For a Few Dollars More

Infobox Film
name = For a Few Dollars More
(Per Qualche Dollaro in Più)


caption = American promotional poster
director = Sergio Leone
producer = Arturo González
Alberto Grimaldi
writer = Sergio Leone
Fulvio Montella
Luciano Vincenzoni
starring = Clint Eastwood
Lee van Cleef
Gian Maria Volontè
Klaus Kinski
music = Ennio Morricone
cinematography = Massimo Dallamano
editing =
distributor = United Artists
released = Italy:
November 18, 1965
United States:
May 10, 1967
runtime = 132 min.
country = Italy
language = Italian
English
budget = $600,000 (est.)
preceded_by = "A Fistful of Dollars"
followed_by = "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"
imdb_id = 0059578
amg_id = 1:18148

"For a Few Dollars More" ( _it. 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 cannabis. He has a musical pocketwatch that he plays whenever he wishes to kill someone. "When the chimes finish, begin," he says, and sure enough when the music stops he shoots his victim. Through flashbacks we learn that Indio's pocketwatch (and perhaps cannabis addiction) originates from a woman who killed herself while being raped by Indio.

The film begins with Colonel Mortimer illegally stopping a train in Tucumcari in order to collect a bounty of $1000 on Guy Callaway. Mortimer's gunslinging is displayed as he easily kills Guy Callaway from long distance. After collecting the bounty he inquires about Red "Baby" Cavanagh who has a $2000 bounty, and was last seen in White Rocks. However he is a step behind the Man with No Name who finds Cavanagh at a saloon playing 5 card draw poker. The Man with No Name kills Cavanagh and takes the bounty. Eastwood's character is referred to by a lawman in Tucumcari as "Manco." Eventually, the two bounty hunters meet and team up to take down Indio.

Indio's primary goal is to rob the Bank of El Paso and its safe containing almost one million dollars. Mortimer and Manco realize that Manco must join Indio's gang during the robbery in order to "get him between two fires." Manco is offered membership in the gang after rescuing one of Indio's friends from prison.

When Indio robs the bank, he brings the gang (and the money) to a small border town, where Mortimer reunites with Manco. The two plan to steal the bank money from Indio, but the bandits catch them in the act and beat them severely. Indio, stoned on marijuana, releases the bounty hunters and informs his gang that they "got away". The next morning, Manco and Mortimer shoot down the gang, one by one, in the streets of the town, and then finally face Indio himself. Indio shoots the gun out of Mortimer's hand and takes out his pocketwatch and begins playing it. As the chimes end, Manco appears with a pocketwatch, playing the same tune as Indio's, while holding a Winchester rifle at Indio. Mortimer looks into his pocket and finds his watch missing.

"Now we start," Manco announces, and sits while Mortimer and Indio face off. During the standoff, Manco looks down at the pocketwatch and sees a picture of the woman Indio raped. The music finishes and Mortimer guns down Indio.

At this juncture, Mortimer reveals that the woman in the pocketwatch is his sister. His revenge complete, he decides to take no part of the bounty. Therefore, Manco takes it all, $27,000 worth. As he leaves, he recovers the $1,000,000 stolen from the bank of El Paso.

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. Clint Eastwood was not ready to commit to a second film when he had not even seen the "first". Quickly, the filmmakers rushed an Italian-language print (a U.S. version did not yet exist) of "Per un Pugno di Dollari" to him. The star then gathered a group of friends for a debut screening at CBS Production Center and, not knowing what to expect, tried to keep expectations low by downplaying the film. As the reels unspool, however, Eastwood's concerns proved to be unfounded. The audience may not have understood Italian, but in terms of style and action, the film spoke volumes. "Everybody enjoyed it just as much as if it had been in English", Eastwood recalled. Soon, he was on the phone with the filmmakers' representative: "Yeah, I'll work for that director again," he said.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 Albaricoques, a small "pueblo blanco" on the Nijar plain.

Cast

*Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name
*Lee Van Cleef as Col. Douglas Mortimer
*Gian Maria Volontè as El Indio
*Mara Krupp as Mary
*Luigi Pistilli as Groggy
*Klaus Kinski as Wild
*Joseph Egger as Old Prophet
*Panos Papadopulos as Sancho Perez
*Benito Stefanelli as Luke
*Roberto Camardiel as Station clerk
*Aldo Sambrell as Cuccillo
*Luis Rodríguez as Gangmember
*Tomás Blanco as Santa Cruz Telegrapher
*Lorenzo Robledo as Tomaso
*Sergio Mendizábal as Tucumcari bank manager

Characters

Manco

In the English-dubbed version of the film, Eastwood's character is said to "go by the name of 'Manco'". [ After killing the man at the start of the film, Mortimer inquires about another outlaw and the sheriff tells him that another bounty hunter has made the same inquiry. This bounty hunter is called Manco (presumably Eastwood).] "Manco" is a Spanish word that means "one-armed." While Eastwood's character is not 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.

The Italian equivalent of the Spanish word "manco," which serves as Eastwood's character's sobriquet, is "monco." In many written sources, the Man with No Name is called Monco, either due to the Italian form or to faulty spelling. In any case, the dubbed voices of the film's characters seemingly pronounce "Manco" when they refer to him.

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 is 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 seems 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 is 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 is not 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.

Music

Ennio Morricone composed the film's soundtrack as he did for "A Fistful of Dollars". In the United States, Hugo Montenegro released a cover version as did Leroy Holmes who released a cover version of the soundtrack album with the original American poster art. Maurizio Graf sang a vocal "Occhio Per Occhio"/"Eye For An Eye" to the music of the cue "Sixty Seconds to What" track that did not appear in the film but was released as a tie-in 45rpm record. [http://www.fistful-of-leone.com/forums/index.php?topic=6620.0]

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 is 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".

*In Stephen King's Dark Tower series, one of the many aliases of Randall Flagg, a nemesis of Roland Deschain (who King has revealed to be modeled after The Man With No Name), is the Man in Black.

Notes

ee also

* "A Fistful of Dollars"
* "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"
* Dollars Trilogy
* Man with No Name
* Spaghetti Western

External links

*imdb title|id=0059578|title=For a Few Dollars More
*amg title|id=1:18148|title=For a Few Dollars More
* [http://www.spaghetti-western.net/index.php/For_A_Few_Dollars_More "For a Few Dollars More"] at the Spaghetti Western Database
*rotten-tomatoes|id=for_a_few_dollars_more|title=For a Few Dollars More
* "An Eye for Eye" by Maurizio Graf http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0geIDWPl2I&feature=related