The phenomenal critical and box office success of A Fistful of Dollars in the US and abroad brought a new international attention to Sergio Leone and the Spaghetti Western trend he did not invent, but instead perfected. Clint Eastwood makes his first appearance as the Man With No Name, a devious, cold-blooded yet strangely charismatic anti-hero who stumbles into an epic family battle that he craftily exploits to his own advantage. Although he transparently modeled his story very closely upon Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, Leone would later play down the influence of the Japanese master director after Kurosawa successfully sued him for copyright infringement. A Fistful of Dollars sets into motion the key elements of the Leone style – stark, woodblock characters whose inscrutable faces tell us all we can know about them; explosive and darkly comic violence; and a dynamically plastic use of the widescreen to craft expressive and sculptural imagery. – HG