What exactly is considered a classic Westerner genre film? Robert Warshow, in his essay “Movie Chronicle: The Westerner” that appears in Film Theory and Criticism defines what it means for a movie to be a Westerner. Warshow characterizes the Western hero by saying that he “…is a figure of repose. He resembles the gangster in being lonely and to some degree melancholy. But his melancholy comes from the “simple” recognition that life is unavoidable serious…And his loneliness is organic, not imposed on him by his situation but belonging to him intimately and testifying to his completeness.” (Warshow 704). Eastwood plays a man who is very much the lonely character, he rides into town alone, making friends with only the Cantina owner Silvanito and never showing allegiance to one warring side or the other for very long. We last see him riding out of town, leaving the coffin maker to clean up the mess, telling Silvanito that he isn’t going to stick around. Joe’s gun, hat and cigar are his only possessions, he rides alone leaving behind the people that he fought for, never asking for a thanks.

Joe in many ways is like the lonely gangster mentioned by Warshow. In The Glass Key, written by Dashiell Hammett, the character Paul Madvig is a gangster figure that finds himself alone at the end of the book, much like Joe. Paul is forced into this loneliness however when Janet Henry decides leave him for his best friend Ned Beaumont. While both Joe and Paul are lonely characters, Joe chooses to be alone. What also sets them apart is the fact that Paul kills for his own reasons and therefore comes off as a bad guy. Paul has his own interests in mind, while Joe has a different agenda that is typical of the Westerner, which includes honor and justice.

Another point of Warshow’s essay is the fact that the Westerner must uphold justice by doing what he “has to do,” while upholding the honor of himself (Warshow 706). Joe in A Fistful of Dollars is a murky mix of these values, which is an example of the evolution of “classic Westerner” to other forms of Westerners. What makes A Fistful of Dollars most recognizably different is the fact that is a “Spaghetti Western” shot in Italy by an Italian director, which therefore leads to evolutions in style, thought, and ideas that will not have the same exact formula as earlier Westerns. We see Joe go against the whole “has to do” value outlined in Warshow’s essay when it comes to the plight of a little boy. When the viewer first sees Jo, he has just entered town for a drink of water, presumably on his way from his last great adventure in whatever small dusty town he has just left. A small boy is seen entering a house, crying, and then forcefully expelled from the house, and shot at, a rather shocking scene. Who would think that someone would shoot at a small boy? Obviously there is trouble in town. Isn’t throwing out and shooting at the helpless dishonorable? Joe would be expected to do what he “has to do,” which would be to right the wrongdoing, presumably by killing the two thugs causing havoc on an innocent child. In order to uphold the “classic Westerner” values, he certainly should have helped the little boy right away, instead of giving a blind eye to the situation and hiding behind his hat and the well he takes a drink from. Was Joe afraid to confront these men, as suggested by his stance behind the well? However he most certainly could have taken them on. We see in later scenes that under his poncho is a gun with which he is an excellent shot. Joe doesn’t seem to want to get involved with what is happening in town, and it is not until he considers the money he could make that he decides to take on the challenges. It is this lack of interest in the town that evolves the Westerner hero and genre over time. But his sense of honor and doing what he has to do comes full circle when he gives the money he is given by the warring sides to the family of the little boy who he ignores in the first scene. So while Joe does have his honor, he is reluctant to act right away and his motives are not too definite throughout the movie. Warshow says that what the classic Westerner defends “…is the purity of his own image- in fact his honor,” yet Joe is comes of as not so pure and doesn’t seem to care what people think of him (706). Warshow also suggests that the Westerner began to feel the “pressure of obligation,” and Joe is a testament to the aging genre (709). He is reluctant to help the boy, but then finds himself doing it anyway. A Fistful of Dollars is a verification of the changing elements of the genre, and how new ideas are constantly replacing older ideas. It is the development of the Westerner that reflects what Warshow considers to be the “…introduction of a realism, both physical and psychological…” that came along as the Westerner genre matured (709). While the movie is an interesting example of the formulas of genre films evolving, it is how the upper hand is displayed that sets the movie apart.

A Fistful of Dollars centers on the broad theme of power. The Rojos and the Baxters want one thing: control over the town. The Rojos have their gun trade, the Baxters have their alcohol. The two warring sides can’t get along because there are two bosses, and it is interesting to note that once Joe enters town, there are technically three. The visual effects are the main clue to this position of who is in charge and who holds the power during the movie.

The most interesting symbol presented in this movie is the cigar. Several key scenes in the movie show Joe with a cigar, and the mise en scène that the cigar is a part of is suggestive of this power and authority. The first time we see Joe with a cigar is when he is hearing the predicament of the town from Silvanito, the cantina owner. Silvanito feeds him, as they sit at a table. Joe sees a set of steps, and asks Silvanito what is up there, while putting a cigar in his mouth. Silvanito is hesitant to let him go up there, but Joe refuses to listen and climb up the stairs. As he steps through the door and onto the balcony, he lights the cigar, and looks down on the town. The stairs can be seen as his ascent to his position in the situation at hand and his position in the town. When he is on the balcony, the camera is at his level, looking down on the Rojos gang and Baxter gang at work. He is physically and figuratively above them, as both a spectator to the events that unfold and as the person who holds the power in the situation, as he leads to the downfall of both sides.

Here is where the cigar comes in as an integral part of this scene. While listening to Silvanito, Joe has the unlit cigar in his mouth, which he takes out while talking. After saying “every town has a boss,” Joe puts the cigar back into his mouth, the cigar a representation of the upper hand that Joe wishes to have, and his desire to be that boss. The next time he takes the cigar out of his mouth and puts it back in is on top of the balcony. The camera angle switches to slightly above Joe’s perspective, Joe is in the foreground and the street is in the background below him. Joe is describing the situation to Silvanito, and he tells him that the Rojos are there, the Baxters over there, and “me, right in the middle,” which directly after this is said the cigar goes back into his mouth. Joe is shown to have power and sway over the situation as he puts the cigar back into his mouth, his representation of power, his understanding of the situation, and his acceptance of having the upper hand.

Joe’s fall from the position of power occurs when he is being beaten by the Rojo gang. While he is being beaten and bloody, we see one of the Rojo brothers sitting on a ledge, laughing, cigar clenched in teeth. At one point, Joe is thrown over a table and onto the ground in front of the Rojo brother. Joe’s position in the shot is below that of the Rojo brother, who looks down on him and laughs. He has the cigar, and Joe has nothing indicating that he has power. The camera then switches sides of the ledge, and the Rojo brother is closest to the camera, as he gets up and extinguishes the cigar on Joe’s hand. The Rojo brother’s face cannot be seen from the angle, and the lighting casts shadows on everything. This scene differs greatly from the cigar scene of Joe mentioned above, which takes place in the middle of the day, outside. The shadows during the beating of Joe scene suggest a darker world, and also the corrupt power that the Rojos have since Joe is now defenseless and cannot do anything in the situation. The next time Miguel Rojo has a cigar is also suggestive of the dark power of the Rojos, with an ailing Joe now gone. Miguel is seen sitting across the street from the Baxter house, cigar in mouth. The setting is at night, and Miguel’s face is half covered in shadow as he uses the cigar to light the fuse that blows up the Baxter house wall.

Joe does not have a cigar in his possession until the scene in which he is regaining strength from the beating. This scene is crucial in the story for the turning point of power. It opens with Joe leaning against a post. As the camera goes to a close-up of his body, his face is completely hidden in the shadows. His gun is pointed into the light, and as he sits up, his face moves out of the shadows and into the light. It becomes apparent that he has a cigar in his mouth, unlit. Coming out of the shadows symbolizes his return of strength, and the unlit cigar symbolizes his return to power. As he shoots at the metal and realizes that the bullets cannot pierce the metal, Joe comes to the realization that he can defeat the Rojo brothers. Leaning on the metal drum, Joe takes out a match, strikes it on the metal, and lights the cigar, an official return to power and a return of the hero in the movie.

The last significant cigar scene is the last scene of the movie. With the Rojo leaders dead, Joe goes into the cantina and comes out, standing on the porch. The shot, with the camera on ground level looking up at Joe on the porch, puts Joe back into the position of power, as Silvanito is below him. Joe is last seen lighting a match and his cigar, as he walks off, steals a horse, and rides off into the distance. Joe has the cigar as his final symbol of power as who restored the town and as the only boss who came away alive. In a way, he is taking charge of the town as both bosses are now dead, but by walking away from the town he rejects this power and stays the lonely, restless Westerner hero.

What is so important about the cigar? The cigar is a masculine symbol that can also be considered a phallic symbol. The power in A Fistful of Dollars centers around men and their superiority, and all conflict centers on who has enough strength, wits, and guns to rule the town. The only two female characters to be seen are Marisol, a helpless woman sold off like property in a card game, and John Baxter’s wife, the only semi-strong female character of the movie. She too is also under male domination, as in the scene where Joe seizes her hand in her bedroom to get her under control. Because men dominate the town and only two female characters are present in a myriad of male characters, how to show domination and who is in charge becomes an issue. The characters are seen smoking a cigar to make the distinction of what male figure is in control. The cigar is therefore a symbol of masculine power gained and lost throughout the movie. By using this symbol for masculinity and by use of lighting and shadows, the good and bad sides of town are clearly defined.

A Fistful of Dollars portrays the classic Western hero Joe as a lonely wanderer with a reluctant sense of honor and what is right and wrong that in ways evolves him from what is expected. Through the use of mise en scène, the good guys and the bad guys can easily be distinguished. The symbolic cigar stands not only for power, but for the masculinity of the characters possessing one. Through such techniques, the power play between the iconic Man With No Name and the warring gangs becomes clearer and more defined, which I now look at as the beauty of cinema.

I like what Daniel Lipskis’s blog Que Onda says about A Fistful of Dollars. I can definitely see why he would say that The Man With No Name is a “beginning of the modern day action-hero.” He has characteristics of both a hero (quick gun reflexes, killing the bad guys, quick witted) but also the characteristics of a human (reluctance to help the boy at first, mistakes like hitting Marisol by accident) which modern day heroes now possess.

Charlie Rainbolt’s blog Das Bolt contains an interesting post that includes a section about genres overlapping unintentionally that I felt fit well with A Fistful of Dollars. He says that the movie Army of Darkness and Yojimbo share the same characteristics including lonely hero, and reluctant helper of the innocent that also fits with A Fistful of Dollars. It is interesting to see these elements cross over, showing that they are formulas that work.

Mallory’s blog And why not? It worked in blazing saddles! Has a great post with a sentence that I think really fits this movie as well, “I have to respect any book that has me caring about a protagonist that I really know very little about.” While Mallory is referring to Ned Beaumont in The Glass Key, I feel this also fits the Man With No Name in A Fistful of Dollars. We do not know much about him, but we still root for him to pull through. Another post she wrote refers to being able to look into the characters eyes, which is also a prominent feature of A Fistful of Dollars. According to Mallory, it is an advantage that cinema has over text, to be able to see emotions directly.

Warshow, Robert. “Movie Chronicle: The Westerner.” Film Theory and Criticism. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 703-716.

I also came upon this artcle in the Washington Post that wonders why all the main characters in Pixar movies are male.

It’s an interesting conflict when you discuss children’s films. In class we talked about the impact of children’s toys, but we didn’t mention the movies they watch. Are films like the ones mentioned in the articles above going to perpetuate the gender stereotype found in movies for adults?

I loved the music. It was perfect. And haunting, and it’s interesting that it is a film about death yet the music is not depressing. It’s…hopeful I guess.

Who would have ever thought a lion keeper, a mole rat expert, a shrubbery cutter, and a robot specialist would have something in common. But I guess we all have something in common with them too. We have our passions, we have our mistakes, we have our reasons, we have our plans and fears of the future. I think that Morris could have picked any person and we would all have the same core stories, which is the point of the documentary.

It was beautiful. That’s all I can say.

So is a movie reality? Is it free from bias? Free from the hands of a human since it is a machine recording it? A movie is reality. Well, it was. In my view, we see people, we see the settings, we see scenes. Maybe the scenes were set up, the clothing picked out on purpose, the acting rehearsed. It is still reality. We see actual people and nature. That was true up until CGI however. Movies are no longer reality and can’t be classified as such.

And movies are never free from bias. It is always capturing what the person standing behind the camera wants you to see. And yes, it is never free from humans. There is always someone pointing that camera somewhere. Not even the security tapes we talked about in class are free from human intervention. They were placed there to capture a certain area with a certain purpose.

This film was nominated for an Academy Award, but was rejected because it had scripted parts, which I feel is unfair. The documentary was great, and the scripted parts only added to the story.

I really really really look forward to the next documentary.

This class is really helping pick up on stuff going on in each shot. I noticed the low angle used to show the one investor and it definitely gives off a certain vibe about him. I also noticed the scales behind Floyd, as a representation of him trying to do justice for people’s pets. I’m sure as I watch more movies I will become more aware of these types of things, which definitely add to the experience of seeing a movie that I really didn’t know existed.

I would like to talk a little bit about the view of if “Little Women” (the 1994 version) is a “weepie” film. I am going to have to agree with this view. While not every scene evokes tears or sadness, there are its moments that are important to the story and are meant to make you sad. Linda Williams, in “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess” even says that “..the woman viewer of a maternal melodrama… does not simply identify with the suffering and dying heroines of each. She may equally identify with the powerful matriarchs, the surviving mothers who preside over the deaths of their daughters, experiencing the exhilaration and triumph of survival.” (p. 735) While this quote refers to maternal melodrama, it can also apply to the other characters of “Little Women.” We see how they are affected by it and how everyone, not just the mother must cope and become strong because of it. “Little Women” does not center around melodrama, but it sure is a big part of the story. Women can identify with overcoming pain and coping and becoming strong, which are parts of “weepy” films. I am going to have to stand by my opinion in class on this.