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Everyone is familiar with the spaghetti western genre: westerns made by Italians, most notably by Sergio Leone, who directed the ultimate trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, all starring Clint Eastwood. These films, shot in the 1960s, made Eastwood, until then a TV actor, famous.
Leone's first spaghetti western, A Fistful of Dollars, was inspired by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's samurai film, Yojimbo. Leone borrowed much of his style from Kurowsawa. Yojimbo is the story of a lone samurai who comes to a town ripped apart by two competing gangs. In A Few Dollars More, Eastwood's character arrives in a western town ripped apart by - you guessed it - two competing gangs. But Leone adds his own style to his version, like his trademark close up of the characters' eyes and sweeping camera movements. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly is by far the most famous of the "Dollars" trilogy, with one of the most recognizable movie themes of all time. As in the first two films, Eastwood, along with all the other characters, is on a quest for gold. The three-way duel at the end of the film is considered one of the best duel scenes in movie history. After the series with Eastwood, Leone went on to make Once Upon A Time in the West in 1968. This is perhaps his most respected film, his movie-making skills reaching their climax in this well-told, brilliantly directed tale. In 1984 Leone followed this up with Once Upon A Time In America starring Robert DeNiro and James Woods, a film about Jewish mobsters in New York. Leone redefined the western. The heros were no longer do-gooders out to save the world, but were just as greedy and ruthless as their enemies. Leone was afraid American audiences would not respond well to an Italian-made western, but they became so popular that over 200 spaghetti westerns were made over the next decades. Clint Eastwood went on to international stardom and Ennio Morricone continued to compose music for both American and Italian films.
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