DVD details for for
Giù la testa (1971)

A Fistful of Dollars: A Fistful of Dollars launched the spaghetti Western and catapulted Clint Eastwood to stardom. Based on Akira Kurosawa's 1961 samurai picture Yojimbo, it scored a resounding success (in Italy in 1964 and the U.S. in 1967), as did its sequels, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The advertising campaign promoted Eastwood's character--laconic, amoral, dangerous--as the Man with No Name (though in the film he's clearly referred to as Joe), and audiences loved the movie's refreshing new take on the Western genre. Gone are the pieties about making the streets safe for women and children. Instead it's every man for himself. Striking, too, was a new emphasis on violence, with stylized, almost balletic gunfights and baroque touches such as Eastwood's armored breastplate. The Dollars films had a marked influence on the Hollywood Western--for example, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch--but their most enduring legacy is Clint Eastwood himself. --Edward Buscombe For a Few Dollars More: A ringing instance of a sequel far outstripping its predecessor, Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More takes the lethal antihero from A Fistful of Dollars, gives him both a rival and an adversary worthy of sharing a gun-blazing corrida, and ratchets up the stylization to something approaching grandeur. This time the Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood) is a bounty hunter whose desert Southwest killing ground is suddenly crowded by the presence of an older, black-clad shootist (Lee Van Cleef). Individually and together, they terminate sundry grotesques while closing in on their biggest quarry, a memorably insane bandit called El Indio (Gian Maria Volonté is brilliant). There's just enough plot to imbue Van Cleef with genuine mystery, a dark avenging angel from a lost past whose pull would supply the emotional core of Leone's later masterworks Once upon a Time in the West and Once upon a Time in America. Leone's bravura widescreen compositions are breathtaking, and Ennio Morricone's music score--tinged with lunatic religiosity--is his first great one. --Richard T. Jameson The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Clint Eastwood (the Man with No Name) is good, Lee Van Cleef (Angel Eyes Sentenza) is bad, and Eli Wallach (Tuco Benedito Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez) is ugly in the final chapter of Sergio Leone's trilogy of spaghetti westerns (the first two were A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More). In this sweeping film, the characters form treacherous alliances in a ruthless quest for Confederate gold. Leone is sometimes underrated as a director, but the excellent resolution on this digital video disc should enhance appreciation of his considerable photographic talent and gorgeous widescreen compositions. Ennio Morricone's jokey score is justifiably famous. Disc 1: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY Collector's Edition Disc 2: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY Bonus Disc Disc 3: A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS Collector's Edition Disc 4: A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS Bonus Disc Disc 5: FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE Collector's Edition Disc 6: FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE Bonus Disc Disc 7: DUCK, YOU SUCKER (A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE) Collector's Edition Disc 8: DUCK, YOU SUCKER (A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE) Bonus Disc