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Fistful of Dollars (A) AKA Per un pugno di dollari AKA For a Fistful of Dollars (Blu-ray)
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - Arrow Films Review written by and copyright: Paul Lewis (8th June 2025). |
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The Film
 A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964)  What can be said about Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and its two sequels, For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), that hasn’t been said many times before? This curious trio of films has been a gateway drug for many young people – a gateway to a fascination with Italo-Westerns, with European genre cinema generally, with the Western. Speaking personally, as a child growing up in the 1980s it was my now-late father’s abiding love of Leone’s Westerns that led me to enjoying both American Westerns and other Italo-Westerns, which connected with my burgeoning fascination – during the “video nasty” era – with Euro-horror films. This was fostered on UK television by series such as Alex Cox’s “Moviedrome” and ITV’s “Le Continental,” both of which regularly screened Italo-Westerns by filmmakers other than Leone – leading to the realisation that there were many (over 400, reputedly) Euro-Westerns that had been produced during the 1960s and 1970s.
The once-derogatory label “Spaghetti Western” has over the past 20 or 30 years been recuperated by fans of the Italo-Western – or, to give this group of films their distinctly Italian moniker, western all’italiana (“Italian-style Western”). In an interview on this disc, Italian film critic Fabio Melelli contends that the Italo-Western, or “Spaghetti Western,” is a genre by itself – rather than a subgenre of the Western. It’s a mildly controversial assertion, dropped casually by Melelli in his interview. However, even if one doesn’t agree with the statement, it is easy to see the reasoning behind the assertion: the Italo-Western dresses itself in the garb of a Western but does its own thing. It strips the Western down to its raw elements, featuring primal conflicts in a symbolic story-space. It’s impossible to imagine the later revisionist Westerns of Monte Hellman, Sam Peckinpah or Arthur Penn, for example, without the impact of the Italo-Western. On the other hand, it has to be said that there are some US Westerns that, just as equally, prefigure elements of the pared-down approach of the Italo-Westerns – including some of the Ranown Westerns directed by Budd Boetticher and other 1950s “adult Westerns” including Andre de Toth’s Day of the Outlaw (1958).  A Fistful of Dollars, like its sequels, functions on a near-operatic level. Drawing on Eighteenth Century Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni’s play Servant of Two Masters and Akira Kurosawa’s samurai masterpiece Yojimbo (1961), and through it Dashiell Hammett’s novel Red Harvest (1929), the plot of Leone’s picture pits two rival families, the liquor-peddling Rojos and the “big gun merchant” Baxter family, against one another. In the middle is Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name, playing one side off against the other. Eastwood’s character claims to be doing this out of a mercenary self-interest, in order to make himself rich, but also displays more than a shred of humanity through the pity he takes on Marisol (Marianne Koch) – the young woman who has become separated from her husband and child after being abducted by the cruel Ramon Rojos (Gian Maria Volonte).
On another level, the plot of Fistful is archetypal; Leone’s minimalist handling of plot elements and dialogue, set against the abstract landscape of Almeria (a filming location that looks vaguely like a US Western whilst also retaining a recognisable Mediterranean flavour), gives the material a near-mythic quality. The town of San Miguel is the logical extension of capitalism, a place where everything has its price… including death. “Here, you can only gain respect by killing other men,” the innkeeper tells Eastwood, “You don’t want to stay in this cemetery.” In his own later Westerns, notably in High Plains Drifter (1973), Eastwood would take the town-as-metaphor concept and extend it to a deliberately absurd extent. (In Drifter, Eastwood’s Stranger has the townsfolk literally paint the town of Lago red and rename it “Hell.”) Along the way, there are some delicious moments of black humour: Eastwood’s assertion, to a group of the Baxter gang who have welcomed him to San Miguel with gunfire, that “My mule don’t like you laughing. Gets the crazy idea you’re laughing at him”; the undertaker measuring folk for corpses before they have been killed; and the Man with No Name’s use of the corpses of soldiers killed in an ambush by Ramon to set a trap for the Baxters. Leone would (in)famously suggest his Westerns were apolitical, though even cursory examination of his later films would prove this isn’t true. In Fistful it’s difficult to ignore, for example, the focus on ethnic conflict – between the Mexican Rojos and the American Baxters – and also the quiet reverberations within the film’s narrative of the conflicts between the Fascists and the partigiani/partisans. (Leone’s later Giu la testa contains even more direct allusions to the cultural scars of the war and postwar period.) In a display of technocratic strength, Ramon’s motto echoes through the film: When a man with a .45 meets a man with a rifle, the man with the pistol will be a dead man.”
Video
 Filling approximately 31Gb of space on its Blu-ray disc, this new restoration of Fistful of Dollars is uncut, running for 99:46 mins. The original 2.35:1 aspect ratio is preserved, and the 1080p presentation uses the AVC codec.
The presentation is based on a 4k restoration from the original Techniscope negative. It’s worth bearing in mind that folks watching Techniscope (or other 2-perf widescreen formats) in cinemas during the 1960s and 1970s would have seen 35mm prints made from anthropomorphised blow-ups which effectively doubled the size of each frame. This would resultin a grain structure that was noticeably more dense than that of widescreen films shot using anamorphic lenses. (Later Techniscope productions of the 1970s would compound this by the production of a dupe negative, the additional “generation” of the material resulting in shallow blacks and an even more pronounced grain structure.) Another of the characteristics of Techniscope photography was an increased depth of field. Freed from the need to use anamorphic lenses, cinematographers using the Techniscope process were able to employ technically superior spherical lenses with shorter focal lengths and shorter hyperfocal distances, thus achieving a greater depth of field, even at lower f-stops and even within low light sequences. By effectively halving the “circle of confusion,” the Techniscope format shortened the hyperfocal distances of prime lenses and altered the field of view associated with them – so an 18mm lens would function pretty much as a 35mm lens, and shooting at f2.8 would result in similar depth of field to shooting at f5.6. The use of shorter focal lengths also prevented the subtle flattening of perspective that comes with the use of focal lengths above around 85mm. (The noticeably increased depth of field, combined with short focal lengths/wide-angle lenses, is a characteristic of many films shot in Techniscope, including A Fistful of Dollars.) Restorations of Techniscope productions that are based on the negative therefore tend to feature deeper, more pronounced blacks and a finer grain structure than would most likely have been present in original theatrical prints. This is certainly true of this presentation of Fistful. Arrow Video’s presentation of the film has an excellent level of fine detail on display, with deep blacks complemented by a subtle gradation into the toe – resulting in pleasing detail evident even during low-light sequences. Highlights are equally balanced and pleasing. The presentation emits the hues of heat, and colours are rich and consistent – from the vibrant red of the film’s rotoscoped opening titles sequence to skintones and the desert sand. The encode to disc is very strong, presenting no issues and resulting in an overall presentation that retains the expected grain structure of a 35mm Techniscope negative. An appropriate reference point to this new 4k restoration is perhaps the 2008 restoration released on Blu-ray in Italy by Ripley’s Home Video (RHV), which with some caveats is generally regarded as preferable (in terms of detail and colour timing) to the later Kino restoration released in the US on Blu-ray and 4K disc. This new presentation from Arrow Video contains much more fine detail than the RHV presentation. This is particularly evident in close-ups of the actors’ faces, displaying fine beads of sweat and pores on skin. Night scenes also fare much better in this presentation, with a more subtle gradation within the shadows that results in greater detail present in low-light scenes – such as the nighttime shootout at the cemetery. Some full-sized screengrabs comparing this Blu-ray presentation with the restoration released by RHV in Italy are included at the bottom of this review.
Audio
 The English version is the dominant presentation of the film. This is thanks to the Eastwood’s presence in the lead role and the fact that Eastwood dubs his own performance (which wasn’t always the case for Anglophonic actors in Italo-Westerns). However, Fistful was, like almost all Italian films of the period, entirely post-synched. Multiple languages were spoken on set, and Leone himself spoke very little English. Arrow’s Blu-ray release contains both the English language version of the film and the Italian language version. These can be selected on the main menu, which presents the viewer with the choice of “Italian version” or “English version.” Selecting one or the other not only determines the spoken language but also the language of onscreen titles.
As with the other English language versions of Leone Westerns, the dub for Fistful is superb and near-seamless. Eastwood’s vocal performance is of course strong, but the dubbing of other characters is equally good. (In the Italian version, Eastwood’s character is dubbed by the actor Enrico Maria Salerno, with a very different, much less sardonic, vocal performance.) Try imagining Ramon’s repeated monologue about the man with the pistol and the man with the rifle without the mocking lilt that is placed on the final few words by the voice actor who dubs Volonte in the English version. Both English and Italian language tracks are presented with two soundtrack options: a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track and a DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 track. The mono track is, in both instances, preferable in terms of offering a more authentic experience, complete with original foley effects. (Surround remixes of both this film and Leone’s other Westerns have suffered from newly recorded foley, including gunshots.) Whilst the surround tracks offer a more modern “immersive” experience, the mono tracks are deep and rich, with excellent range from bass to highs. In terms of subtitles, optional English subtitles for the Hard of Hearing are provided to accompany the English audio options, whilst optional English subtitles translating the Italian language audio track are also available. These are easy to read and error-free.
Extras
DISC ONE:  THE FILM
Audio Commentary with Sir Christopher Frayling. This is the commentary track which is familiar from all the SE releases of Fistful since 2004. Frayling’s track is thorough and detailed, exploring technical aspects of the film whilst also engaging with its cultural importance. Audio Commentary with Tim Lucas. The Video Watchdog founder provides a second commentary for the picture. Lucas’ track has some areas of overlap with Frayling’s audio commentary, though Lucas tends to focus more heavily on offering background trivia about the cast and crew members. Trailer Gallery. The contents of this digital gallery are self-explanatory. There are some interesting artifacts contained within, which demonstrate how differently the film was promoted in various territories. - Italian Theatrical Trailer (3:40) - German Theatrical Trailer (3:38) - German Re-Release Trailer (4:31). This is prefaced by a short video explaining the history of this trailer, which was produced to advertise the film when it was acquired by a new German distributor in 1979. - UK Teaser Trailer (0:59) - US Theatrical Trailer (2:26) - US Radio Spots (5:59) - US Double Bill Trailer (2:06). This trailer was produced to promote the US double-bill release of Fistful and For a Few Dollars More. - US Double Bill TV Spots (1:23) - US Double Bill Radio Spots (2:21) DISC TWO:  “When It All Started” (13:48). Italian film critic Fabio Melelli discusses the origins and production of A Fistful of Dollars, covering its relationship with Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, and reflecting on the impact of Leone’s film on the Italian Western. Melelli casually drops a mildly contentious suggestion that the Italo-Western was a “new genre” rather than a branch of an existing genre. He also discusses the significance of Eastwood’s screen presence and performance, linking this – in its sense of stoicism – to classical mythology. Italian, optional English subs.
“Wind & Fire” (16:56). Alessandro De Rosa, author of a biography about Ennio Morricone, discusses the maestro’s score for Fistful. De Rosa begins with the first meeting between Morricone and Leone, and reflects on Morricone’s unusual approach to composition and orchestration. He talks about Morricone’s inspiration in the song “Pastures of Plenty,” which helped Morricone to develop a “vocabulary” for his Western scores – including the use of whistling, whips, etc, within the fabric of the music. Italian, optional English subs. “Four Fingers Four Picks” (15:08). Italian guitarist Bruno Battisti D’Amario, who played on a number of Morricone’s scores including Fistful, talks about his work with Morricone. D’Amario reflects on his journey to the guitar, and the resistance he faced from his father, a violinist, when he chose to enter into the world of music. He discusses how he came to meet Morricone, and reflects on his contributions to the score for Fistful. Italian, optional English subs. “A Night at the Movies” (12:35). The filmmaker Paolo Bianchini, director of a number of Italo-Westerns, talks about working with Leone behind the scenes – as an assistant – and onscreen as an extra. Italian, optional English subs. “A Fistful of Outtakes” (36:14). Here is presented about half an hour of a total of approximately six hours of outtakes that exist in the archives for the film. There are glimpses of moments no longer in the film, including a portly man being pushed into a river by a stranger (presumably Eastwood’s character) who then steals his distinctive poncho. Alongside this, there are snippets of lighting tests and alternate takes of scenes that exist in the film. Clapperboards bearing the film’s Spanish working title, “Ray el Magnifico,” are present throughout. All of this is presented, of course, without diegetic sound – and the film’s score as accompaniment. Really fascinating stuff. “The Day the Soundtrack Changed” (22:36). Soundtrack enthusiast Lovely Jon narrates a video essay that examines Morricone’s score for Fistful, foregrounding its influence on subsequent film scoring. “Marisol: Sergio Leone’s Madonna in the West” (31:37). This is an archival interview, from 2017 and filmed by Mike Siegel, with Marianne Koch. Koch talks about meeting Leone and being given the role of Marisol. She discusses her experiences riding horses – including an anecdote about Kinski making her ride a wild horse during production of a film that took place a year prior to her work on Fistful. Koch reflects on the minimalistic dialogue of the Leone picture, highlighting the importance of creating character through gesture and action. German, with optional English subs. “MGM Archive Extras.” These are archival features from MGM’s previous digital home video release(s) of Fistful. - “The Frayling Archives” (18:38). From 2010, Professor Sir Christopher Frayling shows off and discusses his archive of materials relating to Fistful, including rare posters and promotional materials. - “A New Kind of Hero” (22:55). From 2005, Professor Sir Christopher Frayling discusses Fistful’s innovations and the impact it had on later Westerns (SD). - “A Few Weeks in Spain” (8:30). Recorded in 2003 for the film’s 2005 DVD release, Clint Eastwood talks about his involvement in Fistful (SD). - “Not Ready for Primetime” (6:21). From 2005, Monte Hellman reflects on his involvement in the 1975 US television version of Fistful, for which Hellman filmed a new prologue (featuring Harry Dean Stanton) (SD). - “The Network Prologue” (7:45). This is Monte Hellman’s prologue, filmed in 1975 for US television (SD). - “Restoration Italian Style” (5:44). From 2005, MGM’s John Kirk talks about the process of restoring Fistful for its digital home video releases (SD). - “Location Comparisons 1964-2004” (5:22). Recorded in 2004, this archival featurette offers a tour of the film’s locations. - “Tre Voci (Three Voices”) (11:13). Mickey Knox, Sergio Donati, and Alberto Grimaldi discuss their experiences of working with Leone (SD). “Alternate Credit Sequences”: German (2:46), English (3:18), Italian Re-Release (3:20). “Image Galleries” - “A Fistful in Pictures” (14:52). - “On the Set” (3:57). - “Promoting A Fistful of Dollars” (15:48).
Overall
 A Fistful of Dollars remains a hugely impressive film, a turning point for both the global Western and Italian cinema. The production of Westerns in Europe provoked the ire of some US critics in the 1960s and 1970s, and the “Spaghetti Western” was for a long time considered with derision. Thankfully the digital home video age has been kind to Italo-Westerns, and Leone’s films are many folks’ gateway to the form. They are firm favourites for a reason, though admittedly many Leone fans will express a preference for the even more baroque plot stylings and technique on display in For a Few Dollars More or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. In comparison with those films, Fistful feels very lean and pared-down – not quite minimalist (how minimalist can a film with that operatic-experimental Morricone score be labelled?) but certainly much more direct than its sequels.
Unfortunately, however, all three of the Dollars films have had frustrating digital home video releases. There have been extras-laden “special editions” from MGM that have annoyingly also suffered from missing footage and manipulated audio tracks (with newly-recorded foley), and more recent restorations (such as those released in the US by Kino) that have demonstrated questionable decisions vis-à-vis matters such as colour timing. However, this new Arrow Video Blu-ray (and 4k) release of Fistful – along with Arrow Video’s commensurate release of For a Few Dollars More – is arguably calling for the label “definitive.” It corrects the issues of previous digital home video releases, incorporating the original mono track (with the original foley) alongside an excellent new restoration of the main feature, whilst also including an excellent array of contextual material – some of it new, and some of it ported over from the film’s previous “special edition” home video releases. Excellent stuff! Please see below for screengrabs comparing this release with the RHV release. Click on the screengrabs to enlarge them. Arrow 
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