A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

A Fistful of Dollars (Italian: Per un pugno di dollari, lit. "For a Fistful of Dollars"), titled on-screen as Fistful of Dollars, is a 1964 Spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, alongside Gian Maria Volonté, Marianne Koch, Wolfgang Lukschy, Sieghardt Rupp, José Calvo, Antonio Prieto, and Joseph Egger.

A Fistful of Dollars was filmed on a low budget (reported to be $200,000), and Eastwood was paid $15,000 for his role. Released in Italy in 1964 and then in the United States in 1967, it initiated the popularity of the spaghetti western film genre. It was followed by For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, also starring Eastwood. Collectively, the films are known as the "Dollars Trilogy", or "The Man With No Name Trilogy". The film has been identified as an unofficial remake of the Akira Kurosawa film Yojimbo (1961), which resulted in a successful lawsuit by Toho. In the United States, the United Artists publicity campaign referred to Eastwood's character in all three films as the "Man with No Name".

As few spaghetti westerns had yet been released in the United States, many of the European cast and crew took on American-sounding stage names. These included Leone himself ("Bob Robertson"), Gian Maria Volonté ("Johnny Wels"), and composer Ennio Morricone ("Dan Savio"). A Fistful of Dollars was shot in Spain, mostly near Hoyo de Manzanares close to Madrid, but also (like its two sequels) in the Tabernas Desert and in the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park, both in Almería province.

Synopsis

A stranger arrives at the little Mexican border town of San Miguel. Silvanito, the town's innkeeper, tells the Stranger about a feud between two families vying to gain control of the town: on the one side, the Rojo brothers: Don Miguel, Esteban and Ramón; on the other, the family of the town sheriff, John Baxter. The Stranger decides to play each family against the other in order to make money, and proves his speed and accuracy with his gun to both sides by shooting the four men who teased him as he entered town with ease.

Actors