The Sergio Leone Anthology (A Fistful Of Dollars/For A Few
Dollars More/The Good, The Bad And
The Ugly/Duck, You Sucker aka A Fistful Of Dynamite aka Once Upon A Time… The Revolution – MGM)
Picture: B- Sound: C+ Extras: B Films:
A Fistful Of Dollars (1964) B
For A Few Dollars More (1965) B
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966) B+
Duck, You Sucker aka A Fistful Of Dynamite aka
Once Upon A Time… Revolution (1972) A
Sergio
Leone only made nine films in his lifetime, but six of them are classics and
five of them established the cycle known as Spaghetti Westerns. His first five films between 1964 through
1972 changed The Western with its ironic & comical cynicism, innovations in
scoring with music & sound effects and started the now-long tradition of
filmmakers referencing many previous films expecting the audience rot know at
least some of the moments as everything from in-jokes to weighty referential
intertextual points.
Making a
mint on the James Bond films, United Artists was very interested in finding
another series that would go over well with audiences, possibly an import with
something exciting to offer that was not art cinema. The result was the purchasing of the rights
to the now-famous Man With No Name
trilogy. They turned longtime character
actor Clint Eastwood into an international star and made Leone one of the most
influential filmmakers of all time.
Already
in the throws of its last great era, The Hollywood Western and Western genre
had entered the epic Professional stage where all the characters (alone or more
often in groups of some kind) were all in it for the money. This resonated highly with the counterculture
and these films started to become hits just as that broke out. The instincts of the studio’s creative people
had been correct yet again.
A Fistful Of Dollars could not have a more honest
title, introducing the mysterious dirty cowboy figure Eastwood would make
iconic (called “Joe” here). A remake of
sorts of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo,
Leone and company took the fun, excitement and love of Hollywood Westerns and
remade/reworked them into this story which in many ways recreates the whole
world history of the genre in order to open it up, deconstruct the conventions
and reopen it up in a more honest, self-reflective, gritty and amusing
way. The predictable (dialogue,
meetings, gunfights) suddenly offer new twists or raise expectations for more
brutal, rawer versions of scenes we have seen in the genre before like gun and
bar fights.
At the
time, Westerns were so saturated in films and TV, plus much more popular at the
time, that many were stunned by the way Leone had trumped the whole genre in
one film. A huge international hit was
the result. Rough for its time,
Eastwood’s gun for hire character finds himself in the middle of a land/family
feud and will help the one who pays him the most to annihilate the other. Of course, nothing is going to be that simple
and he knows it. With music by Ennio
Morricone, a legendary collaboration was also established and the rest is
history.
For A Few Dollars More soon followed, pitting The Man
With No Name against two more formidable opponents in lawman Colonel Douglas
Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) and thief extraordinaire El Indio (Gian Maria Volonte)
who are in a cat and mouse situation.
That is until our anti-hero sees an opportunity to make even more
money. These two films so explicitly and
coldly dealt with the ideas of life and death greed that they instantly aged
most Westerns that came before them. Leone
also understood that The Western began as B-movie material before evolving into
a full-fledged genre and knew how to run with that.
Both are
included here in DVD double sets that had been released in the U.K. for a few
years now. When MGM was sold to a
consortium, the release of those sets was delayed for quite a while in the
U.S., but The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
did get a fancy release on its own on bo0ht sides of the Atlantic and here is
our coverage of that set:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1038/The+Good,+The+Bad+&+The+Ugly
After the
success of that trilogy, Leone made what he thought would be his final Western,
inspired in part by Nicholas Ray’s Western masterwork Johnny Guitar. Once Upon
A Time In The West (1968) broke
away form much of the explicit humor to tell a darker, more serious tale of The
West on an epic scale that raised (along with Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch
in 1969) The Western to a new epic high that few film since have matched. We have previously reviewed that classic on
DVD too.
PLEASE
NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT INCLUDED
IN THIS SET, BUT WAS RELEASED AFTER THE TRILOGY & IS ON DVD:
Once
Upon A Time In The West: Special Edition
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/765/Once+Upon+A+Time+In+The+West
That was
the best film yet and Leone was so satisfied that he intended to conclude his
Westerns there, only producing the next one.
Eventually, however, he would direct the film that became known under
several titles: Duck, You Sucker aka A
Fistful Of Dynamite aka Once Upon A
Time… The Revolution. Suddenly, he
had big name stars like Rod Steiger and James Coburn as his co-stars. Steiger is a poor peasant guy with little to
lose who takes advantage of any opportunity he can and is in the middle of some
peculiar changes when explosions suddenly go off.
Instead
of just military bombs of some kind, it turns out to be Coburn as an explosives
expert an Irish revolutionary hell bent on swinging the Mexican Revolution his
way. More than just another Professional
Western, it deconstructs that cycle of Westerns and is Leone’s bold
anti-Socialist epic. That makes it a far
more complex film that the predecessors, though it also brings back the humor
of the earlier Eastwood films. This
time, that humor is tainted with the deepest of irony, especially when the
ugliest possible things happen in the film.
With the
decline of The Western soon ahead, John Wayne’s career in the twilight and both
Eastwood & Walter Hill the last key filmmakers of Westerns of any
consequence, it was all downhill for the genre from here. Though Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves is an epic, calling it a Western is a bit of a
stretch. The one film that did attempt
to be a massive epic Western and possibly a rebuttal to Leone’s work (at least
to some extent) is Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s
Gate, finally released in 1980 after many delays to disastrous business and
confused critical response. That was the
original UA’s last film, ironically, before going bankrupt and MGM is due to
reissue that restored soon as well on DVD and Blu-ray. More on that classic then.
All four
of these films were shot in 2-perf Techniscope, an inexpensive, effective
Italian imitator of CinemaScope/Panavision that offered less distortion at the
cost of some definition. Previous
versions looked terrible and very grainy in all previous video formats and on
the early DVDs MGM issued, but the anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on
these four films is colorful, exemplary, clean, clear and even rich. Technicolor in Italy invented Techniscope and
all the films here were originally issued in remarkable 3-strip Technicolor
prints. The color in all four films has
its moments of looking that good, even down to the 20 minutes added to Duck, You Sucker.
All
originally monophonic films, MGM has upgraded the films to Dolby Digital 5.1
and though you can hear how thin the original recordings (almost all totally
featuring looped dialogue throughout as was the case with most post-WWII
Italian productions), the remixes are good if not great. The Morricone scores are enduring and where
recorded in stereo, have been added that way.
The combination is impressive no all four films, which I can say even
after seeing The Good, The Bad And The
Ugly in a restored print. The sound
was upgraded a while ago with older Dolby Digital standards. When the high definition Blu-ray versions
arrive, they will have DTS HD 5.1 mixes and hopefully, MGM will have spent some
more time and money to upgrade those mixes for the format to go with the
beautiful transfers. DTS was on all
three DVD sets of The Man With No Name sets in their U.K. release, but there is
no DTS in any case here.
Extras
are massive here. They are as follows
for each set:
A Fistful Of Dollars: Collector's
Edition offers
feature commentary by Film Historian Sir Christopher Frayling, A New Kind Of Hero featurette, A Few Weeks In Spain with Clint Eastwood
On The Experience Of Making The Film, Tre
Voci: Three Friends Remember Sergio Leone, Not Ready For Primetime: renowned and groundbreaking Western
filmmaker Monte Hellman discusses the television broadcast of A Fistful Of
Dollars & The Network Prologue With Harry Dean Stanton, Location
Comparisons Then To Now: Film Clips With Current Footage Of The Locations Used,
10 Radio Spots and a Double-Bill Trailer for the first two films in reissue.
For A Few Dollars More:
Collector's Edition
offers another excellent, thoroughly researched audio commentary by Noted Film
Historian Sir Christopher Frayling, A New
Standard: Sir Christopher Frayling On For A Few Dollars More, Back For More: Clint Eastwood Remembers For
A Few Dollars More, For A Few Dollars
More: The Original American Release Version Comparison featurette, Location
Comparisons Then To Now: film clips intercut with current footage of the locations
used, 12 Radio Spots and the original theatrical trailer.
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly repeats the previously reviewed
DVD set including audio commentary by film historian Richard Schickel, deleted scenes,
Leone's West Making-Of Documentary, The
Leone Style Documentary on Sergio Leone, The Man Who Lost The Civil War Civil War Documentary, Reconstructing The Good, The Bad And The
Ugly featurette On Composer Ennio Morricone, poster gallery and original theatrical
trailer
Duck, You Sucker offers another amazing audio commentary
by Sir Christopher Frayling, Sergio
Donate Remembers Duck, You Sucker featurette, The Myth Of Revolution: Sir Christopher Frayling Discusses Leone's
Political Leanings, His Method And His Style, Once Upon A Time In Italy (AKA: The Autry Exhibition): A
Behind-The-Scenes Look At Putting Together An Exhibit On Leone, Sorting Out The Versions featurette, Restoration Italian Style: John Kirk
Discusses Restoring The Original Italian Version For The First DVD Release, Location
Comparisons Then To Now: Film Clips Intercut with Current Footage Of The
Locations Used, 6 Radio Spots and the original theatrical trailer.
This is a
key must-have DVD collection all serious collectors should own.
- Nicholas Sheffo
