Original subtitles

Can there be hope in a lawless world where men are only worth the price of

their death? And when greed, morality, and money collide, who will be left standing?

Sergio Leone’s 1966 western sequel For a Few Dollars More finds Clint Eastwood’s Man With

No Name returning in pursuit of a new deadly gang only to clash with a fellow bounty hunter

by the name of Colonel Mortimer, played by Lee Van Cleef. With both men hunting the dangerous

criminal known as El Indio and his crew, these two killers will have to work together to take

down a group too dangerous for either of them alone. But is there something greater

that propels Mortimer? And what does it mean for our nameless bounty hunter?

When compared to the splash made by Fistful and the epic conclusion of The Good The Bad

and The Ugly, For a Few Dollars More is often overlooked in the scope of the Dollars Trilogy,

but it’s a story that absolutely stands toe to toe with the rest of Leone’s work. Not only that,

but I find it superior to Fistful and the genesis of a greater humanity in the director’s creations

that lays the groundwork for the pathos that offsets the grandiosity of his trilogy capper.

Here, we’ll explore its story of obsession and pain that quietly underlines a bombastic gunplay

and stylish western cinematography, creeping up on audiences until its emotionally resonant finale.

From its brutal approach to Western archetypes to its use of contrasting character and tones,

For A Few Dollars More cemented the meaning of

the spaghetti western and the west was never the same again.

—

Another Fistful

Hot off the success of A Fistful of Dollars in Italy, Leone teamed with new producer

Alberto Grimaldi to quickly begin work on a followup to his fresh but soon to

be imitated new interpretation of the western. Whereas Leone’s first film had cribbed heavily

from Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo,” this new film would be a completely original tale.

The only catch was that star Clint Eastwood hadn’t even been able to see the first movie

yet due to it being unreleased in America. Cue an Italian language print being shipped

to America for a viewing that impressed Eastwood and friends enough for him to agree to a sequel.

Written by Luciano Vincenzoni in 9 days based on a story by Leone and several collaborators,

For A Few Dollars More’s dialogue was rewritten by Sergio Donati as an uncredited script doctor.

And what became of it is a movie that is deeply entrenched in western tropes,

yet refuses to play by black and white rules. Coming in at a little over 2 hours

and taking our heroes and villains across the southwest, For A Few Dollars More has

a bigger scope than Fistful, pushing us into nonstop setpieces filled with death,

but each moment is propelled by some sort of gray moralistic choice. Betrayal, revenge,

greed, anger - moral corruption is the cause of so much of the story, but what Leone’s

sequel is hiding is the righteous love that’s secretly propelling the story until its end.

Beyond returning to the style that would solidify the new wave of spaghetti westerns,

For a Few Dollars more would also establish several other trends that

would define Leone’s trilogy and subsequent films. Composer Ennio Morricone would return

for his second collaboration with Leone, recording the score before filming began

so the director could shoot the film as the score played on set. Of course, this wouldn’t

interfere with sound recording as the movie would, like most Italian films of the time,

be recorded MOS with no sound being recorded on set, with actors speaking their lines in their

native languages. Afterward, ADR lines would be dubbed into the languages needed for each release

of the film. And beyond Eastwood returning in the lead role, the archetypal Man With No Name

who actually is given some sort of name in each film (Joe, Manco, and Blondie) and who

may or may not actually be the same character, Leone brings back multiple actors for new roles.

Gian Maria Volante returns as the film’s villain, this time the more psychotic and

troubled El Indio. Mario Brega is once again the humongous second in command for the second of

three films. Aldo Sambrell, Benito Stefanelli, and Lorenzo Robledo fill out the gang ranks,

like they do in each part of the trilogy. Josef Egger is again an old and strange

giver of wisdom in his last role, likely not being in The Good the Bad and The

Ugly only due to his passing. And finally Lee Van Cleef plays co-lead as Colonel Douglas Mortimer,

the moral center of the movie, for the first of 2 Leone collaborations.

Actually, The Good The Bad and The Ugly (my favorite film of all time) was the first film

of the Dollars Trilogy I ever saw and in it, Van Cleef returns as the truly horrible Angel Eyes.

It’s a rare recasting in this trilogy that puts an actor in the opposite type of role. To me,

seeing him as Mortimer was a shock in comparison,

when really his return in part 3 is intended to have the opposite effect.

There are a lot of elements from Fistful recycled here as well - obviously, its

focused on bounty hunting, but there’s also the joining of a gang in an effort to undermine them,

our heroes getting found out and beaten, and the signature killing style of the main villain being

turned against him in the finale. Eventually, the scene of our duo working their way through town

and killing hiding gang members would be reused in GBU. What separates For a Few Dollars More from

its predecessor is the strength and confidence with which Leone and crew execute their story.

The Western isn’t the Western just because of the place or time it happens in, but because

of the tropes and archetypes that are addressed in the story. The Dollars Trilogy reiterates on

the ideas seen in countless previous films with a darker, more brutal outlook and then each film in

the trilogy reiterates on the ideas that came in the one prior. It’s a case for these movies

not actually starring the same character, just another mythic killer played by Eastwood trying to

survive in a lawless time. And here, our signature bounty hunter would find his perfect counterpart.

The Eyes of a Killer

Leone opens his film with a long, slow single take of a rider in the distance

killed by a gunman whose eyes we see through. No reason, no flair,

but the gunshots soon transition into hand drawn credits over the scene. The intention

is clear - we’re immediately put into the eyes of a killer, our viewpoint for the next two hours.

A rarity for Leone’s filmography and the only one of the Dollars trilogy to do it,

For a Few Dollars More then brings up text explaining the ruthless world we’ve entered,

but we don’t really need it to understand the dynamics at play here. This is the central appeal

of the western - a classic world established by hundreds of movies with its own rules,

archetypes, motivations, and aesthetics that even the most casual viewer knows by osmosis.

The intention, in my mind, is to establish the amorality of the spaghetti western,

still in its infancy here and directly contrasting the white hat cowboy stories that had filled the

decades before. This idea of a dollar attached to your head fulfilled by your death as the only

thing to give your life worth is just the first of so many juxtapositions that fill the story to

come. And Leone’s filmmaking was always powered by hard contrasts: extreme closeups of faces

that seem larger than the huge spaces around them, quiet stillness punctuated by sudden,

loud violence, lawmen that embrace corruption, and bounty hunters that grow a conscience.

Colonel Mortimer is this movie’s biggest collection of contrasts,

with the film introducing him as a coldblooded killer mistaken for

a preacher who can get away with bringing an entire train to an emergency stop with just a

look. Soon after, his gunfight subverts our expectation of a quickdraw duel,

instead relying on a steady aim assisted by his stock attachment vs the wild shots of his quarry.

Really, this is Mortimer’s movie. It’s Van Cleef’s character that has the biggest arc,

the most character development, who drives the movie’s plot,

and who ultimately is the center of its climax. Eastwood’s Man With No Name is the deuteragonist,

at first being at odds with Mortimer and then ultimately allies, it’s almost the same exact

approach you’d see in George Miller’s Mad Max sequels, pushing Rockatansky into a new

conflict where he’s ultimately a catalyst for change in someone else’s narrative.

Van Cleef, in a role originally intended for Charles Bronson,

brings a mix of sharp eyed intensity (seriously this guy feels like he could kill you with his

eyes instead of his gun) and a polished classiness that contrasts hard against

Eastwood’s scruffier killer instinct. Manco and Mortimer are designed to orbit each other,

with Indio as the gravity that holds them together, at first rivals that debate killing

one another and then allies at first needing each other because Indio’s gang is too big to

take down alone and then slowly reconciled through the morality that propels Mortimer.

Van Cleef, while feeling dangerous, is just a little warmer and more emotional

than Eastwood here. Don’t get me wrong, I love Clint in this role, but he’s stiffer,

harder, less inclined to let something emotionally affect him. He’s an icon in

the flesh who conquers the west instead of letting it conquer him. Of course,

Eastwood and Leone would have enough differences on set that they had a falling out,

leading to Eastwood turning down Once Upon A Time in The West and Leone later saying the

actor only had two emotions, “With or without a hat." That’s not quite fair, because in the end,

it’s Eastwood’s instantly recognizable image that ties everything together.

One of the underlying tensions of Fistful, just like Yojimbo,

is whether Eastwood’s killer is motivated by a moral code or if he’s solely focused on getting

as much money as possible. That question of money vs morals is still in play here,

this time being addressed in both heroes, but ultimately, For a Few Dollars More is

more explicitly in favor of its heroes being upstanding. Spaghetti westerns differentiated

themselves by embracing a gray morality and in some cases refusing a happy ending,

but there’s still a conscience that informs the Man With No Name in each movie. These

are ultimately movies that have a sense of right and wrong and pursue justice by the end.

It’s just that justice is found through stark violence.

Leone’s gunfights are propelled by timing, speed, and precision. They’re either town-clearing fights

where staying cool under pressure is all that matters or one on one showdowns where

split seconds divide life and death. The way these duels are shot are based on patience,

waiting for that exact moment when the time comes to strike. Leone’s

use of geography and juxtaposition of combatants within the frame is electric,

their identical blocking is what creates tension through visual language. Here,

editors Eugenio Alabiso and Giorgio Serrallonga work in direct concert with Morricone’s score,

cutting to the rhythm of the music and using each cut to control the intensity of the scene

until the moment of release. Again, another contrast. The release of tension brings death.

The use of ADR for all characters, with even English speakers’ words and lips

never quite matching up perfectly, creates a dissonance between sight and sound. The

images we see and the dialogue, sound effects, and music we hear almost exist

on two separate planes instead of fully co-existing in the same world.

It can be jarring for audiences who don’t have much experience in Italian cinema of the time, but

I think the effect allows for bigger performances and more exaggerated effects and music.

“The greatest script writer of Westerns was Homer,” said Leone. “The archetype of

yesterday’s cowboys were Achilles, Ajax, Agememon, and Hector. My idea was to bring back the Italian

commedia dell’arte. My films are basically silent films. The dialogue just adds some weight.”

The commedia dell’arte was founded on masked actors playing exaggerated

stock characters in pantomime, but despite these stories being silent,

the archetypes and broad actions made them instantly understandable.

The grittiness of the spaghetti western would make you think that these are movies in pursuit

of realism, but really, they’re going bigger and wilder, almost melodramatic at times.

Everything is writ large and the result is some of the most exciting cinema of all time.

Hope Grows In The Wild

It’s

easy to think that Leone’s Dollars Trilogy is all self-serious cool violence,

but there’s a lot more going on here. These are ultimately exaggerated,

heightened almost cartoonishly mythic takes on the western. Everything is bigger, louder,

more violent, and the movie knows it, too. Look at Eastwood’s conversation with an elderly

informant whose ramshackled house is shaken apart by a passing train, or our two bounty

hunter’s confrontation where they shoot each other’s hats in a gun-toting pissing contest,

and you can see that, while its gray morality and bloodthirsty violence is more reflective

of reality than your typical Gary Cooper western, we’ve pushed into a new type of myth.

But again, this is a movie of contrast. Leone’s film increases its scale and action as it goes

along, pushing our hunters into combat that rattles apart the dusty villages they blow

through, until we find out the very human reason that’s driven Mortimer all this time.

Leone’s cinematography, here once again in collaboration with director of photography

Massimo Dallamano, represents the continued evolution of his distinctive style just 4

movies into his feature career. Leone had already displayed his love of using the full frame of the

panoramic lens in Fistful, but was limited by just a few locations. Still, his tendency to

heavily contrast foreground and background subjects made the tiny town feel massive. Here,

Leone’s sequel visits many more locations, allowing the team to capture multiple desolate,

dusty locations found across Spain to make this a much more sweeping epic. And in classic Leone

contrast, the director and his DP put just as much emphasis on tight closeups, centering faces

in the frame in anticipation of the trigger pull or during one of Indio’s many drug-induced dreams.

The result is that gunfighters separated by dozens of feet feel inches apart.

Of course, Ennio Morricone’s score is just as critical to the mythmaking of Leone’s film,

and the composer’s work is truly incredible. It’s got all the twanging guitars, fluttering flutes,

soaring trumpets, and chanting voices you’d expect, but Morricone adds several flourishes

that set it apart. Specifically, he blurs the line between the diagetic and non-diagetic,

using Indio’s pocket watch music, which the killer uses to countdown his shootouts,

and which Mortimer has an exact copy of, to blend what’s happening in the real world with the music

that surrounds the film. What results is a haunting score that turns the tragic memories

of Indio and Mortimer into the soundtrack of their life and death struggle. Even better,

Leone holds off on telling us the origin of the watch’s music, helping to backfill

greater meaning into the entire movie for a more emotionally-charged finale. It’s a trick that he’d

pull off to even greater effect in Once Upon A Time In The West, an absolutely killer movie.

Also, I have to take a moment to specifically discuss Indio’s confrontation with the former

gang member that sold him out. We cut to Indio and his gang already having captured

the man and his family in a rundown church, with the leader having his gang murder the

wife and young child offscreen in a moment that’s so casually brutal it reclassifies

the film into something far different than the clean cut westerns that came before. And yet

Indio still gives the former friend a chance at revenge with a duel. It’s tragic, impossible,

filled with emotion, and ultimately, Indio still kills the man easily.

Backed by the haunting music box melody, Morricone throws us for a loop with a sudden hard cut to a

blasting organ reinterpreting the melody. It’s the moment the film completely lays out its hand

for us to see. We’re going big, tense, and brutal all the way to the finale. Morricone is a master

at creating a simple, recognizable melody that becomes the film’s motif and returning to it time

and time again, repeating it through multiple instruments, then bringing them together and

repeating at higher notes and faster beats to create emotionally resonant tension. Hell yeah.

After gunfights, robberies, chases, and lots of death, For A Few Dollars More ends on its

most bombastic and emotional note. Indio’s betrayal of his gang to pocket more money

for himself leads to Mortimer and Manco wiping them all out until Indio catches the

colonel off guard and forces him into a duel at a complete disadvantage. Like we’ve seen before,

they’ll shoot when Indio’s watch stops chiming, only for our nameless bounty

Hunter to arrive with Mortimer’s own identical watch and make it a fair fight.

All those years of bounty hunting, how Mortimer’s life fell apart,

the watch chimes, and the reason for everything that’s happened, it’s all

because of the death of the colonel’s sister - the woman that wouldn’t let Indio have her.

For A Few Dollars More would be released in Italy on December 18, 1965, just a little more

than a year after Fistful and going on to make 3,100,000,000 lira (approximately $5 million) in

its home country on a $600,000 budget. The success propelled Leone and Grimaldi to make their third

western, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, in 1966, with all three parts of the Dollars Trilogy filmed

and released in Europe to success before they were ever brought to the United States. Once

released worldwide, with all 3 debuting in the US in 1967, the films became a sensation,

both lauded and criticized for their much more raw take on western violence for the time,

and bringing in millions more, with For a Few Dollars More raking in $25.5 million worldwide.

Their success gave Leone his directorial career, turned Eastwood from TV actor into movie megastar,

and revitalized the career of Van Cleef after years of supporting roles that had dried up.

Together, The Dollars Trilogy is an ambitious unforgettable experience.

1 movie leaves an impression, 2 crystalizes a style, and 3 becomes a landmark in cinema. And

with its continual push and pull between moral reckoning and cynical killing,

Leone’s second western forever pushed the genre into a new era.

With Manco adding up the pile of bodies as money, we return to our cynical opening - lives measured

by the money they bring in death, but with a small difference. We know now that there’s more

to all of this than just cash. And as our heroes ride off into the sunset away from each other,

there’s a sense of hope in what we once thought was a hopeless place.