WP: Fistful of Dollars/Few Dollars More (1964/1965) Sergio Leone@Pretlow Library

We'll be in the big room at Pretlow Library, Meeting Room 1, for this one. A double header of the first two films of the Dollars trilogy. We will start right on the dot at 11:45am and take a short 10 minutes break between films.

ALSO: Join us Saturday, September 13 at 12:15pm for the conclusion of the Dollars trilogy, *The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly *at Richard Tucker Library!

RUNTIME: 109 minutes / 132 minutes

A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (synopsis via Kino Lorber): The film that started it all…the genre of “spaghetti western” was born, “The Man with No Name” was introduced and the iconic talents of star Clint Eastwood (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Unforgiven), director Sergio Leone (For a Few Dollars More, A Fistful of Dynamite) and composer Ennio Morricone (Navajo Joe, Death Rides a Horse) were launched. An instant international phenomenon, this hard-hitting epic stunned audiences with its violence, gritty realism and tongue-in-cheek humor. A lean, cold-eyed, cobra-quick gunfighter (Eastwood) arrives in a grim and dusty border town where two rival bands of smugglers terrorize the impoverished citizens. Though he receives lucrative offers of employment from each gang, his loyalty cannot be bought. He accepts both jobs and sets in motion a deadly plan to destroy the criminals, pitting one against the other in a series of brilliantly orchestrated setups, showdowns and deadly confrontations. Co-starring Marianne Koch (Night People, The Devil’s General) and Gian Maria Volontè (Sacco & Vanzetti, Lucky Luciano), A Fistful of Dollars is the western taken to the extreme.

BLURBS:
"A Fistful of Dollars has a cult, comic-book intensity. It is the punk rock of westerns." - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

"Every true movie fan should see A Fistful of Dollars on a big screen at least once." - Simon Abrams, The Village Voice

FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965; synopsis via Kino Lorber): Screen legends Clint Eastwood (High Plains Drifter) and Lee Van Cleef (Death Rides a Horse) co-star as two rival bounty hunters who join forces to bring murderous bandit El Indio (Gian Maria Volontè, A Fistful of Dollars) and his vicious gang of criminals to justice. But all is not as it seems in this explosive second installment of Sergio Leone’s legendary “Man with No Name” trilogy that blasted off with A Fistful of Dollars and concluded with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Spiced with blistering gun battles, jailbreaks, bank holdups and a sardonic sense of humor, For a Few Dollars More features a haunting score by the masterful Ennio Morricone (A Fistful of Dynamite) and a stellar cast that includes spaghetti western legends Mario Brega (A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die), Luigi Pistilli (Cold Sweat), Aldo Sambrell (Navajo Joe) and Klaus Kinski (The Great Silence).

"Here is a gloriously greasy, sweaty, hairy, bloody and violent Western. It is delicious." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"The stage is set here for Sergio Leone’s coming masterpieces, which would transcribe this intense, unsettling energy onto a canvas large enough to fit all of its splenetic, bloodletting rage." - Jake Cole, Slant Magazine