"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.