Drifter gunman, Joe (Clint Eastwood), arrives in the Mexican village of San Miguel at the border of the United States of America, and befriends the owner of the local bar, Silvanito. Joe discovers that the town is dominated by two gangster lords: John Baxter (Wolfgang Lukschy) and the cruel Ramón Rojo (Gian Maria Volontè). When Joe kills four men of Baxter's gang, he is hired by Ramón's brother, Esteban Rojo (Sieghardt Rupp), to join their gang. However, Joe decides to work for both sides, playing one side against the other.Written by
Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Gian Maria Volontè didn't speak English at all, so was dubbed in this movie. However, he was contractually obligated to speak English for For a Few Dollars More (1965), so he had to learn the language specially. See more »
Goofs
When the Mexican cavalry are ambushed at the river, the machine gun used by the 'U.S. Cavalry' is unloaded at all times - it is a belt-fed weapon, yet has no belt of rounds in it. Presumably, it has caps in the end to produce the muzzle smoke. Furthermore, a hand-cranked Gatling gun would be more appropriate to the time frame of the film than the slightly more modern air-cooled belt-fed weapon used. See more »
Quotes
Joe:
[after saving Marisol and her family and giving them money]
Marisol:
Why do you do it for us?
Joe:
Why? I knew someone like you once. There was no one to there to help. Now get moving.
See more »
Alternate Versions
When the film first aired on American TV (ABC) in August 1977, a network executive ordered the creation of a new prologue (directed by Monte Hellman) to give a moral justification for the lead character's killings: a prison warden (Harry Dean Stanton) commutes "The Man With No Name's" sentence if he goes to San Miguel and restores order to the town. Neither Eastwood or Leone participated in this new sequence ("The Man With No Name" is seen only from the rear), and this distortion of Leone's creative vision has reportedly been dropped from subsequent presentations. This prologue can be found on the Special Edition DVD and later Blu-Ray release along with an interview with Harry Dean Stanton about its making and sourcing from a Betamax copy of the ABC American TV broadcast. See more »
'A Fistful of Dollars' is the first from Sergio Leone's trilogy about "The Man with No Name". The other two movies are 'For a Few Dollars More' and the famous 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'. Although 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' is considered the best this one comes pretty close. It is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 'Yojimbo' and it comes also pretty close to that movie. It was also the first real Spaghetti Western.
Clint Eastwood is "The Man with No Name" who comes to a small town where two families run the place. Both families hate each other and he thinks he can make a lot of money with playing both parties against each other. This is basically the main story. There are some sub-plots, one of them involves Marisol (Marianne Koch) who is taken by a leader of one of the families. Her husband and child still live in the town.
For me it was not the story that made this movie interesting. It was the whole atmosphere. I like all Leone's westerns for that reason. Of course some are better than others, but they are never boring. The way we see Eastwood kill four man early in the movie is simply spectacular.
This no 'Once Upon a Time in the West' or even 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' but we have the same atmosphere, the same kind of score by Ennio Morricone and a Clint Eastwood at the beginning of a great career.
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'A Fistful of Dollars' is the first from Sergio Leone's trilogy about "The Man with No Name". The other two movies are 'For a Few Dollars More' and the famous 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'. Although 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' is considered the best this one comes pretty close. It is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 'Yojimbo' and it comes also pretty close to that movie. It was also the first real Spaghetti Western.
Clint Eastwood is "The Man with No Name" who comes to a small town where two families run the place. Both families hate each other and he thinks he can make a lot of money with playing both parties against each other. This is basically the main story. There are some sub-plots, one of them involves Marisol (Marianne Koch) who is taken by a leader of one of the families. Her husband and child still live in the town.
For me it was not the story that made this movie interesting. It was the whole atmosphere. I like all Leone's westerns for that reason. Of course some are better than others, but they are never boring. The way we see Eastwood kill four man early in the movie is simply spectacular.
This no 'Once Upon a Time in the West' or even 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' but we have the same atmosphere, the same kind of score by Ennio Morricone and a Clint Eastwood at the beginning of a great career.