REGISTER FOR FREE TICKETS HERE
Join us at 3 p.m. Saturday, March 21st, for Sergio Leone’s 1964 Spaghetti Western “A Fistful of Dollars.”
This screening is part of a special Saturday series at the Cosford celebrating the work of visionary filmmaker Sergio Leone and his legendary “Dollars Trilogy” — “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), “For a Few Dollars More” (1965), and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).”
With these films, Leone reinvented the Western. Drawing inspiration from Hollywood traditions while sharply critiquing American mythology, the trilogy strips away the genre’s romantic heroism and replaces it with a stark, morally ambiguous world defined by greed, violence, and survival. The result helped launch the “Spaghetti Western” and forever changed the landscape of the genre.
This spring, experience the entire trilogy on the big screen as it was meant to be seen, presented in stunning 4K. This series is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Norton Herrick Center for Motion Picture Studies at the University of Miami.
A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS | 1964 | DIRECTOR: Sergio Leone | WITH:Clint Eastwood, Marianne Koch, Gian Maria Volontè | RATED R for violence| RUNNING TIME: 1H 39M | 4K RESTORATION
The film that started it all… An instant international phenomenon, this hard-hitting epic stunned audiences with its violence, gritty realism and tongue-in-cheek humor. A lean, cold-eyed, cobra-quick gunfighter (Clint Eastwood) arrives in a grim and dusty border town where two rival bands of smugglers terrorize the impoverished citizens.
Though he receives lucrative offers of employment from each gang, his loyalty cannot be bought. He accepts both jobs…and sets in motion a deadly plan to destroy the criminals, pitting one against the other in a series of brilliantly orchestrated setups, showdowns and deadly confrontations.
Admission is FREE, but registration is required at the link above. The screening will include a brief introduction by Cosford Cinema Co-Manger Katlyn Aviles, Ph.D.
“There are three dialogue-free scenes in the quintessential 1964 spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars — in which Clint Eastwood’s nameless antihero pits the sadistic Rojo brothers against corrupt sheriff John Baxter (Wolfgang Lukschy) — that every genre-loving moviegoer should see at least once projected on a theater screen.
In the first of these formative sequences, Eastwood and co-star Marianne Koch — as the understandably suspicious Marisol, a reluctant hostage of cold-blooded murderer Ramon Rojo (Gian Maria Volontè) — create a playful air of anticipation by exchanging a few knowing glances. Eastwood cautiously nods at Koch after she squints at him with disapproval from an open window. She parts her lips; he freezes, interested, but she slams the window shut anyway. The scene ends once he slowly relaxes his toned cheek muscles.
The next essential sequence finds Marisol reunited with her bawling son Jesus (Nino Del Arco) and her stoic husband, Julian (Daniel Martín). Director Sergio Leone and editor Roberto Cinquini masterfully crosscut between Eastwood and his co-stars to suggest that a gunfight could break out at any moment. This scene’s pacing and shot choices make it as tense as Leone’s most spectacular action set pieces.
For final proof that looks can kill, see the film’s third unmissable sequence: the concluding shootout, when Eastwood and Volontè are reduced to a pair of eyes as their characters quickly reload. You need a big screen to behold fully these close-ups of Volontè’s devastating glare and Eastwood’s iconic scowl.” – Simon Abrams, The Village Voice
