Sergio Leone: Masterworks [A Fistful of Dollars | For a Few Dollars More | The Good, the Bad and the Ugly | Once Upon a Time in the West]

One of the greatest of all Italian filmmakers, Sergio Leone was a true cinematic visionary who pioneered the popular “Spaghetti Western” genre and immortalized the talents of actors Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson; and composer Ennio Morricone. These 4 Leone classics endure as some of the most iconic and influential artistic depictions of the Old American West. A Fistful of Dollars (1964) – Leone’s seminal masterpiece introduced the world to Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name”—a lean, cold-eyed, cobra-quick gunfighter who drifts into a grim and dusty border town where two competing bands of smugglers terrorize the impoverished citizens. Though “The Stranger” receives lucrative offers of employment from each gang, his steely loyalty cannot be bought. For a Few Dollars More (1965) – Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef co-star as rival bounty hunters who join forces to bring the murderous bandit El Indio and his vicious gang of criminals to justice. But all is not as it seems in this explosive and sublime second installment of Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) – In the most ambitious, unflinchingly graphic, and stylistically bold Western ever made, Clint Eastwood returns for one last showdown as “The Man with No Name,” locked in a legendary duel with two gunslingers (Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach). Each man pursues a cache of $200,000 and lets no one, not even warring factions in a civil war, stand in his way. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) – Leone’s frontier fable is as big as its Monument Valley locations, as grand as its fine, distinguished cast, and as tough and bawdy as every kid imagines the Old West. Henry Fonda flips his good-guy image as Frank, a sadistic killer, clashing with Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards, and the mighty Charles Bronson in the film which re-established the Western’s significance to cinema art.