A Fistful of Hammett

I had heard the Sergio Leone was inspired by the American western’s High Noon (1952) and The Magnificent Seven (1960). If you watch the extreme close-ups during High Noon, you’ll realize that the Italian director Leone wasn't the first to use the technique. The Magnificent Seven produced by John Sturges was a different kind of western for it’s day. It had a gigantic feel to it - and still does. I am sure that Leone watched from the theatre seat as we did - soaking in the big sights and sounds of The Magnificent Seven. Leone brought his own kind of big sights and sounds to the western genre.

All artists are influenced by other artists. John Sturges turned Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai into the westernThe Magnificent Seven(1954). The inspired Sergio Leone picked up the torch and remade Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961) into Fistful of Dollars (1964). Everyone seemed to be influenced by Kurosawa’s great work but Akira Kurosawa once stated that his primary influence was none other that the American filmmaker John Ford.

Yojimbo was a revision of a detective short story Red Harvest written by renowned noir author Dashiell Hammett (Hammett as your recall was the writer that originally sculpted the classic Maltese Falcon). Seeing these different treatments to Hammett’s original Red Harvest never gets old. Kurosawa, Leone, and recently Walter Hill (Last Man Standing 1996) took the same storyline into different settings, genres, and centuries - each making their own retelling of Hammet's idea unique.

My favorite telling is Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars. I see the artfulness in Yojimbo but Fistful of Dollars was the movie that transformed the western genre. Fistful of Dollars, though not the first spaghetti western ever made, Leone was the one that put the Italian-made western on the map. His imprint has been on almost every western film made ever since.

Another reason Leone is my favorite is because it was the first time I experienced the storyline. I vividly remember my older brother re-enacting the entire movie scene by scene for me as I sat on the back porch one Summer’s evening. Who was this man with no name? The scenes and dialogue that Brook acted out were different from any kind of western I had previously seen. Why was Brook so excited? I wanted to see this western but wasn’t old enough to go at the time. I could go see John Wayne, but I had to wait for this violent western. It wasn’t until the last installment of The Man With No Name trilogy that I was finally allowed to watch what I had heard so much about. My anticipation wasn’t misspent. I was not disappointed that evening at the Rebel Drive-In. Brook was right - this was a new kind of western - a different kind of hero.

Neither Yojimbo or Last Man Standing have a soundtrack like that of Fistful of Dollars. Ennio Morricone orchestrated an incredible audio landscape to all of Sergio Leone’s work. The Dollar Trilogy were full of visual and sound textures that made these Leone’s movies stand out from the rest.

Like John Ford made John Wayne – Sergio Leone made Clint Eastwood. Sergio made Eastwood into an international movie star. Henry Fonda was Leone’s first choice for the roll of The Man With No Name but Fonda was too expensive. Then there was James Coburn and later Charles Bronson. But it was that television sidekick that reached out for the narrow cheroot.

Though Clint Eastwood has evolved into a great director himself - he has never been better than the unnamed role he played in the Leone films. To think that the only reason Eastwood originally accepted the part of The Man With No Name was his interest in a free trip to Italy. Clint borrowed a poncho from the prop department of Rawhide, took up smoking, and made his way out West –via Italy.

ennio morricone - a fist full of dollars