Per un pugno di dollari

(A Fistful Of Dollars)

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Details At A Glance

General		Extras
Category	Western	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1 - 2.35:1 (Non-16x9), Dolby Digital 2.0
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1964	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	95:46 Minutes (Not 90 Minutes as per packaging)	Other Extras	Menu Audio & Animation Booklet
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu	Cast & Crew
Region	2,4	Director	Sergio Leone
Studio Distributor	20th Century Fox	Starring	Clint Eastwood Marianne Koch Gian Maria Volonté Wolfgang Lukschy Sieghardt Rupp Joseph Egger
Case	Amaray	Starring
RRP	$34.95	Music	Dan Savio

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Dolby Digital	2.0
16x9 Enhancement		Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, 256Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	?	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired	Annoying Product Placement	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired	Action In or After Credits	No

Plot Synopsis

Those who have already read my review of For A Few Dollars More will know the respect and taste that I have for the Spaghetti Western genre because of the rather deglamourised view of Colonial America that is central to the stories. A Fistful Of Dollars, the original episode in the Dollars Trilogy, bears no serious sequential relationship with the other two episodes, so don't feel obligated to see one if you've seen the others. Set in the town of San Miguel, this episode begins with Joe (Clint Eastwood), or The Man With No Name to quote the booklet, riding in and confronting a group of bandits, who promptly insult him and shoot at his mule. Naturally, Joe comes back after setting up shop in the town and exchanges some terse words with them before gunning them all down and informing the local undertaker of how many more coffins are needed. Such is life in the town where John Baxter (Wolfgang Lukschy) and his minions are at war with Ramón Rojo (Gian Maria Volonté) and his motley band of outlaws. As a typical Spaghetti Western story would have it, Joe sets about turning these two factions against one another by joining both bands and switching allegiances faster than I can switch moods. All of this comes at the delight of the local undertaker, Piripero (Joseph Egger), who can guess the height of a potential "customer" with a single glance. I always wondered where Sam Raimi borrowed that idea from when he put it into The Quick And The Dead.

After watching For A Few Dollars More, I was looking forward to telling you about another film in which the canned feel of the acting and effects is made up for with strong characterizations and convincing execution. Sadly, this is not the case, and the film has a tendency to scream its B-grade heritage at a glass-shattering volume, especially when actors other than Clint Eastwood and Gian Maria Volonté, who also appeared in For A Few Dollars More, are speaking. This is not to say that director Sergio Leone doesn't deserve credit for the efforts he put in, but the crudeness of the techniques used to make the film certainly mean that the film has not aged well. Another detail that seems absurd is the R classification of this film, as I have seen films with far more violence and blood in them get away with the decidedly pedestrian M rating. In any case, sit down, put your feet up, and enjoy this classic tale of Colonial mercenaries.

Transfer Quality

Video

When I volunteered to review For A Few Dollars More, I did so because I was so looking forward to describing what a wonderful piece of restoration work United Artists have performed on one of their most talked-about classics. Having volunteered to review A Fistful Of Dollars at the same time, I was also looking forward to being able to tell you that the transfer has defied the thirty-six years since the making of the film. Sadly, like For A Few Dollars More, A Fistful Of Dollars' transfer can be described as being reasonable at the best of times, and it goes without saying that it would not surprise me to learn that both transfers are merely recycled from laserdisc masters. The transfer is presented at the original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and it is not 16x9 Enhanced, although the transfer does not suffer anywhere near as much for it as For A Few Dollars More did. Aside from a lack of resolution in distant details and some moderate aliasing in fine lines, the transfer is as sharp as the source material will ever allow. The shadow detail was good for film from the early 1960s that was shot in such circumstances that one could reasonably expect to see it on SBS. There was no low-level noise at any moment in the film, which is just as well considering how much black there is in a significant number of shots.

The colour saturation is as accurate as the age of the film and the limitations of colour processing in the year the film was produced would allow. Many tones had a look of being too rich for their own good, whereas others seemed to be slightly on the dull side, giving the film a similar look to old television programs that were made in the early days of colour. MPEG artefacts were absent from the transfer, although some shots simply didn't have the resolution to make them apparent in the first place. Film-to-video artefacts consisted of minor aliasing that occasionally became moderate in shots that contained a number of fine lines, with much of the Colonial-styled architecture showing a noticeable shimmer. On the positive side, the shimmering that did occur was far less distracting in this film than it was in For A Few Dollars More. Film artefacts, however, picked up the slack for the other two varieties, with all sorts of ugly spots and blemishes making themselves known in a great number of shots. One wide shot of San Miguel contained so many black marks that it appeared to be raining after a nuclear bombing in Italy.

Audio

While the video transfer for this film is somewhat better than its sequel, the audio transfer in a nutshell is much, much worse. Whereas the non-existent surround field of For A Few Dollars More was the worst of that film's problems, it is the least of A Fistful Of Dollars' many problems. There is only a single audio track on this disc, that being the English dub that was created for the benefit of the American audiences, encoded in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono at a bitrate of 256 kilobits per second. The dialogue is clear and easy to understand most of the time, but the volume level sometimes drops to the point where an entire word will become rather difficult to distinguish without subtitles. Pops and dropouts were also a noted problem, especially in the last third of the film where the quality of the source material must have been degraded by some unusual level of abuse. Audio sync was not a problem except for the one caused by English dialogue being dubbed over source material that was recorded in Italian, a language that is somewhat more efficient with its syllables.

The score music in this particular film is credited to one Dan Savio, although it does not essentially sound any different from the sequel that is credited to Ennio Morricone. The only real difference is that the score in this particular film is much more low-key in its approach and instrumentation, obviously a reflection of the smaller budget and looser production values. The presence of the score music was also quite reduced, with the music only being present for a total that would be doing well to reach half of the film's length, to say nothing of the amount of the score music that was actually noticeable. The limited fidelity of the soundtrack does not help matters any, with dialogue and music emanating from the same speaker in a fashion that sees sounds competing with one another for space in the minuscule surround field.

Again, there was no surround presence to speak of due to the monophonic mix, making the film seem ever more ancient in spite of the wonders of the format. Of course, the surround field is addled by pops and fuzz in the lower levels of the mix, the presence of which seems to vary according to the point in the film one is viewing. In the final stages of the film, a humming similar to the improper connection of an electric bass guitar to an amplifier can be heard, and the frequency of that rather noticeable popping increases quite noticeably. The rear channels were more or less completely silent, and the subwoofer only added a very slight floor to an explosion about ninety minutes into the film, which was probably a mere redirection from the frontal channels. A noticeable difference in this film from its sequel is that the sound of men punching one another is more like the sound of a large piece of fruit, a watermelon just for the sake of argument, being hit with a cricket bat rather than pieces of wet leather being hit together.

Extras

Theatrical Trailer

This is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, without 16x9 enhancement. The sound is in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono. If you thought the main feature was plagued by film artefacts, wait until you see this effort.

Booklet

This is a four-page effort with a few tidbits of information, but nothing to really qualify this item as a compelling extra.

R4 vs R1

The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

Pan & Scan Version (in addition to the widescreen version)

As much as I hate to see such a wide film without 16x9 enhancement, I have no desire to see only half of the film's imagery. Stick with the local version in this case.

Summary

A Fistful Of Dollars is a film that forever changed the face of the Western, presented on a reasonable DVD. It would have been nice, however, to see the same treatment that was afforded to The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly afforded to the other episodes.

The video quality is above average.

The audio quality is below average.

The extras are minimal.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

Review Equipment

DVD	Grundig GDV 100 D, using composite output; Toshiba SD-2109, using S-video output
Display	Panasonic TC-29R20 (68 cm), 4:3 mode, using composite input; Samsung CS-823AMF (80 cm), 16:9 mode/4:3 mode, using composite and S-video inputs
Audio Decoder	Built In (Amplifier)
Amplification	Sony STR-DE835
Speakers	Panasonic S-J1500D Front Speakers, Philips PH931SSS Rear Speakers, Philips FB206WC Centre Speaker, JBL Digital 10 Subwoofer