A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS [1964]

A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
Directed by: Sergio Leone
Written by: Adriano Bolzoni, Akira Kurosawa, Duccio Tessari, Fernando Di Leo, Sergio Leone, Tonino Valerii
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Gian Maria Volonte, Marianne Koch, Wolfgang Lukschy

ITALY / WEST GERMANY / SPAIN

AKA PER UN PUGNO DI DOLLARI

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY: MAY 12, from ARROW VIDEO

RUNNING TIME: 99 mins 

REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera

Into the town of San Miguel rides mysterious gunslinger and soldier of fortune Joe, whose interest in what’s going on in this place is sparked when he sees a woman being held captive and her husband and son being violently scared away by two thugs. Then he’s provoked by three other men, though still does nothing. Needing a drink, he enters the local saloon and meets the owner Silvanito, who explains to Joe that there’s a feud going on between two families vying to gain control of the town: the Rojos and the Baxters. Joe doesn’t “work” for cheap, and realises that there’s a lot of money to be made here, so he decides to sell his services to both families. His first step is to gun down the guys who threatened him, they being Baxter men, then visit the Rojos and insist that they pay him for what he’s just done….

Perhaps the oddest thing about Sergio Leone’s A Fistful Of Dollars, which might be one of the most important films ever made in both the “western” and the “action” genres even though it exists in a trilogy where each film is better than the one before it, is that it’s a remake – and for much of its length a scene-by-scene kind at that, and not even an official one. However, the director of the film in question Yojimbo – Akira Kurosawa –  saw it and wrote to Leone, complimenting his film but demanding payment because it was still essentially his film. He and Toho received 15% of the Far Eastern revenue and he earned more money from it than on any of his own movies. Does this take anything away from its seminal status? Not really. It made a movie star of Clint Eastwood and essentially created his movie image, and single-handedly gave birth to the “Spaghetti Western”  – yes, there’d been Italian “oaters” before but they’d just mimicked American ones. While other filmmakers from Anthony Mann to Sam Peckinpah had a huge effect on the whole western genre, especially in terms of making it more brutal and cynical, Leone had the greatest in this area; hell, even people being shot in American movies weren’t shown in the same frame as the people shooting them until this picture burst onto the screen, and heroes weren’t so questionable in their ethics. The quirky stylistic touches, from extreme closeups to odd angles, plus Ennio Morricone’s music, were endlessly imitated. The film itself is sometimes clumsy and the low budget often shows, but Leone would go on t0 refine his style, while the simple action beat-heavy structure is only one thing which makes this one old movie few modern viewers will be bored by.

Tonino Valerii said that co-screenwriters Adriano Barboni and Stelvio Massi met Leone outside a cinema in Rome where they’d seen Yojimbo, and suggested to him that it would make a good Western. Bolzoni stated that he had the idea and brought it to Franco Palaggi, who sent him with Duccio Tessari to watch it and take notes; he and Tessari wrote a first draft, then the script with ‘s input. However, Fernando di Leo eventually said that he wrote the script with Tessari after Leone described the basic idea. Henry Fonda and James Coburn were too expensive to star, while Henry Silva, Rory Calhoun, Tony Russel, Steve Reeves, Ty Hardin and Richard Harrison all said no. Harrison later said “Maybe my greatest contribution to cinema was not doing A Fistful of Dollars and recommending Clint Eastwood for the part”. Eastwood had also seen Yojimbo and thought it would make a great Western. When cast, he brought the iconic black jeans, hat and and the cigars. Despite being a nonsmoker, he felt that the foul taste in his mouth put him in the right frame of mind for his character. Shot mostly in Almeria, Spain, partly on sets built for some Zorro films, the Italian, German and Spanish coproduction suffered from language barriers, while Eastwood cut much of his dialogue. The production was almost shut down when the technicians removed all the windows because they hadn’t been paid. Originally called The Magnificent Stranger, the title wasn’t changed till three days before the Italian release date. Nobody had bothered to tell Eastwood, who was therefore unaware of its huge box office until an agent pointed it out to him three weeks later. Despite this, the American and British releases didn’t happen until 1967, with the former suffering around three minutes of cuts to violence, mostly a beating and a massacre, and the latter nearly five, though the version released on UK video was of the US cut.

Iginio Lardani’s James Bond-influenced but itself highly imitated title sequence has silhouetted figures on horses and shooting others dead. The credits contain some different names, with Leone Bob Robertson and Morricone Dan Savio. This was quite often done in Italian films of the time to fool people into thinking they were seeing an American film. A white screen dissolves into a shot of the ground over which our hero rides – and, yes, publicity called him the Man With No Name, but he’s referred to as Joe here, if only by one person, and other names in the sequels, which could lead one to believe that they’re three different characters until a certain moment in the last. He probably just goes by many names, rather than none. As he stops to drink from a well on the edge of San Miguel, he witnesses a small boy trying to see his imprisoned mother, Marisol, being and chased away by two men who shoot at him then give his dad a bit of a beating, observing this with seeming detachment then entering the town, refusing to be scared away by a man riding past him with ADIOS AMIGO written on his back. Three other guys taunt him and scare his mule, but Joe is welcomed by bar owner Silvanito who tells him much of what’s going on, while the coffin maker is already building Joe’s because he knows a man’s measurements just by looking at him. The two feuding families consist of the Rojo brothers; boss Don Miguel, Esteban and Ramon, and the family of so-called “town sheriff” John Baxter, his wife, Consuelo, and their son, Antonio. The Rojos own the liquor business and the Baxters own the gun business, but the Rojos are stronger due to the highly intelligent Ramon.

We soon get the first of a few iconic scenes, as Joe goes to confront the [now four] men, telling the coffin maker “get three coffins ready” on the way, before giving them a silly talk about how his mule was scared and thinks they’re laughing at him, then eventually – after much longer than normal – blowing them away. “My mistake, four coffins” he says to the coffin maker. This totally badass scene, which must have wowed so many at the time, can almost be said to mark the origins of the more modern action hero. Joe than makes a deal with Don Miguel to work for the Rojos and gets paid $100 for killing the four Baxter men. He gets a room in the Rojo residence, where he finds Marisol. He overhears Esteban arguing with Miguel about hiring him and decides to leave [“that’s all very cosey but I don’t find you men all that appealing”] and stays with Silvanito. Then a detachment of Mexican soldiers escorting a shipment of gold passes through the town, to be delivered to a troop of American soldiers at the border river in exchange for a shipment of modern American weapons. Upon following the Mexican troops, Joe watches from hiding as they’re massacred by members of the Rojo gang, disguised in American uniforms and led by Ramon. Ramon, knowing that both the US and the Mexican governments will investigate the massacre, suggests being friendly with the Baxters and lying low for a but, but Joe, in perhaps the most devious of his mechanisms, takes two of the bodies to a nearby cemetery with Silvanito’s help and sells information to both sides that two soldiers survived the attack, causing both factions to race there and engage in a gun fight. Joe’s after the gold, but then he changes.

Joe’s decision to do some good actually provides both a moral and an emotional centre for a film which was regarded by so many critics at the time as being amoral and cold, in a trilogy that can be said to have morality as its primary theme. For a lot of the time, Joe is a callous manipulator. plus someone who’ll maybe do any dirty job and not for cheap either. He might well have been dislikeable if he hadn’t been played by Eastwood. The way he calmly bluffs his way in and out of situations with a cocky smile is beyond cool, and Eastwood has the most amazing screen charisma despite never really showing what his character is feeling. I can imagine that countless cinemagoers knew that here was an instant movie star who would last a very long time. Even though he’s speaking Italian dialogue translated into English, in scaling his verbiage down he probably created some of his humourous lines, making them classic largely by his delivery, such as, in response to “is that the way you go to bed every night”? [meaning that he doesn’t change], “don’t worry, I didn’t dirty the sheets”. And he eventually lends a hand, saving a life during a superbly tense hostage exchange set piece, which leads him to rescuing a damsel in distress. Why does he do this – go and help somebody to whom he owes no obligation or favours, at the risk of his own life? The script originally had three pages of explanation of a traumatic event in bis past, but this was cut to “”cause I knew someone like you once, there was no one there to help”, which gets us thinking of all kinds of scenarios. This was an act of genius, one which kept the emotion but also maintained the character’s enigma which was a major part of his appeal. We don’t even know what he’s going to do for a while.

His scenes with Silvanito have some warmth, though Silvanito spitting at him in the distance is telling; to him Joe is just a more devious version of all the other bastards in the town, the most memorable of whom is Ramon, introduced killing loads of men with a gatling gun, who’s set up as a worthy antagonist to Joe, and played by Juan Maria Volonte who would play another in the first sequel. His death scene has him stagger about while the camera adopts his POV. The immortal Leone style is already well in place, if not quite fine tuned; we even get the first use of the camera soaring into the air and revealing a town or lots of people. Certain situations would be replayed and built upon in the sequels, such as the scene where Joe is brutally beaten by bad guys while one of them just can’t stop laughing. The undeniably sadistic [at least uncut – we must remember that many cinemagoers didn’t see much of it] sequence, with details such as a hand being crushed by a boot, was repeated, but longer and with another character joining our hero in receiving the punishment, in For A Few Dollars More, then in The Good The Bad And The Ugly it was another person altogether who was getting the “good treatment” and only fr0m one person. We probably shouldn’t consider Leone to be a sadist just because he liked filming sustained scenes of people having the shit kicked out of them.  Here we also have of his most harrowing scenes, a pretty lengthy massacre that, again in its full version, is astonishingly cruel for the time, countless people being shot dead as they stagger out of a fire. We also get the first of Eastwood’s “resurrections”, an idea he’d often return to, turning up like a supernatural demon in explosive smoke, while shooting at him does nothing – though the baddie never aims where he should.

Religious references turn up, from the Rojos dining like they’re at the Last Supper to the names of Marisol and her family. The script seems to skip over some scenes, such as a seemingly important dinner; where they not filmed because of money? The day for night footage looks terrible, the post-dubbed sound was clearly done in a rush, and San Miguel – even the saloon – has very few people, though this gives the proceedings a strange stage feel. The score is good, is sometimes ill applied – such as when a galloping motif is heard just before the massacre. Leone was already asking Morricone to write some of the music before the film and fitting some scenes to it. Joe is less represented by the riding main title theme, which is really a version of Woody Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty”, than by a descending five note scale which appears when he looks or does something cool. The proper main theme, a trumpet dirge, is an adaptation of a piece written by Dmitri Tiomkin for Rio Bravo called the Deguello. By contrast, Morricone also contributes more atonal stuff, perhaps most notably “Cavalcata” [“Horse Ride”], a six-minute epic of Gothic mood where percussion and low register instruments do battle which links two intercut sequences together. Morricone’s genius was only just taking flight, much like Leone’s. I hope that I’ve presented a good argument for A Fistful Of Dollar‘s importance, an importance which I’d happily go on about for another two paragraphs if I had time to do so. It really is so incredibly seminal – despite it being a very close remake and spotty in some places and aspects. But of course much better was to follow!

4K ULTRA LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella

Perfect bound collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Henry Blyth, Bilge Ebiri, Pasquale Iannone and Eloise Ross

Double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella

DISC 1 – FEATURE (4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY)

New 4K restoration from the original 2-perf Techniscope negative

4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
As I don’t currently support UHD, I didn’t request Arrow’s disc in that format, just the Blu-ray, but I’ll add my comments in the UHD section anyway for more clarity, the Blu-ray obviously deriving from the same source.

A Fistful Of Dollars, like most of Leone’s films, has a history of flawed releases. The restored MGM DVD from 2005 was the first release of the uncut version in the west, the video and previous DVD releases being of the US version which, while two minutes longer than the UK cinema edit, was still missing nearly three minutes. While also improving considerably on the audio, it wasn’t quite satisfactory because it was created from two interpositives; it even had a slight flicker at times. The 2010 MGM Blu-ray was little more than an upgrade and actually inferior to the RHV Ripleys Italian Blu-ray from 2008 [I ‘m a Leone worshipper so I either buy releases or look at screen grabs in detail]. 2016 saw a major Italian HD restoration which was used for a Region A 4k release by Kino Lorber in 2018; however it was done by the notorious L’Immagine Ritrovata who often emphasise an ugly and samey yellow and sometimes green look, and that was also the case here, to the point of the skies rarely being blue like they’d previously been, even though detail was amazing. 2022 saw Kino re-release this film with a newer transfer – done by L’Immagine Ritrovata to boot – and it was much more pleasing, the colours being more natural and the yellow and green dialed considerably back, if not entirely, the latter of which for a while led me to wonder if Italian prints were “timed” differently to export versions?

Arrow’s release is touted as yet another restoration. It‘s certainly yet another improvement. The yellow and green is gone and colours are generally more vibrant, if not quite amazing. Grain is fairly heavy, heavier in fact than the Kino, but mostly consistent and there’s no visible print damage, though blacks aren’t always quite deep enough. Let’s put this into perspective though – this is the best the film is going to look so, taken into perspective, Arrow have done a fine job.

Original English and Italian front and end titles

Newly restored original lossless English and Italian mono audio

Optional newly remixed lossless English and Italian DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio
The mono version is obviously more authentic, containing none of the redone sound effects that are in the DTS-HD surround mix, though the latter does highlight the Morricone score a bit more, which is of course a good thing, so take your pick!

Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for the English soundtrack

Optional English subtitles for the Italian soundtrack

Audio commentary by film historian and Leone biographer Sir Christopher Frayling
Both of the commentary tracks on this disc are from earlier releases, but are so informative that any new one would be pointless. Frayling, writer of the first book that examined the Italian western and a superb biography of Leone, covers every aspect of the film, frequently referring back to important elements like how it differs from Yojimbo and Morricone’s score, as well as pointing out all the locations. We learn among so many other things about the original opening of Joe – originally called Ray – taking a poncho from a Mexican peasant, that Leone couldn’t speak English or any other language but would say “watch me” to his non-Italian actors then mime their parts, and that at one point Eastwood left the set after one of many rows between the Italian and the Spanish crews and was about to return to America until Leone turned up at his hotel telling him that this would never happened again. Frayling is authoritative but pleasant to listen to, has an intellectual air but keeps things simple, and doesn’t leave a single substantial gap in his track. I couldn’t find a fault with it.

Audio commentary by film historian and critic Tim Lucas
Lucas has a quieter voice than Frayling anyway, but his track is still considerably quieter and I suggest that you turn up the sound to listen to it, because, even though Lucas sometimes resorts to telling what’s happening on screen and has longer gaps, he’s still very worth listening to. Obviously he covers some of the same stuff as Frayling, such as comparisons with Yojimbo, but points out some new observations, such as information often being revealed through windows which also happened in the Kurosawa film. He offers some interesting points of view, such as attempting to debunk the “myth” that this movie reinvented the Western, not to mention seeing the recurring actors throughout the trilogy in similar roles including Eastwood’s more as mythic archetypes. He’s also more deeper on cinematic technique, such as working out when shots that look like crane shots are probably not crane shots, and tells us that the mistrust of soldiers in these films relates to Leone remembering US soldiers he initially idolised. He does misquote one important line though. Lucas has similar qualities to Frayling despite talking some different approaches.

Trailers, TV spots and radio spots

DISC 2 – EXTRAS (BLU-RAY)

When It All Started, a newly filmed interview with film historian and critic Fabio Melelli [13 min]
The 2005 worldwide MGM DVD had plenty of special features, and they also showed up on the 2018 Region A Kino Lorber Blu-ray. Arrow decided to go beyond the call of duty and produce five new featurettes and locate one more. Here, we have Melelli tell us somw things that we heard about on the audio commentaries, but it’s a useful look at the film if it’s going to be a while before you can listen to said audio commentaries, and Meleili considers Leone to have approached things from a mythic point of view, something which also added to its success. He also reminds us that Leone spent much of his earlier career working on neo-realist movies, some of which struggled to be made because of there being very little money, just like A Fistful Of Dollars.

Wind & Fire, a newly filmed interview with Morricone biographer Alessandro de Rosa [18 mins]
As a Morricone fan I was especially looking forward to the two new featurettes on the music. This one sees de Rosa enlighten us a bit more on how the score was put together. There’s Morricone telling Leone “either I write the music from start to finish or I leave the project” after Leone wanted him to use material by others; a compromise was made where Morricone did indeed use two pieces he didn’t write as his main themes but made significant changes to them, including the title theme’s lyrics being changed from “with the wind” to “wind and fire” [Lucas in his audio commentary claims that the words are “we can win”, in a very rare mistake from him]. He also tells us that Morricone often didn’t conduct because he wanted to be in the recording booth with Leone and other directors where he could concentrate more on the actual music and discuss it; for a long time Bruno Nicolai would often do the honours.

Four Fingers Four Picks, a newly filmed interview with guitarist Bruno Battisti D’Amario [15 mins]
It seems that D’Amario is actually somebody who deserves a bit more credit than he gets, because he actually composed the accompaniment to the title theme, Morricone asking him to do so because he was very tired. After detailing his entry into the music business which include playing in an orchestra in which both his father and Morricone’s father played, D’Amario shares his memories of working on this score for Morricone, who would subsequently ask him to play on every subsequent score he wrote though D’Amario sometimes had to turn him down because he was doing other things. The nicest story is him going away to do military service, then upon his return hearing a lot of people talking about A Fistful Of Dollars but not realising that it was the same film with which he’d been involved with for some time before.

A Night at the Movies, a newly filmed interview with filmmaker Paolo Bianchini [12 mins]
Bianchini, who describes traveling on a bus which went all around Rome with a mattress for which the driver almost charged him for the amount of an extra person, lived for some time at Leone’s apartment because Leone was often away; he also says that he was one of the people with whom Leone went to see Yojimbo at the cinema, Leone saying afterwards “what a western, wow”!, Bianchini not really understanding what he meant. Quite amusingly, he tells us that, even though cast and crew mostly had pseudonyms so the film didn’t seem Italian, once it became popular it was revealed that it was in actual fact made by Italians and people were proud to have worked on it. He also describes Leone’s genius at being able to get into character’s heads, though he doesn’t like the blood in his films.

A Fistful of Outtakes, highlights from the original rushes [35 mins]
This a real treat for fans. We’re taken chronologically through the movie while also getting the chance to hear much of the score properly because these rushes have no sound. Opening with something very special – part of the cut opening scene where we see Joe kicking a man into a river and taking his poncho – we see portions of many takes of scenes being shot, usually starting slightly earlier with lots and lots of the clapperboard guy and ending slightly later, and sometimes in different angles than we’re used to. Eastwood fumbles with getting his gun out, he rides bis mule for absolutely ages though only a few seconds were actually used, and we get glimpses of both his stunt double and Leone himself. Obviously the picture quality isn’t amazing though would you really expect it to be? This is absolutely GOLD for fans. I hope Arrow were able to locate similar material for the sequels.

The Day the Soundtrack Changed, a new visual essay by musician and disc collector Lovely Jon exploring the film’s iconic score [23 mins]
Did A Fistful Of Dollars take Italian cinema out of the arthouse, as Lovely Jon says? The first two in the Peplum [sword and sandal] cycle to be released outside of Italy – Hercules and Hercules Unchained – did really well but still didn’t have anywhere the same impact. Lovely Jon contributes another enthusiastic look at a Morricone soundtrack, and provides a few new tidbits such as the main title theme originally going to have lyrics to the melody. He devotes a lot of time to listing and talking about the personnel who contributed majorly to Morricone’s score and much of what followed, including a set of key musicians whom Morricone would use over and over again for some time. Lovely Jon also looks at the original album and, like Lucas, thinks that the words sung by that chorus are “we can fight”. Well they do sound like “we can fight” don’t they, so I think that we can let him off.

Marisol: Leone’s Madonna of the West, an archival interview with co-star Marianne Koch [31 mins]
Included on the Kino, this is a really nice watch, heavy on the stills, a few of which don’t seem all that relevant, but it doesn’t seem to matter really. Koch isn’t too fond of A Fistful Of Dollars these days, calling it “a cruel massacre”, but doesn’t seem to be ashamed of the film for which she’s most famous for despite being having made so much else, not to mention being absent for much of it and only having one line of dialogue to say. She discusses in some detail her memories, such as she and many others thinking that Eastwood was rubbish the way he barely seemed to act in not just rehearsals but the first of the rushes until they viewed the latter and realised the magic which Eastwood was bringing to the screen. Apparently Eastwood would talk about being a director even back then, and the piece finishes nicely with Koch saying how she found and interviewed Leone at Cannes in 1984 and thereafter became a journalist. Koch is genuinely lovely to spend time with; honest but full of warmth and character..

The Frayling Archives [18 mins]
This is the first of the 20o5 DVD featurettes, and it was especially nice to watch this one again. Frayling says that he’d “haunt” Italian shops as he bought whatever he could get his hands on to use for his book on Leone’s Westerns, before showing us a considerable selection of posters plus some pressbooks and records with the two main themes on them, items which he doesn’t know will end up after he dies – America or Italy. It’s very interesting to see that Eastwood’s likeness or name wasn’t even on some of the early posters; one suggested that Marianne Koch was the star, while another has Eastwood dwarfed by a large Mexican person who isn’t even in the film but who would supposedly have drawn local audiences. Frayling says that Eastwood was definitely plays three distinct characters in each of the films, and even owns the original script, a gift from the widow of production designer Carlo Simi, which contains a character named George Wetling not present at all in the film.

A New Kind of Hero [22 mins]
Some of the material here we’ve already heard in previous special features, but this is still worth watching for some nice extra nuggets; I can picture so much Leone looking at a photograph of Eastwood from Rawhide and making adjustments with a pen such as drawing stubble, already beginning to create the iconic character. He also explains that characters sometimes laugh or make sounds because the dubbers had to fill out longer sentences, the set being one where different languages were spoken, which was common at the time. Frayling obviously loves Leone, but admits “that the sexual politics of his films is pretty neanderthal” while we’re shown shots of Eastwood in bed with women in the two sequels that were cut out. Eastwood can’t have liked that, and rectified it when he began starring in American films.

A Few Days in Spain [8 mins]
This is the first instalment of a three-parter where Eastwood discusses each of the Dollars films, which in Japan were called “Macaroni Westerns” to differentiate them from American ones. He recalls that the budget was so low that he only had one of everything and took it all back to his hotel every evening, and that it was initially weird having people doing noisy things while he was filming scenes of the shot-silently film though this eventually made him more determined to focus, even though he also had to make notes after he’d done a scene for him to refer to when he did the English dubbing. The crew were apparently rather inefficient compared with American or newer Italian ones. It’s always nice to see Eastwood, though I feel that he could have said a bit more about the production and his feelings regarding the actual film.

Not Ready for Primetime [6 mins]
When A Fistful Of Dollars had its American TV premiere, it was decided that its hero killing and manipulating all these people wasn’t appropriate for viewers at home without some moral justification. So a prologue was added where Joe is led out of the prison cell that he’s been spending time in to the office of some unnamed lawman, played by Harry Dean Stanton, who tells him about San Miguel and “I want the place cleaned up and I don’t care how you do it”.  In return, he’ll get a pardon. Eastwood’s face is never shown except in one closeup taken from the film, because of course he’s played by a double. Director Monte Hellman recalls that they couldn’t find the exact poncho for the double to wear, that he’d make it much shorter if he shot it today, and that, when Eastwood saw the film on TV, he said to people that he didn’t remember shooting the scene!

The Network Prologue filmed for the film’s US TV debut in 1975 [6 mins]
The quality isn’t great, but this was fascinating to see back in 1975. It’s introduced by the collector who had the sole recording of the prologue, copied onto video from TV.

Restoration Italian Style [5 mins]
John Kirk, a controversial figure in some circles for reasons I won’t detail here, restored the Dollar films and A Fistful Of Dynamite [aka Duck You Sucker]  for their 2005 DVD Special Edition releases. Here, he describes how he couldn’t get A Fistful Of Dollars to look as good as he wanted because he was unable to access the Italian negative [MGM didn’t own one] and had to piece together a full version from two old interpositives. He also says that the version he’d restored will have some shots slightly longer or shorter than the versions that many viewers will have seen, because different cuts were made for different countries, though he doesn’t explain why.

Location Comparisons 1964–2004 [6 mins]
It’s always interesting to see these. Not much has really changed in Almeria.

Tre Voci [Three Voices] [11 mins]
This sees Leone collaborators Mickey Knox ‘[writer of most of Leone’s English language tracks to be dubbed in the United States], screenwriter Sergio Donati and producer Alberto Grimaldi chat about the creation of A Fistful Of Dollars. Knox describes Leone put the threat of his hero “in his image”, Donati recalls Leone telling him to go and see Yojimbo because it could be a western, and Grimaldi remembers that, despite being considered lowly by the critics, 80% of cinemagoers loved them, so he found it easy to set up.

Alternate credits sequences

Three comprehensive image galleries: A Fistful of Pictures [14 mins], On the Set 4 mins] and Promoting ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ [15 mins]

BLU-RAY LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella

Perfect bound collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Henry Blyth, Bilge Ebiri, Pasquale Iannone and Eloise Ross

Double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella

DISC 1 – FEATURE

New 4K restoration from the original 2-perf Techniscope negative

High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation

Original English and Italian front and end titles

Newly restored original lossless English and Italian mono audio

Optional newly remixed lossless English and Italian DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio

Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for the English soundtrack

Optional English subtitles for the Italian soundtrack

Audio commentary by film historian and Leone biographer Sir Christopher Frayling

Audio commentary by film historian and critic Tim Lucas

Trailers, TV spots and radio spots

DISC 2 – EXTRAS 

When It All Started, a newly filmed interview with film historian and critic Fabio Melelli [13 min]

Wind & Fire, a newly filmed interview with Morricone biographer Alessandro de Rosa [18 mins]

Four Fingers Four Picks, a newly filmed interview with guitarist Bruno Battisti D’Amario [15 mins]

A Night at the Movies, a newly filmed interview with filmmaker Paolo Bianchini [12 mins]

A Fistful of Outtakes, highlights from the original rushes [35 mins]

The Day the Soundtrack Changed, a new visual essay by musician and disc collector Lovely Jon exploring the film’s iconic score [23 mins]

Marisol: Leone’s Madonna of the West, an archival interview with co-star Marianne Koch [31 mins]

The Frayling Archives [18 mins]

A New Kind of Hero [22 mins]

A Few Days in Spain [8 mins]

Not Ready for Primetime [6 mins]

The Network Prologue filmed for the film’s US TV debut in 1975 [6 mins]

Restoration Italian Style [5 mins]

Location Comparisons 1964–2004 [6 mins]

Tre Voci [Three Voices] [11 mins]

Alternate credits sequences

Three comprehensive image galleries: A Fistful of Pictures [14 mins], On the Set 4 mins] and Promoting ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ [15 mins]

This is quite simply the definitive release of this flawed but immensely important and influential work, besting the already very fine Region A Kino Lorber release with the inclusion of even more special features.  A great job by Arrow! Highly Recommended – even if those familiar with these films will know that far better is soon to come.