OMG! Look how young Clint is in the 1964 spaghetti western, A Fistful of Dollars (United Artists)
If you missed The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at last month's United Artists Film Festival, don't despair. You will have another chance to see not only that Sergio Leone spaghetti western classic, but his entire Man with No Name Trillogy courtesy of the San Diego Italian Film Festival . The free summer mini-series kicks off on Thursday June 5 at 7:00 pm at the Museum of Photographic Arts with the 1964 film A Fistful of Dollars , featuring Clint Eastwood as the now iconic Man with No Name. For a Few Dollars More follows on July 3, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly closes the mini-series on August 7.
Here in teh U.S. we refer to these films as "Spaghetti Westerns," but in Italy they are called "Westerns all'Italiana." All three films are the collaboration of filmmaker Sergio Leone, star Clint Eastwood, and composer Ennion Morricone. According to film lore, an obscure director named Sergio Leone was given $200,000 and a load of leftover film stock in the early 1960s and told to make a western. Leone turned to Akira Kurosawa's samurai epic Yojimbo, for inspiration and to American TV actor Clint Eastwood as his star. The rest, as they say, is history. The film introduced Eastwood as the laconic, cynical, anti-heroic gunslinger known only as the Man with No Name. Leone's trilogy of films came to define a genre and Morricone's epic, playful scores are equally memorable. These are films, with their stunning visual composition, are glorious on the big screen. Put these films down on your calendar now and don't miss them.
This mini-series is a warm up for the real event in October when the San Diego Italian Film Festival once again partners MoPA to screen 20 Italian movies for free. The films are shown through a collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura of Los Angeles. For more information email the festival at SDItFF@gmail.com.
