Analysis of the Dollar Trilogy [part 1 of 7]

Michele227

Michele Iovinella

July 25, 2025

Between 1964 and 1966, Sergio Leone drew an indelible line in the history of world cinema with his "Dollar Trilogy": "A Fistful of Dollars", "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". Three works that, despite being narratively unrelated, constitute a single, grandiose cinematic fresco capable of completely deconstructing and reinventing the western genre.

The Genesis of an Artistic Revolution

When Leone began his authorial career, the Hollywood western was going through a phase of creative immobility. The narrative canons were rigid in predictable formulas where the unblemished hero had the frontier as his theater of moral redemption. It was a simple Manichean dualism between good and evil. The Roman director sensed that that mythological universe could be deconstructed and reassembled according to a completely new grammar.

The Leonian revolution was therefore not only aesthetic, but profoundly philosophical. Drawing on the tradition of the Commedia dell'Arte, Italian neorealism and silent cinema, Leone transformed the western into a theater of the absurd where anti-heroes moved in ambiguous moral landscapes, devoid of absolute certainties. Thus was born what international critics called "spaghetti westerns", an initially derogatory label that quickly turned into a globally recognized mark of artistic quality.

"A Fistful of Dollars" (1964): The Birth of the Anti-Hero

The first chapter of the trilogy represents the founding moment of a new cinematic mythology. Leone takes Kurosawa's lone ronin from "The Samurai Challenge" and transfers it to the dust of the Wild West, creating the Man with No Name played by Clint Eastwood. This character inaugurates a new type of protagonist: he is neither hero nor anti-hero in the traditional sense, but a pragmatist of survival who operates according to the logic of personal convenience.

The town of San Miguel becomes the perfect microcosm to explore this new moral dimension. Two crime families, the Rojo and the Baxter, vie for control of the territory, while the Stranger manipulates both factions for his own gain. Leone already builds his unmistakable aesthetics here: the close-ups (which later became "Leone-style") on the sweaty and dusty faces of the characters, the very long shots, the narrative rhythm that alternates moments of contemplation with explosions of brutal violence.

The film also introduces stylistic elements that will become Leonian trademarks: the dramaturgical use of silence, the characterization through symbolic objects (the poncho, the cigar, the gun), and above all that particular erotic tension towards violence that distinguishes the spaghetti western from its American counterpart.

"For a Few Dollars More" (1965): The Maturation of the Code

The second chapter represents the evolution and refinement of the Leonian language. The narrative structure becomes complicated: no longer a single protagonist, but two bounty hunters, Monco (Eastwood) and Colonel Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef), who team up to capture El Indio (Gian Maria Volonté), a psychopathic bandit obsessed with the music of a music box.

Leone introduces the theme of personal revenge here through the character of Mortimer, moved by the desire for justice for the murder of his sister. It is an element that humanizes the narrative without betraying the moral ambiguity that characterizes the Leonian universe. The Colonel is not a traditional hero, but a man consumed by pain who has turned his mission of revenge into a profession.

The film also marks the director's technical evolution. The action sequences become more elaborate and choreographic, the editing more sophisticated, the use of Morricone's soundtrack more integrated into the dramaturgical structure. The famous final sequence, with the duel punctuated by the sound of the music box, anticipates the technical perfection that Leone will achieve in the third chapter.

Gian Maria Volonté builds in El Indio one of the most disturbing villains of western cinema, a psychopath who smokes marijuana to forget his atrocities and who finds in music the only possible form of redemption. He is a character who foreshadows the psychological complexity that Leone will fully develop in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly".

"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966): The Apotheosis of Leonian Art

The third and final chapter represents the artistic apotheosis of the trilogy and one of the absolute peaks in the history of cinema. Leone expands the narrative scale by transforming the search for a treasure into a choral epic set during the American Civil War. The three protagonists – the Blond (Eastwood), Tuco (Eli Wallach) and Sentence (Lee Van Cleef) – embody three different facets of the human soul in a world where traditional moral categories have dissolved.

The film marks the definitive transition from the intimate western of the first two chapters to the epic of vast proportions. The battles of the Civil War are not just a background, but a central narrative element that allows Leone to develop a profound reflection on the absurdity of organized violence. The Langstone Creek Bridge sequence, where hundreds of soldiers die for a military objective that will prove useless, represents one of the fiercest criticisms of the myth of the "just war" ever to appear in American cinema.