A Fistful of Dollars - the birth of Spaghetti West

Looked back on as the perfect antidote to the encroaching staleness of American Western cinema, 'A Fistful of Dollars' (1964) is oft-hailed as the premiere Spaghetti Western - Sergio Leone's one-man revitalisation of a dying genre, the first of his three westerns with a then-unknown Clint Eastwood, and the beginnings of what would perhaps become some of the most famous of western trademarks that are still being used today.

By setting the story south of the border, and abandoning the usual cast of cliched characters, Leone managed to invent an entirely new kind of Western - a less romanticised, more realistic representation. Eastwood's nameless character is little more than a mercenary, playing the town's villains off against one another in a machiavellian bid for cash.

The usual codes of honour don't apply here, and the film is better for it - sharp, edgy and gritty. Eastwood's character is the height of cool, playing his adverseries for chumps. One character remarks "It's like playing cowboys and indians" - calling to mind the discarding of usual Western stereotypes and conventions, and Eastwood instead plays games with death itself. The trailblazing isn't just in the story itself either, Leone's style of direction is probably more famous than he is himself - his use of musical cues, realisticly brutal violence, extreme close-ups of scrutinising eyes, and establishing shots of characters in profile are all now well-known hallmarks of the genre, and were an astoundingly fresh approach at a time when directors favoured long-shots and blood-free shootings.

Watch it for Eastwood's 'man with no name', watch it for all the great shots of characters facing off. Watch it for the cool lines and hardened characters, and the lack of morals that frees the story up for all sorts of sideways trickery. The ending is awesome.

TRIVIA: The plotline is directly lifted from Akira Kurosawa's 'Yojimbo' (1961). Kurosawa's successfully sued Leone for breach of copyright.

Leone and Eastwood followed up 'A Fistfull of Dollars' with 'A Few Dollars More' and 'The Good, The Bad and the Ugly' (widely reputed to be the best Western of all time).

When the film was sold to American TV, the networks added a new beginning to the film to give Eastwood's character some sort of moral upstanding. Both Eastwood and Leone denounced the TV edition.

The protagonist's role was originally offered to both Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda. Leone couldn't afford them though and had to settle for Eastwood, then a minor television actor. Both Fonda and Bronson would later star in Leone's 'Once Upon a Time in the West'.

One of the film's stuntmen had to act as an interpretor between Eastwood and the rest of the production crew (who all spoke Italian or Spanish, including the director).