The best film in the career of Italian director Sergio Leone was probably his last, Once Upon a Time in America (1984). But he will always be better known for the four 'Spaghetti Westerns' that first brought him fame.
The first three featured Clint Eastwood as the ironic, soft-spoken, lethal 'Man with No Name'. Eastwood had played a similar laconic tough guy on the television series "Rawhide"; Leone was casting as much as inventing the character.
A Fistful of Dollars was the first film, a Western remake of Akiro Kurosawa's Yojimbo. While it was a good film, it was a low budget film with a comparatively weak supporting cast.
The trademarks of Leone's style were more apparent in the superior sequel, For a Few Dollars More. Confrontations were drawn out, to prolong tension. Flashbacks were used to show past relationships between the protagonists. Partnerships are necessary but treacherous. Advantages are fleeting. The characters are given better motivation for their actions: Eastwood is after much bigger money this time around, while Van Cleef definitely has a score to settle with Volonte.
But in several ways, For a Few Dollars More is substantially different from its predecessor or its follow-up, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Eastwood may have first billing, but his character is at best only equal to that of the more experienced and perceptive Van Cleef. While Eastwood still wears a serape, and chain smokes cigarettes, he's not really the 'Man with No Name'. He's called Manko by the other characters.
Unlike in his other films with Leone, Eastwood does not perform any selfless deeds in For a Few Dollars More. He doesn't rescue a wife from sexual slavery, as in A Fistful of Dollars, or blow up a blood-soaked bridge to fulfill a dying man's last request, as in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Only his style, and his murderous and mercenary characteristics remain. While Eastwood tries to assert himself, it is Van Cleef who calls the shots, and who has the big showdown with the villain.
The most complex character is that of Indio (Gian Maria Volonte). He is a treacherous bandit leader and bank robber, with a fixation for a combination pocket watch and music box. He takes it out and plays it whenever he is about to kill someone, and the reason for his fascination is gradually revealed throughout the film. (This element is similar to Bronson's harmonica in Once Upon a Time in the West.) After one such murderous confrontation, Indio slumps as if exhausted. Some critics have compared this reaction with being spent after a sexual performance.
Perhaps it is a misnomer to refer to Eastwood's three films with Leone as a trilogy. Van Cleef and Volonte have leading roles in two of the three films, but as different characters. Eastwood's name and character isn't quite the same throughout. It may be best to consider the three films as instead belonging with Leone's fourth legendary western, Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), which had Charles Bronson taking the Eastwood-like role. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is the greatest of the four films.
All four films were largely Italian productions filmed in Spain and dubbed in English. They feature Ennio Morricone's memorable score, with its lyricless grunts and yells. They portray the American West as a desolate, lawless land where the mercenary 'good guys' are nearly indistinguishable from the villains. This modernistic view of the West is different from American productions of the previous decade, which clung closer to the formula of white hats and black hats. (76/100)
In the second film in Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western trilogy A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS being the first and THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY the last the Man...More at Family Video
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