¿Qué Onda?

It is interesting to think of A Fistful of Dollars as a great departure from the early westerns and as the beginning of the modern day action-hero. The hard-boiled style was never found before Leone’s film. The film does not disguise the fact that it takes its plot from kurosawa’s Yojimbo, but it does vary in style. The character in the A Fisful of Dollars that makes the greatest difference between the two for me is the music and the sound effects. Leone is known to be very picky with his effects and his partnership with Morricone gave us what some, including Quentin Tarantino, consider to be the greatest movie ever made in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Leone is still relatively new to directing in A Fistful of Dollars, and you can see a definite growth in confidence from A Fistful of Dollars to For a Few Dollars More. While I was thinking along the lines of A Fistful of Dollars being a remake of Yojimbo into an American Western, it is interesting to note that according to the commentary from those involved in the production of the movie, it was mainly marketed in Europe, as it was filmed and scored there. In casting the For a Few Dollars More Leone was still unable to get a “leading man” and ended up casting Lee Van Cleef as the colonel. One of the things that Leone was best at was not just his use of closeups but his ability to cast “character faces”. He was said to have cast many Spanish Gypsies in the roles of the mexicans and while they couldn’t act it didn’t matter because everyone on the set spoke their first language and it was dubbed over later to suit the country it was going to be released in. The laconic nature of “Joe” or the man with no name, can be credited with the birth of american action heroes. Clint Eastwood has been noted as saying that he actually was fighting to have lines cut and it is interesting to see how his character is less talkative than Sanjuro in Yojimbo.

I greatly enjoyed both films, but it is interesting to note that while we are analyzing an American film in
The Glass Key, both of the films that we have gone to are foreign films, while A Fistful of Dollars was in some ways never intended for a single culture, it is interesting to see the Italian interpretation of both the American Western and Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, which is interspersed with Italian Machismo and many interesting touches from Leone. A Fistful of Dollars seems like Leone’s testing grounds and he found great success, his later films are a greater affirmation of his directing ability, and his second film in the series, For a Few Dollars More, just oozes with his cinematic style. If you were wondering my favorite film in the Dollars Trilogy is For a Few Dollars More, while I enjoy The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly the rivalry/partnership of Van Cleef and Eastwood, along with the brilliant contrast of the evil Indio and The Man With No Name, in acting styles is amazing. I am interested to hear your impressions of the movies.

The beauty of Hammett´s The Glass Key is in the multiple possible readings of the details. While I was reading this book after discussing the homosexual hints in the movie I was hard-pressed not to think of José Donoso´s El Lugar Sin Límites. Donoso´s book is a Chilean Novel from the late 60´s that was also made into a movie. The title of his book can be literally translated as “the place without limits”. In both books the characters are forced, by choice or setting to wear a certain “mask” that makes it so that the reader and the other characters never really know exactly what they are thinking.

Analyzing Donoso’s book it is interesting to see that he may have lifted many parts of the story and structure from Hammet. Both deal with political struggles, Donoso’s is between the gang in a lawless town and the Don who rules over the vineyard. Donoso’s is interesting in the way that it takes the central female character and replaces it with a transvestite. Through this method Donoso includes both the love triangle that we see with Paul, Ned and Janet and uses La Manuela to replace Janet. This is entirely to detailed to completely cover in a blog, but it is intersting how if not the story, but many of the themes seem to cross cultural boundaries. Being that Donoso was a film buff I do not find it unlikely that he deliberately included elements of The Glass Key in his novel. I am interested to see how these themes play out in Yojimbo, and look forward to analyzing how through film these ideas crossed cultural boundaries into not only other films, but written works as well.

The only commentaries and summaries I have of this book by Donoso are in Spanish but if someone would like a brief description post a comment or ask me in person.