The Western is one of the most popular genres in cinema, and the sub-category of Spaghetti Western boasts some of its most famous films. They’re called “spaghetti Westerns” because the filmmakers were Italian, and the most important of them is none other thanSergio Leone. His breakthrough came with his 1964 filmA Fistful of Dollars, which would turn out to be the first of a loose trilogy. Then cameFor a Few Dollars MoreandThe Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and these three would be known as the Dollars Trilogy. Their financial success and stylistic flair make them legendary, and his role as the nameless drifter launched their starClint Eastwood’s movie career.
The dialogue in these works are dubbed (pretty sloppily, at that), but that’s made up for with gorgeous settings filmed in the Italian mountains, great shootouts, suspenseful silences, terrific directing, and beautiful cinematography. Whether Leone gives us a wide establishing shot of the mountains or an extreme close-up of someone’s eyes, every image comes together to keep audiences' eyes glued to their screens. However, the films coming out within a year of each other, using the same grandiose style, and sharing so many other characteristics doesn’t mean they’re equally good. These films each tell a self-contained story, and though they’re all worth watching, these stories and how they’re executed differ enough in thrills to merit being ranked below.
3’A Fistful of Dollars'
Released in 1964
A Fistful of Dollarsbegins with an animation of men riding horses, accompanied by a nice score byEnnio Morricone. The Man with No Name is told to leave the town he rides into, as there are so many men dying here, but he stays. The war between sheriff John Baxter’s people and the Rojos have torn this town apart, and Eastwood’s character proves useful to both sides of this conflict. His first display of force is both intimidating and funny: he tells the casket-maker to get three coffins ready and then shoots the four men who shot at his horse. Walking back, he says “My mistake, four coffins.”
The leader of the Rojos has stolen another man’s wife and wants to take over the town. His name is Ramón, and he’s played by a very solidGian Maria Volonté. One of his best moments is when he tells the man with no name that someone with a .45 will always lose to someone with a rifle. Of course, in a movie like this, not everything is so easy to take seriously. It’s pretty silly that everyone falls for the graveyard trick, since those bodies don’t even stir during the big shootout. There’s also a scene with a barrel that its victims could have avoided instead of screaming—but hey, these plot points still move the plot along nicely. A few of the best shots are when our anti-hero is watching a massacre from inside a coffin, when he’s walking out of a cloud of smoke, and when he survives several rifle blasts by wearing a metal plate (as foreshadowed by the armor earlier in the film). Based so heavily onAkira Kurosawa’sYojimbothat the Japanese film’s production companysuccessfully sued Leone for a handsome sum, this is one ofthe most famous remakes of all time.
A Fistful of Dollars
2’For a Few Dollars More'
Released in 1965
The second installment of the Dollars trilogy,For a Few Dollars More,continues the tradition ofhaving a stylish introduction. We’re presented with a man far off in the distance getting shot off his horse. It also has a quote: “Where life had no value, death, sometimes, had its price. That is why the bounty killers appeared.” The music tells us from the get-go that composerMorricone has come up with some more brilliant material, and expectations are already high.
We first meet Colonel Douglas Mortimer, played byLee Van Cleef, who is so intimidating that he can stop a train without getting in trouble and easily get his wanted man. Then we meet the Man with No Name again. These guys are both quiet and cool. The villain, El Indio, is again played by Gian Maria Volonté, an infamous bank-robber with a bounty on his head for $10,000 dead or alive. Every other man in his crew has a bounty on his head too, ranging from $1000 to several thousand. El Indio is just as evil as the previous antagonist, but the jingle from that pocketwatch makes Volonté’s presence twice as ominous. This criminal is profoundly haunted, and obsessed by, this watch—and we are gradually shown why. A few particularly fun scenes are when the two bounty hunters shoot each other’s hats in the middle of the night, when they shoot some apples from a tree during the day. As is expected with westerns, the most suspenseful and emotionally powerful part is the ending—where everyone’s positions in the shootout is similar to how things play out in the next installment of the trilogy. Colonel Mortimer and the Man with No Name (called “Manco” here) decide to team up against over a dozen men, and it’s very satisfying to watch them win.
For A Few Dollars More
Released in 1966
One ofthe greatest desert movies ever made,The Good, the Bad, and the Uglysurpasses the previous two films in the Dollars Trilogy. With each entry, the films got longer, more ambitious, and more compelling. Leone was honing his craft with every work, and it shows. This three-hour epic is twice as long asA Fistful of Dollars, yet the pacing is so good that even that unnecessary extended sequence with the bridge in the middle of a battle doesn’t really slow things down. The third work in the trilogy is more elaborate in every way, including its introduction—tops its predecessors with an intro that’s definitely the coolest and more visually striking of the three. We’re still shown men on horseback, but there’s more of them. We hear shots fired as the credits come up, and even get animation for a cannon. The best improvement on the intro is probably the music, though; Ennio Morricone strikes again.
As for the actual film,The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’s plot is arguably more straightforward than its predecessors': three men search for buried Confederate gold during the Civil War, and it takes a while getting there. It’s cool how the movie introduces them one at a time, freeze-framing to give each character the stamp of “The Good,” “The Bad,” and “The Ugly”. Clint Eastwood returns as the Man with No Name (the good), Lee Van Cleef switches roles from good guy to villain as Angel Eyes (the bad), andEli Wallachplays “Tuco” (the ugly). These three keep running into each other as they journey through desert towns and desert, and the shootouts are everything a Western fan would want them to be. We all know they’re all somehow going to reach the gold at the exact same time and have a really long, dramatic shootout over it. We also know that the least greedy of the three men will probably come out on top, but Leone is so good at storytelling that these inevitable genre conventions don’t get in the way of the spectacle. Along with Morricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold” and lots of breathtaking scenery, the craft of this film elevated the Western genre in a way that makes it irresistible for fans to this day. It may not be perfect, but it’s stilla must-see Western—spaghetti or otherwise.
The Good the Bad and the Ugly
NEXT:‘Every Sergio Leone Movie, Ranked’
