Per qualche dollaro in più

(For A Few Dollars More)

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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 mono (3:36)
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	None
Year Released	1965	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	126:20 Minutes (Not 131 minutes as per packaging)	Other Extras	Main Menu Audio & Animation Booklet
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Selection then Menu	Cast & Crew
Region	2,4	Director	Sergio Leone
Studio Distributor	Fox Home Entertainment	Starring	Clint Eastwood Lee Van Cleef Gian Maria Volonte Mara Krup Luigi Pistilli Klaus Kinski
Case	Amaray	Starring
RRP	$34.95	Music	Ennio Morricone

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) French (Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, 256Kb/s)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	?	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired French Dutch	Annoying Product Placement	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired French Dutch	Action In or After Credits	No

Plot Synopsis

For those of you who don't know what a Spaghetti Western is, the basic story as provided in the booklet that comes with this DVD is that a film set in Colonial America was filmed in Italy, and the American press originated the term as a sort of put-down. Said film, A Fistful Of Dollars, was a great success due to the deglamourised view it took of Colonial America, and introduced a more truthful and stark view of the era. Soon, the films produced in America were imitating these independent Westerns produced in Western Europe, and the term Spaghetti Western took on a whole new meaning. The dollars trilogy, consisting of A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, also made a star out of Clint Eastwood. This film, the second episode in the series, retains the similarly low-key and deglamourised feel of the original, both in the story and the production. Colonel Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) is a bounty hunter who begins the film by killing a rather hideous-looking man for a thousand dollars, which is supposedly the same price that was put on the head of America's most famous Colonial outlaw, Billy The Kid. Indio (Gian Maria Volonte) is a rather despicable outlaw who kills the bounty hunter who put him behind bars eighteen months before the time this film is set in, as well as his young family. A ten thousand dollar reward awaits the man who kills or apprehends him, and Mortimer is the prime candidate for it. His main source of competition is Monco (Clint Eastwood), who is also billed as The Man With No Name as part of the publicity for the film's theatrical release.

Suffice it to say that Monco and Mortimer team up to take on Indio and his merry mob, with all the usual double-crosses and plots present and accounted for. The most interesting plot point revolves around a sad connection between Indio and Mortimer, which I won't spoil for those who haven't seen the film before because, in a way, it makes this film as interesting as it is. Sit back, grab yourself a bucket of popcorn, and enjoy.

Transfer Quality

Video

This film is thirty-five years old, it was produced by an independent studio in a country where film preservation is a foreign term, and the resultant video imagery looks every inch of it. Thankfully, the rest of the transfer process does not magnify the problems that originate from the film source. The transfer is presented in the original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and it is not 16x9 enhanced. Some image problems result from this omission, and it is a real shame because a film like this really demands a widescreen presentation with as much resolution as possible. The transfer is as sharp as the film stock and the original photographic conditions allow, with the details most critical to the story being easy to make out while the backgrounds are somewhat indistinct. Given that there is only around two and a quarter hours worth of video information with two mono soundtracks encoded onto the disc, I believe this is more likely a problem with the original photography than with the MPEG encoding. Shadow detail was reasonable for a thirty-five year old film, but very little of the film takes place in darkness. Low-level noise was not a problem with this transfer, which is certainly the best aspect overall.

The colour saturation is as dull as you'd expect from a thirty-five year old film, although this is once again more a problem with film stock than any specific aspect of the transfer. Some restoration work would have been nice, but the dull tones lend a certain historical feel to the film that enhances the viewing experience. MPEG artefacts were not noticed at any point in the transfer, although the bitrate is curiously all over the place when it most certainly doesn't need to be. This would seem to be something of an under-utilization of the space on the disc, and one I hope MGM do not continue with future releases. Film-to-video artefacts are where the lower resolution of the 4:3 transfer rears its ugly head, with gun barrels, hat brims, and even the edges of wooden panels shimmering without rhyme nor reason. The worst aspect of the aliasing was that it was completely unpredictable by any standards. I implore MGM to strongly consider remastering this disc with a 16x9 transfer and a higher bitrate, as this would make the film look substantially better. Film artefacts are also a consistent problem in this transfer, with all manner of white flecks showing up on the picture with alarming regularity. Some cleaning up of the source material would have done wonders here.

The subtitles are somewhat variant from the dialogue that is actually being spoken, perhaps reflecting a translation from the original Italian dialogue rather than the English dub that was created for the benefit of the American audience.

This disc is presented in the RSDL format, but two viewings of this film, each on a different player that is known for making layer changes somewhat easier to notice, failed to turn up an exact location for the layer change. Given the reasonably high bitrate of the transfer and the lack of serious extras on this disc, I would have to put this down to great care being taken with the positioning. However, should you happen to view this disc and notice where the layer change takes place, don't hesitate to let me know so I can sleep easier at night.

Audio

Once again, the audio transfer explicitly demonstrates the age of the film, not to mention the fact that little, if any, restoration work has been performed upon the source material. The audio transfer is presented in a choice of two languages, both of them in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono: the much-loved English dub that was created for the American theatrical release, and another dub in French. Why on Earth we have not been given the original Italian dialogue, I will never know, as I am sure it would be of far greater interest to the viewer than a French version. Because I have no interest at all in the French language due to its rather weak and butterfly-like sound, I stuck with the English dialogue, which also happens to be the default soundtrack. The dialogue was mostly clear and easy to understand, although a lot of words are lost in the maze created by the recording techniques and the actors' shared tendencies towards mumbling. Audio sync wavered upon the border of being a problem rather frequently, reflecting the fact that the cast are speaking different syllables to what we're actually hearing, and that the soundtrack we have been provided with was created in post-production. Again, one must lament the lack of the original Italian dialogue, as this would have been the optimal way to view the film with the closed-caption English subtitles (sort of like SBS in digital).

The score music in this film is provided by the great Ennio Morricone, who is probably best known for his rather haunting work on John Carpenter films such as The Thing and Escape From New York. This score music is a great European imitation of the traditional Western style, with an authentic feel of its own that makes you forget rather quickly that the film was shot in the middle of Europe rather than on the coast of America. The score, such as it is, makes some rather heavy use of strings, whistles, horns, and even the occasional pipe organ, all of them combining and making for a strangely haunting sound. Given the limited fidelity of the soundtrack, the score music survives quite well in its rather compressed and channel-restricted feel. The use of deep, bassy chanting in some parts of the score, traditional to the Western though it may be, makes the score music noteworthy by itself. This is a score that screams for a release on a digitally remastered CD sourced from reasonable elements.

Being a Dolby Digital 2.0 mono soundtrack, there was no surround presence to speak of, which is a real pity because the separation of the music from the rest of the soundtrack into the rears would have done the film a small favour. If ever there was a good case for a simple Pro-Logic remix of a film, then this is certain the one to argue. As it stands, the sound is true to the theatrical version, without any added distortion or clarity problems, which is all you can really ask for with a film that is of such advanced age. The subwoofer had nothing to do, and played cards with the surround channels for the entire two hours of the film while the centre and front speakers faithfully reproduced the dubbed-in sounds that are supposed to be of men punching one another, although they tended to sound a lot like pieces of wet leather being slapped together.

Extras

Theatrical Trailer

Clocking in at three minutes and thirty-six seconds, this is a rather lengthy trailer, even by today's standards, which does a surprisingly good job of selling the film without giving away the entire story. It is plagued by film artefacts of various sizes, presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 without 16x9 enhancement, and with Dolby Digital 2.0 mono sound.

Booklet

An eight page booklet covering the history of Spaghetti Westerns, the origins of the term, and other interesting facts about the film. Well worth reading.

R4 vs R1

The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;

RSDL Formatting

Given that neither version is 16x9 Enhanced, and the source material shows equal amounts of film artefacts, I think the absence of a second layer on the Region 1 version makes the local version the better choice.

Summary

For A Few Dollars More is a great Western, and it is quite easy to see why the American filmmakers began imitating the Italians, not to mention why Clint Eastwood became such a star from appearing in it. It is presented on an average, but strangely reasonable, DVD.

The video transfer is distinctly ordinary, and suffers all the obvious signs of being recycled from a Laserdisc master.

The audio quality is also distinctly ordinary, but this is more a problem with the source material than anything else.

The extras are distinctly ordinary. A retrospective interview or commentary track with Eastwood would have done this package wonders.

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