Thursday, July 11 2019| 9PM A Fistful of Dollars Italy 1964 d. Sergio Leone with Clint Eastwood, Marianne Koch, Gian Maria Volonté, W. Lukschy, S. Rupp, Joe Edger, Antonio Prieto, Jose Calvo and Margarita Lozano. Techniscope and Technicolor. 99 m
“Based on Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, it set a fashion in surly, laconic, supercool heroes with Eastwood’s amoral gunslinger, who plays off two gangs against one another in a deadly feud. All the classic Leone ingredients were there – the atonal score, the graphic violence, the horrendous dubbing – and the film’s Stateside success changed the face of a genre.” Geoff Andrew
“Clearly, the magnet of this picture, which has been a phenomenal success in Italy and other parts of Europe, is this cool-cat bandit who is played by Clint Eastwood….Wearing a Mexican poncho, gnawing a stub of cheroot and peering intently from under a slouch hat pulled low over his eyes, he is simply another fabrication of a personality, half cowboy and half gangster, going through the ritualistic postures and exercises of each. His distinction is that he succeeds in being ruthless without seeming cruel, fascinating without being realistic. He is a morbid, amusing, campy fraud.” Bosley Crowther
See Also: For a Few Dollars More (Leone, 1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone, 1966), Viva Maria! (Malle, 1965), Yojimbo (Kurosawa, 1961)