Fistful of Dollars, A, is a violent Western motion picture that made an international star out of American actor Clint Eastwood. The film was released in 1964. The movie was set in a dusty Mexican town but was actually filmed in Italy. The director was Sergio Leone of Italy, who was also the coauthor of the screenplay with Duccio Tessari.
Critics nicknamed A Fistful of Dollars and similar films “spaghetti Westerns” because of their Italian background. The success of the film led to the production of many other violent, low-budget Westerns that imitated the Leone style.
A Fistful of Dollars was based on the Japanese action motion picture Yojimbo (1961). Eastwood played the mysterious “man with no name,” a gunfighter who battles two families trying to control the same piece of land. Leone used extreme close-ups and sparse dialogue in the film. The international production co-starred German actress Marianne Koch and Italian actor Gian Maria Volonte. Eastwood and Leone collaborated on two other “man with no name” Westerns—For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966).
See also Eastwood, Clint ; Westerns .
