"A Fistful of Dollars" (1964)

I may have seen A Fistful of Dollars (1964) more times than any other movie besides The Sound of Music (1965).  That's because, when I was in my tweens, we owned two movies: A Fistful of Dollars and a recorded-off-TV copy of The Sound of Music.  And that odd pairing probably explains a lot about my personality, heh.

When I was growing up, if we came down with a cold or flu bug that was too severe for us to handle schoolwork, we got to watch a movie.  Mom or Dad would go to town and rent a VCR (oh, yes, you could rent VCRs from the video store if you were too poor to own one yourself, like we were!) and a movie.  A single movie.  That meant, if we wanted to watch something besides the movie that got rented, we had two options to choose from.

Now, you're probably saying to yourself, "Um, isn't A Fistful of Dollars kind of... inappropriately violent and gory for people who aren't even 13 yet? Isn't it rated... R?!?!?"  Yes, well, here's the thing: it wasn't rated R when it was released in 1964 because the R rating didn't exist yet.  The MPAA and its rating system started up in 1968 (and ratings were rather different back then than today's ratings, too).  (Also, A Fistful of Dollars was an Italian movie, not an American one, so it wasn't made under the last gasp of the Hays Code anyway.)  That means that when the movie was released to VHS back in the 1980s, it said "NR" on it, for "not rated."  What that actually meant was exactly what I explained in this paragraph -- it was released before there were ratings.  However, my parents thought that meant the same thing as being rated G -- that it was suitable for all ages.  

Today, the film carries an R rating, for violence, because the MPAA eventually went back and rated all the old movies as they got released to VHS and DVD.  However, my parents watched it first when they bought it, to see if it was suitable for us kids, and they figured since the violence is pretty obviously fake, since all the blood is kinda orange and a very paint-like consistency, and since the makeup for things like scars and wounds looks like Silly Putty and Play-doh, my brother and I would not find this movie alarming.  And they were absolutely correct.  We did not find this movie realistic or scary in any way.  We found it thrilling.  And we watched it a lot.  Well, multiple times a year for several years, anyway.  I mean, we weren't invalids -- we didn't get sick every month or anything like that.  But a few times a year, we'd get a cold or a flu bug, and then we'd get to watch a random rental from town, plus probably one or both of the movies we owned.

All of that is why I know this movie backwards and forwards.  I know all the dialog.  I know every squint and sneer and twitch of Clint Eastwood's face.  I can listen to Ennio Morricone's soundtrack and tell you what's happening in the film at pretty close to every given moment.  In fact, there was a time when I got a bit tired of A Fistful of Dollars and decided that I liked the second Man with No Name movie, For a Few Dollars More (1965), better than this one.  It's probably a better movie.  It probably has a better score.  And, for over a decade, I told people it was my favorite Clint Eastwood movie.

Then I got a chance to go see A Fistful of Dollars on the big screen at the local Alamo Drafthouse Cinema a few years ago.  Weird as it may sound, I got tears in my eyes during the opening credits.  I cried repeatedly during the film, flooded with nostalgia and fondness and joy.  I had forgotten how much I simply love the storyline of this movie!  How satisfying the ending is!  How much I love the trumpet theme during the final showdown!  (Okay, I hadn't actually forgotten that.)  How many personal Storytelling Buttons it pushes for me!  (Since I saw it so often at a young age, it may have actually formed a lot of my storytelling tastes, to be honest.)  I came out of the theater reconvinced that this is my favorite Clint Eastwood movie.  I put it back on my list of 100 favorite movies where it belongs.  And I have re-watched it several times since, most recently when I was struck down by an upper respiratory infection last fall.

The movie starts when a stranger (Clint Eastwood) rides into a dusty little nowhere town.  (Storytelling Button #1: someone new comes to town, and everything changes.)  He sees a child forcibly separated from its mother, which clearly bothers him, though he doesn't intervene.  (Storytelling Button #2: the watchful lurker who bides his time.)  Later, as he rides through the town, some yahoos take pot shots at him and scare his mule.  The stranger faces them down and tells them to apologize to his mule, which gets him into a gunfight with them, and he wins, of course.  (Storytelling Button #3: making someone apologize for being rude.)

The stranger makes friends with a lonely bartender and studies the situation in town.  The Rojos are a wealthy Mexican family who sell illegal guns.  The Baxters are a wealthy American family who sell illegal alcohol.  The Baxters and Rojos hate each other and are constantly warring for control of the town.  The bartender and his friend who makes coffins nickname the stranger Joe, so I'll refer to him as Joe for the rest of the review because calling him "the stranger" is clunky.  (Storytelling Button #4: a stranger uses the nickname bestowed on him, and we never learn his real name.) Joe decides he could make a lot of money by pitting the Rojos and the Baxters against each other, convincing each of them he's on their side and willing to kill for pay, and so on.  And he proceeds to do exactly that.

The woman Joe saw at the beginning is named Marisol (Marianne Koch), and the meanest Rojo brother, Ramón (Gian Maria Volontè), is madly in love with her.  She's already married and has a son, but Ramón claims her husband cheated him at cards and is holding her a hostage until her husband pays back what he won at cards.  He refuses to let her little son see her.  We can all imagine what Ramón is keeping Marisol around for, but all the movie ever shows is him forcing her to kiss him.  (Storytelling Button #5: families divided by force.) 

Joe not only becomes rich by working with both the Rojos and Baxters, but he also finds a way to get Marisol out of Ramón's clutches, reunites her with her husband and son, and sends them on their way.  In fact, viewers gradually realize this may have been Joe's whole reason for sticking around in this nowhere town.  He tells Marisol and her husband that he knew someone like her once, but there was no one there to help, and that's about all the backstory we ever get for Joe, but it's a powerful bit of history in one short sentence.  (Storytelling Buttons #5 and #6: rescuing someone who can never rescue themselves, and a mysterious character who remains mysterious.)

From here until the paragraph just above the blogathon button, there be spoilers.

Ramón eventually figures out it was Joe who freed Marisol, and he and his men beat and torture Joe in retaliation.  (Storytelling Button #7: hero who sustains a brutal beating and/or torture without revealing any information.)  Joe escapes their clutches using cleverness.  (Storytelling Button #8: escaping prisoner.)  

He then recuperates in hiding.  His hand was crushed until it's almost useless, and he has to learn how to draw and shoot all over again.  (Storytelling Button #9: regaining lost skills/gaining new skills while in hiding.)

Finally, he's ready.  Thanks to a couple gifts from his friends the bartender and the coffin maker, he makes a surprise re-entrance and challenges Ramón to a gunfight.  (Storytelling Button #10: rising from the dead or near-dead to mete out justice.)  He appears to magically repel bullets from Ramón's rifle, repeatedly staggering when shot, but always getting his feet back under him.  (Storytelling Button #11: appearing to have superpowers through trickery.)  That lets him get close enough to Ramón for his own pistol in his damaged hand to be accurate, and he slays Ramón and his brothers and their gunmen and everyone else who tries to take him on.  (Storytelling Button #12: sweeping the floor clean of your enemies.) 

And then, he leaves.  Just mounts his mule and rides out of town, having cleaned out the Rojos (who cleaned out the Baxters) and leaving the town open for the honest town folk to start over in.  (Storytelling Button #13: leaving when the job is done instead of staying to enjoy a reward.)

End of spoilers!

Ahhhhhhhh, just recounting it like that fills me with warm fuzzies!  Yes, warm fuzzies, even though this is a violent movie filled with cruel people.  It is also a movie centered around one man who sees injustice and finds a way to combat it, who sees cruelty and evil and finds a way to end them, and who sees three suffering people and finds a way to rescue them.  Man, I love this movie.

This has been my contribution to the Journey to Italy Blogathon hosted this week at Realweegiemidget Reviews and Speakeasy.  Click either of those blog names to find the list of all the other participating blog posts.

Obsession or Love: "Laura" (1944)

What’s the difference between love and obsession? How can you tell if you’re in the throes of one versus the other? Can obsession become love? Can love become obsession? 

These questions are at the heart of the 1944 noir film Laura. While it explores all of them fairly thoroughly, it does not provide any definitive answers. Instead, it seems to present obsession and love as two sides of the same coin, never far apart. 

The New York Police Department tasks Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) with investigating the murder of a high-society working girl, advertising whiz Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney). Like any good detective, he collects clues, interviews those who knew the deceased, and follows up on any hunches he might have. 

Everyone he interviews professes to have loved Laura. They are all confused how anyone could have wanted her dead, much less murdered her. Yet, the body found on the floor of her apartment, clad in a negligee and shot at close range in the face, proves at least one person in New York City did not love Laura Hunt. Perhaps they were obsessed with her, and their obsession took a deadly turn. 

As he investigates her murder, McPherson becomes more than a little obsessed with the dead woman himself. Everyone who knew her tells him how elegant and sophisticated, yet sweet and kind Laura was. She was intelligent and had exquisite taste, helped her out-of-work boyfriend find a job at her advertising firm, was always polite and friendly to her maid, and dazzled the entire world. How could anyone help himself from falling in love with her, even in her permanent absence? 

It seems no one can resist Laura’s charm, even after she’s dead, not even McPherson, a working-class snob who calls women ‘dames’ and looks down his nose at his wealthy suspects because they live in expensive apartments surrounded by beautiful things. The only person he interviews that he appears to respect is her maid Bessie (Dorothy Adams), a working-class woman who practically worshiped her employer. Bessie and McPherson get off to a rocky start, but once he stops casting aspersions on Laura and starts listening to Bessie, they get along fine. 

McPherson may be a reverse elitist, but when it comes to the murdered woman, all his prejudices go out the window. He doesn’t mind that her apartment is expensive, her things beautiful, her furniture and clothing in the best taste. That just makes him more fascinated with her. So fascinated that he spends the night in her apartment, going through her clothes and personal possessions, drinking her alcohol, and staring at her portrait. He even puts in a bid on her portrait when he learns it will be sold at auction. 

You can’t fall in love with a dead person you’ve never met, but you can become obsessed with them. Maybe even as obsessed as the person who killed her so she could never be someone else’s. McPherson almost gets so lost in his own yearning for this woman he’s never known that he stops investigating her murder… but only almost. In the end, he finds the killer, and even gets a chance at actual love, the kind that could replace his unhealthy obsession with Laura.

(This post originally appeared in Femnista magazine on October 29, 2019.)

Announcing We Love Musicals Week

Ladies and gents, this is the moment you've waited for.

I'm hosting a blog party again next month, its spotlight is on musicals, and YOU are invited to participate!

Much like last year's We Love Sibling Stories Week, this party will be a celebration with many parts.  There's the blogathon-ish aspect, where you get to contribute your own posts about musicals.  There's the giveaway aspect, where I give away some fun musical-related goodies.  There's the tag aspect, where I provide a tag of ten or so questions you can answer, all about musicals.  And there's the game aspect, where I make up a blog game or two to go with this year's theme.

If you love musicals, I hope you'll join me in celebrating them for a whole week, from February 10 to 14.  There's no limit of how many people can blog about a specific topic, but I do like to get an idea for how many people will participate.  So please leave a comment here once you have an idea of what you'd like to contribute.

There's also no limit on how many posts you can contribute!  And I encourage you to think outside the box.  Movie or show reviews are great, but things like lists of favorite songs, favorite composers, specific character types you love, favorite musicals from a specific era -- those would all be awesome contributions too!  This is a party, not a blogathon, so feel free to get creative if you want to.  The main rule is just that all posts should be family friendly (even if the musical you are talking about has "mature" themes or aspects).

Please use any of these buttons on your own blogs to spread the word about this event.

I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with to share!

The Roster

+ Hamlette's Soliloquy -- tag, game, and giveaway (and maybe something else, too)

+ Meanwhile, in Rivendell... -- current favorite musicals

+ Whimsically Classic -- something

+ Realweegiemidget Reviews -- favorite musical moments

+ Movies Meet Their Match -- review of Six

+ Taking Up Room -- review of Thousands Cheer (1943)

+ The Maidens of Green Gables -- something

+ I'm Charles Baker Harris (and I Can Read) -- review of A Complete Unknown (2024)

+ Inkling Corner -- The Phantom of the Opera

+ Revealed in Time -- The Phantom of the Opera

+ 18 Cinema Lane -- review of Million Dollar Mermaid (1952)

+ Starlight and Saucepans -- Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and what makes a good movie musical

+ YOU!

My Ten Favorite New-to-Me Movies of 2024

Here we are again, ready to reminisce over all the movies we've watched in the past year and figure out which ones we liked best.  If you've done a similar post this year, leave a link in the comments so I can check out what your favorites were!

If you want to see my past lists, I've got ten years' worth at the bottom of this page.  Meanwhile, here are my favorite ten new-to-me movies that I watched last year!

1.  Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter One (2024)  A variety of people have experiences in the Old West, many of them in or around the fictional town of Horizon.  It's a sprawling epic with lots of storylines and little or no closure to any of them, and I'm somewhat obsessed with it.  So much of it pleases me, from the authentic historical details to the filmography to the storytelling.  (I could do without the scene with nudity or the implied sex scene, though.  It's not a family friendly movie.)

2.  The Train (1964)  A bitter and disillusioned member of the French Resistance (Burt Lancaster) helps sabotage a train filled with precious pieces of French artwork that an equally bitter Nazi officer (Paul Scofield) is desperately trying to steal away from Paris before the Allies arrive.  My son is particularly pleased with all the very real train-related details, and I'm pleased by all the cool stunts Lancaster does.

3.  Murder on the Orient Express (1974)  Even though Hercule Poirot is not played by Peter Ustinov or Kenneth Branagh (my two favorite Poirots), but instead by Albert Finney (who gets a bit shouty), this is still such a fun time.  That's mainly thanks to the amazing cast: Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave, Anthony Perkins, Richard Widmark, Michael York... are you drooling yet?  What a lineup, huh?

4.  The Man from the Alamo (1953)  A Texan (Glenn Ford) is elected to leave the Alamo to warn the people of his town that something bad is about to befall them.  By the time he reaches the town, it's too late, and everyone assumes he ran away from the Alamo because he's a coward.  This makes him angry and vengeful, and the storyline took a few turns that surprised me, which I enjoyed.

5.  Emma (1996 -- Kate Beckinsale)  Yes, it took me this long to finally see this adaptation of the classic Jane Austen novel.  I was surprised how much I liked it -- it's never going to rival the other 1996 version that stars Gwyneth Paltrow, but I liked it a lot better than the 2009 and 2020 versions.

6.  The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)  A bunch of military misfits are brought together to stop the Nazis during WWII.  Yes, that premise has been used oodles of times.  But this movie brings some fresh fun to it -- and it's based on a real people and real incidents, which bumps the whole thing up a notch.  I'm particularly fond of how Henry Cavill keeps trading up for better and cooler coats.

7.  Love Crazy (1941) A woman (Myrna Loy) suspects her husband (William Powell) is cheating on her and decides to get a divorce.  Her husband pretends to be mentally ill so she can't divorce him.  I'm not usually a big fan of screwball comedies, but I love Loy and Powell together, and this one never gets daffy enough to annoy me.

8.  Anastasia (1956)  A con artist (Yul Brynner) uses a mentally unstable young woman (Ingrid Bergman) to try to convince the world that the Russian princess Anastasia is still alive.  It's acerbic and twisted and melodramatic... and a lot more like the animated movie Anastasia (1997) than I'd expected.

9.  Christmas in the Air (2017)  A widower (Eric Close) who designs and makes toys hires a professional planner (Catherine Bell) to help him juggle his Christmastime family activities and work commitments so he won't disappoint his kids by forgetting anything important, but will also be able to help his brother land a big contract for their family-owned toy company.  Yes, it's a Hallmark movie.  Yes, I will willingly watch it again.

10. My Cousin Rachel (1952)  A wealthy young man (Richard Burton) becomes obsessed with his cousin's widow (Olivia de Havilland) because he's convinced she killed his cousin.  And then he's convinced she didn't.  And he loves her.  But he hates her.  But she loves him.  But she might be trying to kill him.  Come on, it's a very young and toothsome Richard Burton growling at a middle-aged and gorgeous Olivia de Havilland -- that's all you really need to know.