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The
Man with No Name
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Clint
Eastwood and Sergio Leone galloped into Western cinema immortality
through a phenomenon that came to be known as the "spaghetti
Western."
Commemorating
the history
and great
moments of the Western
By
Holly George-Warren
EDITOR'S
NOTE: This article is our fifth installment in a yearlong
series on the 100th anniversary of the Western, and of filmmaking
itself.
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No
other film genre is as associated with America as the Western. Yet, in
the 1960s, a new breed of cowboy picture-starring Italians as well as
Americans, directed by an Italian, and filmed in Spain-would affect the
course of film history. Perhaps this development's most important
achievement was to introduce movie audiences to an actor who would come
to personify a new type of antihero, beginning with Westerns, and later
with a series of Dirty Harry films: Clint Eastwood.
In
1964, Italian director Sergio Leone-a lifelong Western fan who had
assisted on several American film productions in Europe-began work on an
action-packed shoot-'em-up of his own. Due to a limited budget, Leone's
dream of casting Henry Fonda or James Coburn in the lead didn't pan out
for his debut Western, but he settled on an actor who'd been playing a
character named Rowdy Yates in the American television Western Rawhide.
Clint Eastwood had been chomping at the bit to make films, but his CBS
television contract prevented him from doing so in the States. The 10
features he'd been in prior to Rawhide amounted to mostly bit parts, so
the 37-year-old Eastwood gladly accepted an offer of $15,000 and
welcomed the opportunity to spend his summer break in Europe.
Thus
began a transformation of Eastwood's clean-cut, grinning Rowdy persona
into a glinty-eyed, terse-lipped, stubble-chinned, cigarillo-smoking
anti-cowboy. The German-Italian co-production, which was filmed in
Spain, was originally titled The Magnificent Stranger, and had been
based on a Japanese film, directed by Akira Kurosawa, called Yojimbo
(inspired in part by Shane). In Leone's picture, Eastwood's scruffy
Stranger, garbed in dark poncho, beat-up flat-brimmed hat, and dusty
skintight jeans, comes moseying into the Mexican village of San Miguel
astride a mule. After being shot at by one group of thugs, he observes
another nasty crew firing at a toddler scampering in the street.
Deciding to take advantage of the two viciously competitive families
seeking to control the godforsaken place, the cold-blooded,
sharp-shooting Stranger conceives a plan to hire himself out to each
clan as a mercenary. An unprecedented filmic brutality follows,
characterized by a kind of choreographed gore-fest juxtaposed with
lingering closeups of leering desperados. The Stranger's amoral stance
and qualms-free precision with his pistol, as well as his low-key,
withdrawn demeanor, created a new kind of antiheroic icon. Eastwood's
soft-spoken, gruff delivery and granite-faced resolve contrasted greatly
with the overemoting, flamboyant acting by the Italians-what Eastwood
has called the "hellzapoppin' school of drama."
 In
Italy, violence wasn't subjected to the same scrutiny by film censors as
in the States. The Hayes Commission traditionally had restricted
American productions from showing in a single frame the act of a gun
being fired and the bullet striking a victim. "You had to shoot
separately, and then show the person fall," Eastwood told Leone
biographer Christopher Frayling. "And that was always thought sort
of stupid. But on television we always did it that way... And you see,
Sergio never knew that." Upon its release, the film became
massively successful in Italy, but due to a lawsuit between Leone and
Kurosawa it didn't get released in the States until 1967, with the title
A Fistful of Dollars and Eastwood's character referred to as "The
Man With No Name." Leone's name in the credits was Americanized as
"Bob Robertson."
In
1965, Leone set to work on a sequel, this time pairing Eastwood with
another little known American actor, Lee Van Cleef. Van Cleef had played
the heavy in a number of Westerns, including High Noon, Gunfight at the
O.K. Corral, and The Bravados, among others. When cast by Leone, he'd
given up acting for painting after being seriously injured in a car
accident. In A Few Dollars More, Eastwood and Van Cleef played
conniving, brutal bounty hunters vying for the same mark-the murderous
bandito Indio, who rapes and pillages in drug-crazed frenzies. Van
Cleef's role as the snake-eyed, sneering killer Colonel Mortimer
resulted in his becoming a superstar in Europe, acting in 12 Westerns
over the next nine years.
Leone's
next project, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, teamed Van Cleef and
Eastwood with scene-stealing method actor Eli Wallach, who'd played the
killer bandit in The Magnificent Seven. All three are in search of gold
treasure hidden by Confederate soldiers, with the raging Civil War
adding a bloody backdrop to the plot. This film had more liberal doses
of Leone's earthy-sometimes gross-out-humor that was hinted at in the
first two films. That same year, all three films were finally released
in the States, inaugurating the term "spaghetti Western" and
becoming hugely popular with audiences-while receiving a negative
critical reaction from the press and from some directors associated with
the Western, such as John Ford, Anthony Mann, and Budd Boetticher.
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