A favorite of the most die-hard Leone fans, For a Few Dollars More is his first mature film, a major showcase for Leone’s masterful use of the human face as a expressive object, explored through the bold close-ups that push to a radical extreme Sergei Eisenstein’s notion of typage – characters offered as instantly recognizable representative models of social class and cultural stereo-types. In Leone’s case, however, he turned to the iconic myths of the American West, and of Hollywood cinema, to fashion a fever dream of masculinity and violence using studio and television actors Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef as icons swept off the ordered mantle of studio-era classicism into the raging fire of Leone’s baroque and tempestuous frontier. Cast as rival “bounty killers," Eastwood and Van Cleef are bonded into a laconic partnership, and possible friendship, when they join forces to capture the notorious bandit, “El Indio” brilliantly played as a haunted, decadent man-child by Gian Maria Volontè. Using rapid-fire montage and wonderfully integrating Morricone’s sublime orchestral score into its narrative, For a Few Dollars More is a profoundly sophisticated example of a polyvalent film style that is able to be simultaneously parodic and tragic, comedic and frightening, cooly detached and ardently emotional. – HG