. Leone had
implemented the infamous American conflict into his film in order to deliver
some stark commentary against the brutality of war, primarily using Eastwood's
character. It can be argued that this is the most empathetic the "Man with
No Name" ever gets in the series. Not only does
he uncharacteristically comment on the nonsensical conquest of the bridge
seen halfway through the film ("I've never seen so many men wasted so
badly"), but he also stops his pursuit of the gold treasure in order
to spend time with dying soldiers from both sides of the war.
In terms of events, however, there are many events that
establish “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’s” place at the front of the series.
For instance, Eastwood's Blondie slowly picks up the pieces of his iconic
outfit throughout the movie before finally donning the whole thing in the
wake of the final shootout.
“For
a Few Dollars More” takes place after “The Good, the Bad and the
Ugly” not only because Colonel Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef),
the vengeful bounty hunter who teams up with Manco to track down an outlaw, is
a veteran of the Civil War, but because a newspaper can be seen in the film
containing the year 1872. The only factor that puts “For a Few Dollars More” before “A Fistful of Dollars”,
however, is that Manco and Mortimer engage in a bravado shooting contest
where the target is the "Man with No Name's" hat. The holes from that
squabble can be seen in “A Fistful of Dollars.”
Inconsistencies In
The Dollars Trilogy
While there are no major continuity errors throughout
the Dollars trilogy, the fact remains that Sergio Leone had
not intended the three films to be viewed in tandem, and as a result, there are
some minor inconsistencies throughout the productions. Most prominently, while
United Artists' campaign strategy revolved around branding Clint
Eastwood's character as "The Man with No Name," he has a different
nickname in each: in “A Fistful of Dollars”, he is referred to as Joe; in “For
a Few Dollars More”, he's called Manco; and in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,
his name is Blondie. To be fair, all three of these names, especially the
latter, are assigned to the character by other figures in Leone's Wild
West.
There are some repeated casting choices throughout the
trilogy that also scratch away at the idea of the classic Western movies being
a sequential story. For instance, Lee Van Cleef, who played Colonel
Mortimor in For
a Few Dollars More, also played Angel Eyes (aka "The
Bad") in The
Good, the Bad and The Ugly. Though Mortimer survived the events of
the previous production, his devilish character arc would be nonsensical in the
latter, especially if The Good, the Bad and the Ugly took place prior
to For a
Few Dollars More. Also, Italian actor Gian Maria Volontè played the
central antagonist in both A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.
In both films, his characters meet a glorified ending at the hands of Western
justice. So while these casting choices were certainly made out of necessity
and director preference, they tap away at the notion of the Dollars
Trilogy.
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