The film that changed the history of the western and the life of Clint Eastwood

It's been 60 years since A Fistful of Dollars, the foundational film of spaghetti western with which Sergio Leone redefined an entire genre and influenced subsequent generations

[Clint Eastwood, protagonist of the famous dollar trilogy]

El Debate

By Belén Ester

9/22/2024

There are films that are destined to change the history of cinema, to mark culture and time, to redefine the way films are made, seen or understood. The Birth of a Nation, Ben-Hur, Star Wars or Jaws are some examples. So is A Fistful of Dollars.

In 1963, Sergio Leone, a young Italian film director who had grown up in American blockbusters and had made his directorial debut with The Colossus of Rhodes, wrote a story set in the West with three other screenwriters. His idea of making Italian Westerns had been in his head for years. Perhaps since 1961 when he saw Kurosawa's Yojimbo, who would end up denouncing him for plagiarism. Or perhaps as a child, when he tirelessly watched John Wayne films in his native Rome. The fact is that in 1964 his script saw the light of day with a baroque and excessive film with which cinema would change radically.

For a Fistful of Dollars tells the story of an unnamed gunman, a filthy gringo who arrives in a town where two opposing families live, one an arms dealer and the other an alcohol dealer. And observing, patiently, is how the anonymous character, handsome, cold and of few words, will try to get a cut. He was Clint Eastwood, a television actor who had made the more or less successful series in the United States Rawhide and who had such a low cache that it was what Leone's meager production, which wanted Charles Bronson, could afford. So, without speaking a word of Italian, Eastwood came to Spain and bought a poncho out of his pocket at a street market in Almeria. In addition, Leone's childhood friend, Ennio Morricone, composed a soundtrack with castanets and whistles because he did not have the budget to put together an orchestra with enough strings. And so on.

The rest is history.

The Dollar Trilogy

The film was released in village and second-hand cinemas in Italy, but word of mouth made cinemas across the country ask for more copies week after week. Eastwood did not teach his family any. He was afraid that they would understand the way of making westerns that that crazy Italian with whom he could only understand with an interpreter had devised, and sometimes not even that.

                             [The western that changed everything]

 However, a visionary Leone used the image of that hero with dark intentions to shape a type of cinema that critics and producers referred, not without a certain contemptuous sarcasm, as spaghetti western.

Without a founding charter or roadmap, Leone was proclaimed the father of a bastard genre that did not limit itself to imitating the American classic, but gave it a twist by proposing as its protagonist a selfish and greedy character who, only at the end, shows a hint of goodness. In addition, everything was dirty and dusty, the plot fled from the fort, the railroad, the conflict with the Indians or the construction of the nation, to focus on the Mexican border where, in addition, the honorable speeches of the heroes gave way to the sadistic reasons of the villains. For a handful of dollars he changed everything and people adored him. Leone would shoot the following year, also in Spain, Death Had a Price and, in '66, with Hollywood money involved, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, forming the so-called Dollar Trilogy that he did not conceive as such and that is known in this way for having in all three films an Eastwood without a name - and with the same poncho - as the protagonist.

But what is truly surprising about the film is its mannerism. His highs, low angles, discordant cuts, very close ups, depths of field and long static shots with which he delighted the respectable of the 60s who were used to the beautiful rides through Monument Valley. Here there was beauty too, but more violent, dirtier, less honorable... Beauty in the composition, not in the characters, nor in their intentions, nor in their message. And, without intending to, one of the most profoundly moral genres that has ever existed was also born.

['A Fistful of Dollars' (1964)]

In 1966, Sergio Corbucci premiered Django and Damiano Damiani, Yo soy la revolución. In 1967, Sergio Sollima made El halcón y la presa and Tonino Valerii, El día de la ira. In 1968, Mario Caiano, His Name Screamed Vengeance and Gianfranco Parolini, If You Find Sartana... Pray for your death, and so on up to 600 titles that would end up influencing the American genre itself, from which, precisely, these filmmakers tried to distance themselves.

Today there is still debate about the real contribution of spaghetti western to the history of cinema or whether it influenced the editing of action cinema or the approach to violence of thrillers. But what is certain is that he redefined an entire genre, or perhaps innovated it, or perhaps parodied it. And that nothing would be the same anymore. It all began like this, in 1964, with a gunman arriving in a cursed town, without a past or future. Only with his revolver and his empty pockets.