A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS

by Kevin Koehler

Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest is a great novel. How do I know this? I’ve read it, for one thing, but also because Akira Kurosawa used it (along with another Hammett noir, The Glass Key) as the basis of his samurai classic, Yojimbo. But there’s more: Yojimbo (and by transitive properties, Red Harvest) was later remade by esteemed spaghetti western maestro Sergio Leone as A Fistful of Dollars, which introduced American audiences to The Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood). As if that wasn’t enough, Walter Hill remade A Fistful of Dollars as the 1996 feature Last Man Standing (though it is credited as a remake of Yojimbo, Hill’s film bears a closer resemblance to Leone’s than Kurosawa’s). Okay, so one of these things is not quite like the others, but Hill did direct 48 Hours. Also, his version of Hammett’s tale is actually quite strong (despite the poor box office and critical reception); stronger, dare I say, than A Fistful of Dollars.

If this is blasphemy in certain quarters, then so be it. No masterpiece, Dollars is highly regarded for reasons generally outside its own artistic merits, like establishing television actor Clint Eastwood as a motion picture star or the Italian Leone as a studio director; its supposed reframing/demythologizing of the traditional Hollywood western (a slow process begun much earlier than the release of this film) is overstated by a fair margin.

Eastwood stars as the Man With No Name (that strangely does have a name: people call him “Joe”), a quick-draw drifter who happens upon the tiny border town of San Miguel. Two warring families – the Rojos and the Baxters – struggle for control over San Miguel (and its gun/liquor trade) while everyone else lives in fear. The Nameless One figures he is just the man to play each side against the other and maybe make a few dollars in the process. “The Baxters over there, the Rojos there, me right in the middle.” His amoral self-interest ultimately gives way to something else as the bodies pile up; in true cowboy fashion, he seeks a peace for the citizens of San Miguel, but one baptized in blood.

A Fistful of Dollars is an important film historically, but it’s also substantial flawed. Eastwood aside, the acting is quite poor, and done no favors by the English-language dubbing; Leone’s commendable attempts at Old West realism suffer heavily as a result. The hallmarks of Leone’s signature style are in their clear infancy here – his building of suspense, the Ennio Morricone score, the dark humor – and put to far better effect on Dollars’ own sequels The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and For a Few Dollars More. For a simple film, the plotting is awkward at times, particularly in regards to an ending that requires disappointing logical concessions; we're reminded of celluloid and clapboards when we should be thinking of bullets, blood, and dirt. It’s a practice swing from the talented director and a far cry from the moral complexity of some of his later, more successful work - Leone's further development as a filmmaker makes Dollars into superfluous viewing.

Interesting footnote: Upon its original release, A Fistful of Dollars did not acknowledge Yojimbo as its source material. Kurosawa would famously state in a letter to Leone: “It is a fine film, but it is my film.” A judge agreed, as the producers of Yojimbo successfully sued for copyright infringement. The verdict comes with some irony: neither Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest or The Glass Key are credited on Yojimbo.

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