A Fistful of Dollars *****

Of all the definitions of mythology that I’ve looked up, none of them satisfy me. They're all too narrow. To me, something becomes part of mythology when it not only achieves iconic status within that same culture, but to other cultures.

So when I see an Italian director, remaking a Japanese movie, to give his take on the Western – I think it’s safe to say that the Wild West has reached the level of American mythology. The cowboy has become a symbol of what America is to the world.

I’ve already said that Jack Ford is the great American mythologist because of the outstanding Westerns that he has shot, but to explore the idea of the Western as American mythology I did not want to use one of his movies and I’ll use the follow story to explain why.

One dry summer day in Los Angeles, I was having lunch with Ford at some place on Wiltshire Boulevard and we started discussing My Darling Clementine, Ford’s film about the Gunfight at the OK Corral. There were parts of that movie that I had never read in any history book, so I asked Ford how much license he took with the legend. “None,” Ford answered. “I told the story exactly how Wyatt told it to me.” You learn something every day. It turns out that when Ford starting making silent westerns in the teens, he had become friends with the aging gunfighter Wyatt Earp.

My point is that Ford’s movies had somewhat of a first hand experience to them. He was just telling stories as he or his friends knew them. Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa explore the mythology that Jack Ford helped to create.

Kurosawa’s movie came first in 1961. He took the ideas and themes in a Western and adapted them to a story about a Japanese icon, the Samurai. Kurosawa did one thing a little different then most Westerns did when it came to plotting the story. In Yojimbo, the main character was completely immoral. The unnamed Samurai’s only goal was to obtain profit no matter who got hurt. And this was the hero! It sprinkled a bit of gray into a traditionally black and white business (Ford’s The Searchers is the exception here).

A couple of years later, Italian director Sergio Leone virtually plagiarized the plot of Yojimbo, placed it in the American West and had a bounty hunter/gunman replace the Samurai (one icon for another) and called it A Fistful of Dollars. Leone would go on to make several of what are called Spaghetti Westerns. There’s been some debate about which one of these movies was the best, but there’s always a soft spot in my heart for A Fistful of Dollars. This is my favorite Leone movie for two reasons; first of all, it was the maiden voyage and it was chartering new ground with each shot, and second, the Man with No Name was never quite as gloriously immoral in the sequels as he was in A Fistful of Dollars.

The basic story is that there are two families feuding in some unnamed town during some unmentioned time. Into this situation walks Clint Eastwood, the Man with No Name. After sizing up the deal, Clint decides to offer his services to one family to act as their bodyguard and to repel the threat of that other horrible family. The first family agrees, so Clint then goes to make the same offer to the second family. Following these original propositions, Clint then continues to work one side against the other until the entire town is decimated and he becomes rich in the process. I started to grin just thinking about it.

Not only does Leone explore this great American myth, but he enhances it by adding to the mix another great American tradition, capitalism. What Eastwood does is simply an immoral version of supply and demand and in turn becomes the Westerns first full blown antihero.

As great as the story is that is not why this movie is important. It’s the look of it. I’m not sure Leone even knows what a medium or a two-shot is. In this movie there are two options – the long, long shot where you can see into the next state or the extreme close-up where you can see the beads of sweat forming on the brow.

The vast, long shots are nothing new and have been a Ford staple for decades, but the close-ups are different. These shots can accomplish one of two things – either making the character larger-than-life by having a face fill the screen or making someone looked deformed or evil by focusing on a flaw. These shots also show the dirty, grimy part of the West as juxtaposition to the long beautiful shots of the vast scenery.

Also note that the hero does not have a name because that character is not a person at all, but an American archetype. It’s interesting to watch this movie because it’s a great film first of all and it shows an outsider’s take on something that is truly American.

By the way, if you still doubt that the Western is the only mythology that is uniquely American, tell me the last time you saw a Italian movie about George Washington. A Japanese film? Greek? I’m pretty sure the Brits didn’t do one.