Everything about For A Few Dollars More totally explained
For a Few Dollars More (
Italian:
Per qualche dollaro in più) is a
1965 spaghetti western film directed by
Sergio Leone and starring
Clint Eastwood,
Lee Van Cleef and
Gian Maria Volontè. German actor
Klaus Kinski also plays a supporting role as a secondary
villain. The film was released in the
United States in
1967 and is the second part of what is commonly known as the
"Dollars" trilogy.
Plot
Eastwood (marketed as the "
Man with No Name") and Van Cleef (as Colonel Douglas Mortimer and marketed as "The Man in Black") portray two
bounty hunters in pursuit of "El Indio" (Volontè), one of the most wanted fugitives in the western territories, and his gang (one of whom is played by Kinski). Indio is a ruthless, intelligent man addicted to smoking
peyote. His drug-induced craziness is emphasized via closeups and flashbacks of the past. Indio has a penchant for
duels set to the climactic end of the chiming of his timepiece. After victories in the duels Indio has his henchman hand him the drug in order to relax from the high intensity of these battles.
The film begins with Van Cleef illegally stopping a train in
Tucumcari in order to collect a bounty of $1000 on Guy Callaway. Van Cleef's gunslinging is displayed as he easily kills Guy Callaway from long distance. After collecting the bounty he inquires about Red "Baby" Cavanaugh who has a $2000 bounty dead or alive and was last seen in White Rocks. However he's a step behind Eastwood who finds Cavanaugh at a saloon playing 5 card draw poker.
In a memorable scene Eastwood deals himself and Cavanaugh 5 cards each without saying a word, the nervous look on Cavanaugh's face shows his fear of Eastwood's intentions. Cavanaugh draws 3 kings and lays them down assured he'd won the hand, when Eastwood simply smiles and shows 3 aces, winning the hand by the slimmest of margins. When Cavanaugh asks Eastwood "I didn't hear what the bet was", Eastwood smiles and calmly says "Your life". Eastwood proceeds to capture Cavanaugh and gun down his 3 henchmen. Eastwood then shoots Cavanaugh who reaches for his pistol.
Indio's primary goal is to rob the Bank of El Paso and its special safe containing one million dollars. After a tremendous display of sharpshooting Van Cleef and Eastwood realize that one of them (Eastwood) must join Indio's gang during the robbery. Van Cleef's character has a personal motive for his actions: his sister, as revealed at the film's end, killed herself while being raped by Indio, after he killed her husband moments before. Eastwood's character is, as in the other "Man with No Name" films, motivated mainly by money, but also by a sense of justice toward those he likes. The film ends in a long duel between Indio and Van Cleef in which Indio's musical chimes work against him as Van Cleef also knows the music from his sister's same pocketwatch and kills him avenging his sister's death and leaving all the money for Eastwood.
Production
After the box-office success of
A Fistful of Dollars in
Italy, director
Sergio Leone and his new producer,
Alberto Grimaldi, wanted to begin production of a sequel, but they needed to get Clint Eastwood to agree to star in it. However, Eastwood hadn't even seen the first movie at this time, and wasn't ready to do another until he had. So Leone gave him an Italian print (an English version hadn't yet been made) and Eastwood brought some friends to screen the film with him at the
CBS Production Center. The reaction was positive, and Eastwood agreed to do a sequel.
The film was shot in
Almería,
Spain, with interiors done at
Rome's Cinecittà Studios.
The production designer,
Carlo Simi built the town of "El Paso" in the
Almería desert: it still exists, as a tourist attraction. The town of Agua Caliente, where Indio and his gang flee after the bank robbery, is Albaricoces, a small "pueblo blanco" on the
Nijar plain.
Cast
Characters
Manco
In the English-dubbed version of the film, Eastwood's character is said to "go by the name of 'Manco'". "Manco" is a slang term meaning "maimed" or "disfigured".{ While Eastwood's character isn't maimed, he performs nearly all actions using only his left hand, to leave free his right hand, with which he draws. His behavior thus bears a joking resemblance to that of a one-armed man.¨
El Indio
El Indio (Spanish for "The Indian") played by
Gian Maria Volontè is a ruthless character, considered by the authorities in the film to be one of the worst criminals of the times; according to a bank official "Not even Indio would dare to rob that one." In a flashback sequence it's revealed that he shot his friend and then raped his friend's lover. The girl shot herself in the process. The girl was the sister of Van Cleef's character. El Indio smokes what appears to be
cannabis to ease the intensity of the memory. In the film El Indio has a gang of 14 men who rob the bank in
El Paso.
Colonel Douglas Mortimer
Colonel Douglas Mortimer is a rival bounty hunter, though he's much older than Eastwood's character. Clint Eastwood's character travels to visit a man known as "The Prophet" early in the movie to find out all he can about this rival bounty killer. "The Prophet" explains Colonel Douglas Mortimer to have "once been a great soldier. Now he's reduced to being a bounty killer like you." At the bank in Tucumcari, Mortimer explains to a bank manager he was from the Carolinas. The bank manager is encouraged by Mortimer's presence, giving the indication Mortimer has a large amount of money elsewhere which the bank of Tucumcari would be glad to accept. Unlike Manco, Clint Eastwood's character, Mortimer's motivation throughout the movie isn't the bounty over El Indio and his gang, but vengeance for Indio's rape of Mortimer's sister many years before, who killed herself while being raped by Indio. During an encounter with El Indio in the movie, Mortimer exclaims, "This is Colonel Mortimer, Douglas Mortimer...does the name mean anything to you?" Having seen the death of Indio, Mortimer leaves all of the bounty to be collected by Manco, Eastwood's character, at the end of the movie. Mortimer says to Manco, after being questioned by Manco about the bounty, "It's all for you, I think you deserve it." Mortimer rides off alone at the end, as his purposes were then completed.
References in other media
In the video-game, Revolver Ocelot, a character based on Lee Van Cleef, fixes a stock to his Single Action Army revolver during the game's climactic chase scene. Cleef's character used a stock-affixed Single Action Army in this film as well.
In the Terry Pratchett novel Men at Arms, the character of Captain Samuel Vimes is to be presented with a pocket watch as a retirement gift. In the climactic scene where Vimes confronts the main villain of the story, Corporal Carrot uses the musical chime of the watch to prevent Vimes from killing the villain. Pratchett has confirmed that it's supposed to be the same chime as the pocket watch in For a Few Dollars More.
In the Japanese animated series Noir, a musical pocket watch features prominently throughout the story. In the second to last episode, the watch's chime prevents one of the Noir candidates from killing another, setting up a three-way standoff highly reminiscent of the final fight between Manco, Mortimer and Indio.
In the Disney film, the villain Davy Jones (played by Bill Nighy) and his former lover Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris) have matching lockets. One scene, where Tia Dalma's locket stops playing and Jones' continues, is taken directly from the final duel of the movie. Director Gore Verbinski is an acknowledged fan of Leone, so this is likely a deliberate homage.
In the 1998 Film, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a chime plays immediately prior to a shoot-out Harry "the Hatchet", Barry, and Gary and Dean.
The 187 Lockdown song "Gunman" features a sample of the musical chimes from the film. The song is on the band's 1998 album 187.Further Information
Get more info on 'For A Few Dollars More'.
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