The 'Dollars' Trilogy - cinematic perfection?

johnny_ultimate

I'm only four decades late to the party, but this week I sat down to watch the Man With No Name films in their entirety. I'd seen For a Few Dollars More before, and was impressed, but for some reason had never checked out the other two.

I loved these films. They have pretty much everything that is good about cinema. In handy bullet pointed form:

The direction: Sergio Leone is a master of the cinematic image, there's no other way to put it. Leone has total command over the images and story he wants to tell. He basically owns these films, fully confident in the atmosphere he wants to put across. From the first time when Clint rides into town in Fistful..., the atmosphere just gets under your skin. These films feel as sweaty and uncomfortable as the Old West must have. Leone has created a world here, one that's not always pleasant but always interesting.

The acting: Clint Eastwood is the definitive cowboy - cold, mysterious and yet strangely human. He can be funny (my favourite moment in the whole trilogy is when

his head pops up to a prison cell and he simply places a stick of dynamite at the window

) and surprisingly deep (

giving a dying soldier a final drag of a cigar and a jacket near the end of the Good...

). He's put through a lot in these films - often extreme physical pain! - and always has our sympathy. He may be a killer, but he's a moralistic and human one. Lee Van Cleef is superb in two separate and very different roles (

a mourning father and bastard general respectively

). The bad guys in all the films are extremely memorable (Gian Maria Volontè in For a Few... is a highlight) and also unusually well drawn - villains with motivations always help.

The music: Ennio Morricone is a musical god, that pretty much sums it up. The use of music in these films is just phenomenal - the

climatic shoot outs

in the second two films perfect examples of how the sound and images combine to create something really, really special.

Thoughtful and entertaining: there's often an unnecessary divide between 'serious cinema' and 'entertainment'. The spaghetti westerns are both. Despite the high body count, the Good the Bad and The Ugly especially has a lot to say about death, morals and war. They are well written, with characters who have motivations and depth. Yet they never forget that at the same time they are entertaining - often very funny (Eli Wallach as comic relief in the Good.., Clint's constant one-liners etc...) and action packed (it's always fun seeing the double crosses and plans coming together).

If any films can define an entire genre, these can. They have the final word on many tropes of the Western. Leone owns the shootout in particular -

the pocket watch shoot out in For a Few.. and the climatic three way duel in the Good.. are both absurdly tense, exciting affairs

. While pretty much entirely self contained, they also are fun as a series, especially

when Eastwood finally dons his poncho

near the end of the last film.

Anyway, I'm sure most of you have discovered and enjoyed this films long ago, but for me these were pleasant revelations. They reminded me why Eastwood is so respected (as I'm not a fan of all his directorial work), and helped me discover a wonderful composer and a superb director (looking forward to checking out Leone's later stuff).

Kess73

A brilliant trilogy although pedants may say that they are just three parts of a quadrilogy.


I recently double dipped on my versions of the trilogy, actually it would be a quadruple dip overall(VHS to DVD to Special edition DVD to Blu ray), to bring my collection into the blu ray era, and it was worth every cent.

The films look and sound amazing on blu ray, and it is the extended version of each film with bucketloads of extras.

They match up well in terms of picture quality with the blu ray releases of How The West Was Won and The Searchers (two must buys for any other western fans looking to move to blu ray)

The western is a genre that has really benefitted from blu ray. The landscapes and close ups on faces seem to leap off of the screen, and the colours just seem so vivid. Many could pass for modern films, such is the quality of the restoration work done.

Renn

Hmm, I found Once Upon a Time in the West to be a more enjoyable experience than any of those mentioned. And I'd also put High Plains Drifter in that category as well.

johnny_ultimate

Kess73 wrote: »

Many could pass for modern films, such is the quality of the restoration work done.

I'd agree with that just watching the SE DVDs. There were moments when I was really impressed at how contemporary and fresh these films looked for forty year old movies. A lot of it is down to Leone and his cinemtographers' confidence I think, but they definitely haven't aged anywhere near as much as many others. There are some relics of older times - the audio-synching is weird and distracting on occasion - but for the most part it's still fresh.

Renn wrote: »

Hmm, I found Once Upon a Time in the West to be a more enjoyable experience than any of those mentioned. And I'd also put High Plains Drifter in that category as well.

I'll have to check out Once Upon a Time in the West soon alright, I'm going to work through the rest of Leone's stuff over the next while. Haven't heard much about High Plains Drifter bar the title.

Also, is a Fistful of Dynamite worth checking out?

Renn

Oh, btw, wasn't knocking them at all, might have come across like that. Haven't seen Fistful of Dynamite myself.

prinz

Absolutely. Perfect cinematic experience IMO. Absolutely unrivalled directing, even to this day with all the computers and gadgetry etc.

Although Once Upon A Time In The West outshines them all IMO. Just incredible, so many periods of time with nothing at all being said, yet everything you need to know can be read from expressions, breathing patterns etc. Outstanding.

Killme00

prinz wrote: »

Although Once Upon A Time In The West outshines them all IMO. Just incredible, so many periods of time with nothing at all being said, yet everything you need to know can be read from expressions, breathing patterns etc. Outstanding.

+ everything

Once upon a time in the West is in my opinion the greatest movie ever made. Every piece is like silk, the music, the acting, the picture etc.

[Bold Statement]Its better than the Godfather[/Bold but true]

Beruthiel

I grew up on those films. For me, Clint was the ultimate cowboy. (I was big into playing cowboys and indians as a kid )

johnny_ultimate

Hitting up the shops today for a copy of Once Upon a Time in The West then!

prinz

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Hitting up the shops today for a copy of Once Upon a Time in The West then!

I'm jealous. When you go to watch it, just make sure there are no distractions and the place is as quiet as you can possibly make it. Sit back and enjoy! Don't forget to give your opinion here afterwards.


Oh and Claudia Cardinale :eek: Hawthang! :pac:

zimovain

High Plains Drifter is Clint's masterpiece for me. Amazing movie I caught by chance on ITV2 one night. Now it's in my collection on my 'most watched' shelf.

Kess73

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Hitting up the shops today for a copy of Once Upon a Time in The West then!

Keep an eye on the running time for the version you get. A lot of the shops stock the 145min and 159min version.


The 165min or 171min are the versions to look out for.


The 171 min version is out on blu ray later this year.

Kess73

Having said that, if you spot a version that clocks in at 159 mins but is inside a tan coloured carboard slip, then get it. It is marked as a Special Collector's Edition.

I have this copy as well and it looks fab and when you take off the slip case, the inside opens like a book with all the main characters in it.

jpm4

Killme00 wrote: »

+ everything

Once upon a time in the West is in my opinion the greatest movie ever made. Every piece is like silk, the music, the acting, the picture etc.

[Bold Statement]Its better than the Godfather[/Bold but true]

I guess I'm the only one who gets a fit of the giggles every time Charles Bronson appears with his harmonica then? I love Bronson but I have a hard time taking him seriously in that film anyway.

I do love The Good, the Bad and the Ugly though. Eli Wallach is superb.

Kess73

jpm4 wrote: »

I guess I'm the only one who gets a fit of the giggles every time Charles Bronson appears with his harmonica then? I love Bronson but I have a hard time taking him seriously in that film anyway.

I do love The Good, the Bad and the Ugly though. Eli Wallach is superb.

That he was, and he is still going with a role in the sequel to Wall Street being his most recent showing. Fair going for a lad of 94.

Wacker

The scene with the hats from about forty minutes into For a Few Dollars More is right up there with my all time favourite movie scenes. I remember when I was watching it, I wasn't necessarily rooting for the Man With No Name, and I could understand why Mortimer was

allowing himself to be slapped around and treated like such a b*tch. It was only after his hat had been shot about three times when I realized what was going to happen next. When Clint misses his shot and Mortimer draws his gun, it was truly epic. And then he totally PWNED him!

That scene is one of the reasons I love Clint so much. Think about this: imagine if it had been John Wayne playing lead instead. Does anyone think that scene would gone the same way? Hell no.

Check it out for yourselves, if you like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqZF8XD9Pk4

I watch a portable DVD player while DARTing into work in the mornings, and I was watching The /Good, The Bad and The Ugly on it one morning. As anyone who has seen it will know, t

he shootout at the end has about four minutes of quick cuts between the protagonists' faces, hands, guns, etc, before the shooting starts, all accompanied by Enio Morricone's awesome score. The guy next to me was watching the whole thing over my shoulder! Mate, without the music you're not getting the proper experience.

Wacker

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Lee Van Cleef is superb in two separate and very different roles (

a mourning father and bastard general respectively

).

Brother, not father, IIRC.

johnny_ultimate

Wacker wrote: »

The scene with the hats from about forty minutes into For a Few Dollars More is right up there with my all time favourite movie scenes. I remember when I was watching it, I wasn't necessarily rooting for the Man With No Name, and I could understand why Mortimer was

allowing himself to be slapped around and treated like such a b*tch. It was only after his hat had been shot about three times when I realized what was going to happen next. When Clint misses his shot and Mortimer draws his gun, it was truly epic. And then he totally PWNED him!

That scene is one of the reasons I love Clint so much. Think about this: imagine if it had been John Wayne playing lead instead. Does anyone think that scene would gone the same way? Hell no.

That scene is just fantastic, your eyes are glued to the screen from the start to the end. What I love about For a Few Dollars More is that it has two equally likable and motivated protagonists. It's brave having Mortimer as a character who is probably even slyer and more intelligent than Clint, but it totally pays off in that scene you mentioned and the ending too. I was actually a little disappointed he didn't return in the sequel

(his story is told in For a Few Dollars More when I think about it)

, but Van Cleef's character in that is interesting too, although not likable by any stretch! Also, I believe you're right in the above spoiler, my bad!

Picked up Once Upon A Time in The West and High Plains Drifter (was only a fiver) yesterday so more Westerns to come

Duggy747

This scene from A Fistful Of Dollars always cracks me up with Clint's grimmace and then wows me with it's badassery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeFpM2OEWPs

Awesome cinematic greats. These just came out on Blu-Ray recently if I'm not mistaken. I don't have a HD TV or a Blu-Ray player but dammit I'd love to watch the trilogy in this setup.

Oh, and Once Upon A Time... and High Plains Drifter are brilliant. I love the poster to HPD:

Renn

Is HPD on blu-ray yet?

Kess73

Renn wrote: »

Is HPD on blu-ray yet?

Nope not available on blu ray on either Region B or an an American import as of yet.

Renn

Bah I'll pick up Once Upon... for sure though.

Kess73

Renn wrote: »

Bah I'll pick up Once Upon... for sure though.

Same here, that is due out on blu ray in the autumn/winter.

Renn

Excellent. Pretty much an essential blu-ray buy for me. Going to try and limit it to just the ones I really want...Blade Runner probably next. I used to own There Will Be Blood but sold it off before getting to see it - not sure if it's worth re-investing in. Boogie Nights is out in two weeks and that will have to be bought.

Kess73

Renn wrote: »

Excellent. Pretty much an essential blu-ray buy for me. Going to try and limit it to just the ones I really want...Blade Runner probably next. I used to own There Will Be Blood but sold it off before getting to see it - not sure if it's worth re-investing in. Boogie Nights is out in two weeks and that will have to be bought.

TWBB is excellent on blu ray. It is a massive step up in terms of both audio and visual quality on the dvd version. Where the dvd is muddy in places with a lot of colour blur, the blu ray is razor sharp and reveals a huge amount of detail missed in the other format.

Renn

What sound system setup you got? Missing out on half of the whole blu-ray experience because I don't have one

old_aussie

Saw "The Good,the Bad and the Ugly" first and loved it.

Watched the other two,"Fist Full of Dollars" and "For a Few Dollars More" later but found them to be not quite as good as "The Good,the Bad and the Ugly"

All three are great spaghetti westerns.

Skerries

i actually found TGTB&TU and FAFDM on my Sky+ anytime section the other day and just had to watch the end scenes again, superb!
Morricone complements those films like no one else could
you asked was A fistful of Dynamite AKA Duck you Suckers! any good? go and buy it now!
i rate it up there with those other 2 movies and always watch it when it is on, another excellent cowboy film to watch out for is Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch which i think was banned or there was some problems here due to the violence

A Fistful of Dollars is based on Kurisawa's Yojimbo and has also been done in other remakes such as Last man Standing with Bruce Willis and Omega Doom with Rutger Hauer

Kess73

Renn wrote: »

What sound system setup you got? Missing out on half of the whole blu-ray experience because I don't have one

I don't have anything too fancy. I have a sony Blu ray player hooked up to the Sony HT-IS100 speaker system. The sound is pretty decent and the speakers are tiny so were easy to position just right.

johnny_ultimate

Just watched Once Upon a Time in the West, and while it is surely a masterful piece of cinema, I don't think I'd rank it above the Man With No Name films. This is probably just personal taste, there's an awful lot to like about Once... - the cinematography is absolutely stunning, the story surprising, the music typically wonderful, and the opening scene must be one of the most atmospheric few minutes of cinema ever. I just don't think the characters had quite the same presence as Clint, a hero you can really get behind, and didn't find the more 'epic' tone as compelling (it's not as much, for lack of a better word, 'fun' as the Dollars films). Also, I really don't like Charles Bronson, but that's very much just me. Not dismissing the film at all, I still greatly enjoyed it and Leone is definitely a master of the camera and the genre, it just lacks the sucker punch I think his earlier films have. That said, I liked the expanded story

(especially the station twist)

and Bronson's backstory a lot.

High Plains Drifter next, and then I think I shall take a break before I go into Western overdose mode (my friends think my sudden interest in all things spaghetti Western is rather odd :P).

Wacker

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

High Plains Drifter next, and then I think I shall take a break before I go into Western overdose mode (my friends think my sudden interest in all things spaghetti Western is rather odd :P).

Just checking, but you have seen Unforgiven, right? Give it another look before taking a break from Westerns. You'll appreciate it so much more now that you're more familiar with the films that it was a reaction to (sort of...).

Kess73

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Just watched Once Upon a Time in the West, and while it is surely a masterful piece of cinema, I don't think I'd rank it above the Man With No Name films. This is probably just personal taste, there's an awful lot to like about Once... - the cinematography is absolutely stunning, the story surprising, the music typically wonderful, and the opening scene must be one of the most atmospheric few minutes of cinema ever. I just don't think the characters had quite the same presence as Clint, a hero you can really get behind, and didn't find the more 'epic' tone as compelling (it's not as much, for lack of a better word, 'fun' as the Dollars films). Also, I really don't like Charles Bronson, but that's very much just me. Not dismissing the film at all, I still greatly enjoyed it and Leone is definitely a master of the camera and the genre, it just lacks the sucker punch I think his earlier films have. That said, I liked the expanded story

(especially the station twist)

and Bronson's backstory a lot.

High Plains Drifter next, and then I think I shall take a break before I go into Western overdose mode (my friends think my sudden interest in all things spaghetti Western is rather odd :P).

Before you take a break from Westerns, have a look at a more recent western, if you have not already, in Open Range.

It is a slow burning thing of beauty. Costner + Western = great film.

johnny_ultimate

Wacker wrote: »

Just checking, but you have seen Unforgiven, right? Give it another look before taking a break from Westerns. You'll appreciate it so much more now that you're more familiar with the films that it was a reaction to (sort of...).

Saw Unforgiven years ago and greatly enjoyed it at the time, may give it another whirl at some point soon!

Kess73 wrote: »

Before you take a break from Westerns, have a look at a more recent western, if you have not already, in Open Range.

It is a slow burning thing of beauty. Costner + Western = great film.

I saw a few contemporary Westerns in the cinema (like the Missing and 3:10 To Yuma), but think I missed Open Range, so will watch if I can.

Have to watch Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon A Time in America (woo! not Western!) too. Just think I need a few days without shooutouts and mysterious strangers :P

Kess73

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Saw Unforgiven years ago and greatly enjoyed it at the time, may give it another whirl at some point soon!



I saw a few contemporary Westerns in the cinema (like the Missing and 3:10 To Yuma), but think I missed Open Range, so will watch if I can.

Have to watch Fistful of Dynamite and Once Upon A Time in America (woo! not Western!) too. Just think I need a few days without shooutouts and mysterious strangers :P

Do watch Open Range, it is head and shoulders above the likes of the remake of 3:10 To Yuma, enjoyable as I found that film to be.

There is not one weak performance in Open Range and the characters draw you into the story. Costner and Duvall excel in their roles.

It stands shoulder to shoulder with the top westerns of the past in my honest opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60wmgRH958Q

mikhail

Wacker wrote: »

Just checking, but you have seen Unforgiven, right? Give it another look before taking a break from Westerns. You'll appreciate it so much more now that you're more familiar with the films that it was a reaction to (sort of...).

+ 1 for this. I saw Unforgiven long before the Dollars trilogy, and liked it. I rewatched it after seeing Leone's work, and it became one of my favourite movies.