For a few more dollars

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Movie
German title For a few more dollars
Original title Per qualche dollaro in più
For a few dollars more 1975.svg
Country of production Italy , Spain , Germany
original language English / Italian
Publishing year 1965
length 132 (126) minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Sergio Leone
script Sergio Leone
Luciano Vincenzoni
production Arturo González
Alberto Grimaldi
music Ennio Morricone
camera Massimo Dallamano
cut Eugenio Alabiso
Adriana Novelli
Giorgio Serrallonga
occupation
synchronization
chronology

←  Predecessor
For a handful of dollars

Successor  →
Two glorious scoundrels

For a few dollars more (original title: Per qualche dollaro in più , English title: For a Few Dollars More ) is a Spaghetti Western by Sergio Leone from 1965, which was made as the follow-up to the film For a Fistful of Dollars . It is the second part of Leone's dollar trilogy . In the lead role in turn is Clint Eastwood to see who in the role of a bounty hunter to that of Lee Van Cleef together tearing played Colonel Mortimer at an unbeatable team.

Also Gian Maria Volonte is again one of the party; he embodies the unscrupulous El Indio. Other leading roles include Luigi Pistilli , Klaus Kinski , Mario Brega and Josef Egger . Like Volonté, Brega and Egger already appeared in For a Fistful of Dollars , also in other roles.

action

Colonel Douglas Mortimer is on the train to Tucumcari, which is on the border with New Mexico . His clothes identify him as a clergyman. Since the train does not stop there, he simply pulls the emergency brake. He merely acknowledges a threat from the conductor with a tired smile. For a moment the colonel flashes his Colt under his black coat as a warning. It quickly becomes clear that he is a bounty hunter who finds the wanted crook Guy Callaway in a bar and brings him down. Next he wants to get the baby Red Cavanagh award. He learns from the sheriff that someone else is after Cavanagh: a man whose right arm is hanging down, which means he can recognize him. This time Mortimer is left behind, because Monco, his competitor, is faster, kills the bandit and collects the bonus.

Coincidence would have it that the ice-cold bandit El Indio is freed by his gang from the state prison. The men seek refuge in an old church ruin, where they forge a plan to rob the bank of El Paso, which is considered the safest in the whole area, guarded like a fortress. Mortimer is currently depositing his money there, but is informed beforehand about the security measures to protect the bank vault. Monco has also heard of El Indio's outbreak and arrives in El Paso. A meeting of the two bounty hunters is therefore inevitable. A shooting duel in a class of its own, which shows both of them that they are equal to each other, makes them join forces and make a pact; after all, $ 10,000 is on El Indio's head.

To this end, they decide to infiltrate El Indio's gang. Monco frees Sancho, one of El Indios people, from prison and sneaks into the gang as a decoy. El Indio, however, remains suspicious of him and sends him to a fictitious robbery in Santa Cruz to have a free hand in robbing the bank in El Paso . On the one hand, the sheriff and his men should be busy elsewhere, on the other hand, the man he doesn't trust is far away. The ice-cold criminal is carrying a music box that is a counterpart to Mortimer's clock and shows a photo of a woman. While he looks at their face, something like a human emotion can be observed for the first time. In flashbacks it becomes clear what this woman is all about. El Indio, who had not been able to win the beautiful woman for himself, then murdered her husband and took the woman by force. While she was being raped, she committed suicide, unable to live with this disgrace. That also left its mark on him.

But Monco suspects what El Indio is up to. He gets rid of his companions, rides alone to Santa Cruz and forces the officials of the telegraph office to send a false message to El Paso. El Indio believes he is safe, the bank building is blown up, the safe is loaded and taken away. What the bandits can't know: Mortimer and Monco are watching and chasing them. For pretense, Monco reports back from Santa Cruz, where there was supposed to have been a slaughter, and Mortimer introduces himself to El Indio as a safe specialist. For the first time he faces the man who drove his sister to death, a tragedy he never got over.

The bounty hunters kill the bandits in a massive showdown in the remote town of Agua Caliente . El Indio is defeated and killed by Mortimer in a duel. In this case, he wasn't interested in the bounty, but only in avenging the murder of his brother-in-law and the rape and death of his sister. The music box was the Colonel's wedding present for his sister, whose melody has now become El Indio's death song. Mortimer foregoing a large part of the money from the booty from the bank robbery. Mortimer and Monco split up in friendship and Monco drives a car full of wanted and killed criminals and most of the booty from the bank robbery from El Paso to the next town to collect the bounties for them.

background

Emergence

Leone's second part of the dollar trilogy is even more brutal, but also funnier than the previous film. What is new is that the solitary stranger without a name, who now appears as Monco, makes a pact with another bounty hunter in order to get rid of an unscrupulous criminal and his gang. The opening scene already contains a cold-blooded murder, perpetrated on a rider who just came along, whistling, lively. The opening credits then also confirm that it is dangerous to live here and warns: “When life has lost its value, death - sometimes - has its price. This is the reason for the hunt for the bounty. "

Leone conjures up the same scene as in A Fistful of Dollars . Again, the film offers rapid tracking shots and scene changes that fluctuate between cruel and cheerful. The shooting skills were further refined, for example a bullet severed Eastwood's cigarillo. The intensity of the images was also increased a little and more attention was paid to details. It is surprising that Leone provides his main hero with an equal partner, with whom he provides a congenial interaction. Lee Van Cleef plays this part in his inimitable way and shares with Eastwood the rank of a full leading role. The prologue of the film is determined by Van Cleef's character long before Eastwood even appears in the picture. Dressed as a clergyman, he forces a train to stop in the middle of the prairie at a desert cafe called Tucumcari. It soon becomes clear that he is a bounty hunter. After killing the dreaded bandit Guy Callaway, he turns to his next victim: Baby Red Cavanagh, who has $ 2,000 on his head. Now Eastwood comes into play, because the sheriff lets Mortimer know that someone else is interested in Cavanagh, he can recognize him by the fact that his arm is hanging down. This time, Eastwood's character Monco was given a handicap that "seems to underline his invincibility". However, Mortimer is left behind, because his competitor is faster and collects the premium. Their paths cross again faster than they thought, because both are interested in a particularly bad bandit who is up to mischief with a gang of scoundrels: El Indio, who is exposed to $ 10,000. His unscrupulousness is already revealed in the scene when he is brought out of prison by his accomplices in an inhuman liberation operation. The following scene, in which El Indio takes revenge on the man who betrayed him, is also difficult to bear.

In this film, too, there are scenes again in which the dialogues are kept to a minimum, which is underlined by Morricone's film music by just then making it swell dramatically. A music box, which plays an essential role in the film and connects the story episodes, is used several times. With Morricone's revolutionary music, she reinforces the various duels of the main characters. If you compare Morricone's music with that of the previous film, it has gained even more complexity.

In order to find the right actor for Eastwood's opponent Colonel Mortimer, Leone went to the USA. His renewed request to Henry Fonda was refused again. Lee Marvin and Jack Palance were also on Leone's list, and Lee Van Cleef was chosen at the last minute, so to speak. He therefore had little time to deal with the role, as the shooting was imminent and began in April 1965 in the Cinecittà studios in Rome, from where it went on to the Spanish province of Almería and the Tabernas desert .

production

The Western color film in Techniscope is a joint production by PEA-Film, Rome, Gonzales-Film, Madrid and Constantin Film , Munich. The film was shot in Almería , Andalusia and in the Roman Cinecittà studios. The production designer Carlo Simi recreated the city "El Paso" in the desert near Almería: It still exists and has become a sight. The town of Agua Caliente (hot water) is actually Albaricoques, a small ghost town in the Níjar area . This time they didn't want to have copyright problems at all. Leone wrote the original script for the film together with Luciano Vincenzoni, which took the duo nine days. The bounty hunter Monco, the central figure in the story, is clearly a revenant of the nameless stranger from For a Fistful of Dollars , a near-faithful replica of the man with no name. The only difference is that he is now a bounty hunter. The world he moves in is just as anarchic, ruthless and brutal as in the previous movie, if not a little worse. His independence is not so unconditional as he enters into a dubious alliance with a professional colleague. Eastwood wears the same poncho as in the first film, and his six-shot Colt also accompanies him. The Spanish landscape, which contributed to the atmosphere of the film in the first part, is shown here again extensively. The opening of the film is not quite as complex as in the first part. Klaus Kinski's part as a hunchback is one of the highlights of For a Few Dollars More . "He growls, hisses and looks so dark that it runs down your spine." Kinski made the anger his figure was carrying visible, comparable to a volcano that is about to erupt. His performance in this film ensured that he was one of the regular cast in many Spaghettiwestern.

Like Eastwood, Van Cleef received a $ 50,000 fee for his role. Eastwood were also given some perks, including a new Ferrari. The money came in handy for Van Cleef, as after ten years of full employment he had to overcome a long dry spell, also because of problems with his health. With this film he made a comeback "as an icon of the Spaghetti Western". Eastwood had worked with Van Cleef in the seventh season of the western series A Thousand Miles of Dust .

Soundtrack

Compositions by Ennio Morricone

  • For a Few Dollars More and For a Few Dollars More (Sequence 3)
  • Aces High and Prison Break
  • Chapel Shootout and The Watchers Are Being Watched
  • The Wild One and Indios Flashback
  • To El Paso and The Showdown
  • The Vice of Killing and Mortimer & the Chest
  • Discovered and Slim Murdered
  • Indio & Nino and Carillon
  • Indios Flashback Pt. 2 and Sixty Seconds to What?
  • Goodbye, Colonel! and Occhio Per Occhio
  • Eye for an eye ; Watch Chimes and Watch Chimes 2

Marketing, Success

Already A Fistful of Dollars exceeded expectations, which one of the film had at the box office many times. “For a few dollars more” turned out to be even more successful - and not just financially. There were even more fights in the film, wilder exchanges of fire, and the sets were also more opulent, and many of the film's dialogues became legendary. If the previous film was shot quickly and painlessly, things looked very different with this $ 600,000 production. The film is also almost a third longer than the first film in the trilogy and comes up with a wealth of special effects that are used to underline the brutality and the many ideas in the course of the plot.

The viewers in Italy stormed the cinemas when the long-awaited sequel was on the program. The film also caused a stir in England. It often happened that both parts were shown together in a double performance. The advertising posters for it were sensational: “Clint Eastwood is back and on fire at both ends. Are you up to it? "There were also double features with the war film Kampfgeschwader 633 , produced in parallel by United Artists with Cliff Robertson , and with the headline:" The fastest Colt in the West - The largest squadron in the sky. "

For a few dollars more it can be described as “a refined further development of the spaghetti western” - “an absurd mixture of violence, black humor and gorgeous music”. As in For a Fistful of Dollars , the viewer has to deal with outlaws, gallows and dodgy have-nots.

synchronization

The 1966 dubbing (cinema version) was performed by Aventin Film, Munich, the post-dubbing by Lunatic Synchron, Munich. Dialogue script and dialogue direction were by Joachim Brinkmann :

Kurt Zips , who played a hotelier, Panos Papadopulos in the role of Sancho Perez and Werner Abrolat as Slim spoke to themselves.

In 1980 the film by Tobis , whose owner Horst Wendlandt had acquired the rights in 1978 from the bankruptcy estate of the Constantin rental company, was republished. The version (FSK 16) was shortened even more; Compared to the original, around eleven minutes were missing. The re-synchronization was created by the slapstick dubbing author Rainer Brandt , which had an effect on some passages in the dialogues.

The German version of the film was cut by ten minutes. It was first reconstructed in 1995. The restoration was based on the negative of the original version, which was badly damaged, so that a number of scenes that already existed in a German version had to be dubbed. This particularly affected the last film role that was completely lost. In Germany, an almost uncut film version on DVD and an uncut BluRay disc have now been released by Tobis, which also contains both dubbed versions.

Versions and publication

Several actors are already known from the first part, above all Gian Maria Volonté, who this time appears in the role of the ice-cold bandit El Indio. The Spaniard Aldo Sambrell, the Italians Mario Brega and Benito Stefanelli as well as the Austrian Josef Egger were there again. Egger embodied the coffin builder Piripero in For a Fistful of Dollars, now he can be seen as a prophet who has been taken with life and lives right next to the newly built railway line. The passing trains make his life hell; he had previously refused to sell his property to the railway company. His run-down home is just one of many impressive sets that were created especially for the film.

The German cinema version was only released from the age of 18 - and yet it was shortened.

  • The film premiered in the Federal Republic of Germany on March 25, 1966.
  • In Italy it ran on December 18, 1965 in Turin under the original title Per qualche dollaro in più .
  • In Spain it premiered on September 5, 1966 in Madrid under the title La muerte tenía un precio .
  • In the USA it was published on May 10, 1967 under the title For a Few Dollars More .

It was also marketed in Greece, France, Argentina, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Japan, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Turkey, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Australia, Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, Brazil, Estonia, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Mexico, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia as well as in the Soviet Union, Ukraine and Yugoslavia.

The DVD release by Paramount contains the restored and uncut version with the original cinema dubbing from 1966. The scenes that were missing at the time were re-dubbed. The film itself is still cut by a few seconds. The film was released uncut on Blu-ray in Italy on August 1, 2007 . The film is also part of DeAgostini's large Clint Eastwood DVD collection, in which it appeared as number 9. The DVD comes with a 14-page booklet accompanying the film.

Trivia

  • The city of Tucumcari is mentioned in the film . This is an anachronism : the city was only founded in 1901, long after the period of the classic Wild West.
  • In 1966 the film Mad Is Deadly was shot. Its original title is Per qualche dollaro in meno (For a few dollars less) and is a parody of the film.

criticism

The criticism of the film was again controversial. The magazine Monthly Film Bulletin branded the film as "openly sadistic, possibly even more sadistic than its forerunner". The Motion Picture Herald saw it quite differently, raving about "increased cinema enjoyment". Film Daily targeted the action scenes and shootouts, saying they would "make half a dozen good westerns."

Critics David Downing and Gary Herman argued that Eastwood had a special way of grinning in the trilogy, and that “that grin shows a whole outlook on life. It was that grin that Newman and McQueen had perfected, a grin that testifies to self-confidence and the independence that goes with it ”.

For the lexicon of international film , For a Fistful of Dollars presented itself as "carefully and excitingly staged spaghetti westerns".

Time magazine wrote: "This film is ideal for everyone who loves an elementary Western with galvanic attitudes, nerve-racking music full of jew's harps and chorals and a sovereign contempt for meaning and authenticity."

Joe Hembus found in the Western Lexicon : "Everything is brought into a shape better than today's American Western style."

The Protestant film observer was of the opinion: "Formally made brilliant, the film offers violence as a line of business and killer as - albeit dodgy - hero and therefore requires reservations from the age of 18."

Cinema drew the conclusion: “Stylish lead opera with a Morricone sound.” […] “Ultra-laconic, ultra-long-lasting, sophisticatedly staged. With Klaus Kinski in nasty top form and great music by Ennio Morricone. "

ServusTV praised the film as follows: “Accompanied by Ennio Morricone's great music, the second part of Sergio Leone's famous dollar trilogy also turned into a real Western classic. Imposing pictures, iconic sayings and gripping shootouts, 'For a Few Dollars More' has everything a good Spaghetti Western needs. In addition to the two Hollywood warriors Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleefe, the German cult actor Klaus Kinski shines in a supporting role! "

The Illustrierte Film-Kurier No. 105 succeeded, “... that the opponents get in each other's way and are forced to pull the fast Colts once with- and once against each other, [give] the tough story a good shot of irony. But the dominant [is] the fast-paced, gripping, exciting realism with which Sergio Leone once again built his scenes, [which] boosts the tension and imaginatively creates new shocks and thrills, exactly That is what made his 'handful of dollars' so successful that the Hamburger Abendblatt called the film admirable and the Düsseldorfer Nachrichten called it a “masterpiece”.

Phil Hardy noted that some details of the film were very influential, such as Mortimer and his extraordinary collection of weapons, which sparked “a wave of technological gadgets” in genre films, or El Indio's flashbacks to Mortimer's sister, who was “a Leone for the first time -Figure with a remarkable past ".

John Mahoney from the Hollywood Reporter wrote that many sequences of the film were "choreographed to the music directly out" after his perception.

Daily Cinema magazine took the “dark faces” that characterize the film as a reference for the other bad things that happen in the film, “ugly as the bandits' faces,” it said, for example, or “the strip is a purely male one Event that women appear exclusively as dead dream women or living sluts ”.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Certificate of Release for For a Few Dollars More . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2012 (PDF; test number: 35 219 V).
  2. a b c d e f g h i j k l The great Clint Eastwood DVD Collection No. 9 For a few more dollars from DeAgostini, Verlag DeAgostini Deutschland GmbH, Hamburg, editorial management: Ariane Ossowski, editing: Joachim Seidel, project management: Niklas Fürer, 2014, pp. 1–7, 10.
  3. a b Illustrierter Film-Kurier No. 105: For a few dollars more. United Publishing Companies Franke & Co. KG, Munich 2, p. 1.
  4. ^ Howard Hughes: Aim for the Heart. IB Tauris, London 2009, ISBN 978-1-84511-902-7 , p. 8.
  5. Michael Munn: Clint Eastwood: Hollywood's Loner. Robson Books, London 1992, ISBN 0-86051-790-X , p. 56.
  6. Christopher Frayling [first edition: 1981]: Preface . In: Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone . IB Tauris, New York, USA 2006, ISBN 1-84511-207-5 , p. Ix.
  7. a b c d Gerald Cole, Peter Williams: Clint Eastwood His films - His life , Heyne Filmbibliothek No. 32/92, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Munich, 1986, pp. 61, 62, 64, 70.
  8. For a few dollars more in Synchronkartei.de
  9. For a few dollars more at schnittberichte.com
  10. The Clint Eastwood films in the collection - No. 9: For a few dollars more at clinteastwood-dvd-collection.de
  11. For a few more dollars. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 17, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  12. Il Messagero. Quoted in: Joe Hembus : Western Lexicon. 1272 films from 1894–1975. Carl Hanser, Munich / Vienna 1977 (2nd edition), ISBN 3-446-12189-7 , p. 20.6
  13. Evangelischer Filmbeobachter, edited. from the Evangelical Press Association in Munich, Critique No. 112/1966
  14. For a few dollars more In: Cinema (with 41 frames for the film). Retrieved October 25, 2016.
  15. For a few dollars more ( memento from October 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) at servustv.com. Retrieved October 25, 2016.
  16. ^ Phil Hardy: The Encyclopedia of Western Movies. Woodbury Press, Minneapolis 1984, ISBN 0-8300-0405-X , p. 290.