Dollars Trilogy

One of the most famous Spaghetti westerns and maybe the best , the dollars trilogy . I would be amazed that no here loves those movie . I remember as a kid i had hard time watching them because of their cruel nature , now they are a true refreshment from the " modern " movies .

No boring characters who fight " for FREEDOM and jesus ", no annoying female characters who just stand their to be pretty and no " EVIL " villain's .

Personally my favorite was the " For A Few Dollars More "


EDIT: How could i forgot this , The facial expressions which Sergio Leone shows are amazing , they say so much combined with the music . It was excatly that atmosphere that attracted me as a kid but yet it scared me also .

Originally Posted by Uber Mind

Personally my favorite was the " For A Few Dollars More "

Mine too. It is important to note though that it's not actually a trilogy, it's just three films made by the same people in a similar setting. Only the "main character" stays the same, more or less. Col. Mortimer from the second film is obviously not identical with Angel Eyes AKA "The Bad" from the third film despite being played by the same guy, and the main villains from the first two films are played by the same guy, which is somewhat confusing as well, at least to people who think it's a trilogy in terms of content.

I know it's not a trilogy in a classic way , but they are three separate stories about same character .And if it weren't for Mexican and Civil war setting all three movies chronologically could be completely " random " you could never be 100% sure what happened first .

Especially For A Few Dollars more , i couldn't pin point any historical event to that movie .

Man With No Name also wears the best clothes in the beginning of the 3 movie which would suggest that it takes places after the second because he has " more money "

Originally Posted by Uber Mind

I know it's not a trilogy in a classic way , but they are three separate stories about same character .And if it weren't for Mexican and Civil war setting all three movies chronologically could be completely " random " you could never be 100% sure what happened first .

Especially For A Few Dollars more , i couldn't pin point any historical event to that movie .

Man With No Name also wears the best clothes in the beginning of the 3 movie which would suggest that it takes places after the second because he has " more money "

Actually in the third film he picks up the poncho he wears in the first two, so the last film is definitely the first chronologically. At least if you consider him the same character.

Some of the best westerns around, though personally the more personal revenge theme in Once Upon a Time in the West elevates it just above the dollar trilogy

One of my favorite western villain.

Great, now I must re watch the movies again...

Am i the only one who thinks he was shocked seeing another guy ing he's " love interest " , that later he regretted killing her ( but not regretting killing that guy ) and that maybe the murder of those was he's first crime . I speculated a lot about that scene .

Damn it, man!

You're making want to re watch that movie.

Ah, well, my memory of that movie is fuzzy. but in the end, it did had a Hugh impact on him.

I own them all, and watch them at least once a year.

Absolute classics.

Actually in the third film he picks up the poncho he wears in the first two, so the last film is definitely the first chronologically.

Maybe he simply likes that those ponchos .
And isn't the civil war after that war with Mexico in the first film .
But then again that brings me to my " theory ' that Man With No Name really doesn't cares about money , he just does all this stuff to find some kind of meaning to his life .But I'm sure Sergio Leone didn't had any clear concrete explanations because the back story wasn't his goal probably .

I love these movies. Sergio Leones other two westerns are excellent as well.

Another reason 2 one is the best for me is because there you really don't know what will happen in the final stand off .

Leone changed the face of cinema with the dollars trilogy. He took Hollywood's sacred cash cow, the western, and tore up the manual. The good guys aren't good upstanding members of society and the bad guys (some of them) are as lovable as they are deadly. Leone ended, or put a huge question mark, over the heads of some of Hollywood's biggest stars by showing what could be done with a handful of virtual unknowns a pitiful budget and a wagon load of imagination. By the time he made Once Upon a Time in the West even the god like 'Henry Fonda' one of the most revered western actors wanted in on this new wave of film making.

Bit on other westerns..

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

After Leone had shown the big studios how to reinvent a genre that was becoming predictable they began to play him at his own game. In 1970 Hollywood produced two of the best westerns ever made, but these were very different from the standard good guys wear white bad guys wear black westerns. 'A Man Called Horse' and 'Little Big Man' changed how the wild west was portrayed in films and how the characters of the wild west were no longer predictable.

'A man Called Horse'


'Little Big Man' If you don't laugh at this scene you must be dead...


A few years down the line Sam Peckinpah, one of Hollywood's established western genre directors, took an obvious stab at the Leone model with the cult classic 'The Wild Bunch.' The trailer doesn't portray just how violent this movie really is, or how good the actors, most of whom had only been supporting actors before this, really are..



Other great westerns that I think are heavily influenced by the Dollars trilogy and Leone's style of mixing brutal violence with razor wit.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. 1969
The Scalphunters. 1968
The Culpepper Cattle Co. 1972
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. 1973

Getting back to the dollars movies, for me personally the first two films are much darker than 'TGTBTU.' The beating 'Joe' receives from 'Chico' (Mario Brega) was just brutal, hero's just didn't get battered like that in westerns. Even more shocking that scene in 'For a Few Dollars More' when a baby's cries are suddenly cut off was jarring when I first saw it and hasn't lost it's power (even now where children are killed in movies all the time)... However in those films we get glimpses of the humour that Leoni took to another level in TGTBTU. The introduction of 'Joe' in the first movie is classic Leone and still makes me smile every time..

Joe: Get three coffins ready.

[Having said "get three coffins ready" earlier]
Joe: My mistake. Four coffins...

I think the second movie is the darkest of the three. The 'bad' guy is 'Indio' a murderous psychotic, even his own men and family are terrified of him. I mentioned the scene where he has one of his men murder a crying baby (though this is off screen). But it's the non speaking 'Mario Brega' as Niño who wields a machete in a way that I'd never seen in a film before who appears even more frightening than Indio...

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly..

I could rattle on about this film all day but it really just has to be watched.

How do you end one of the most EPIC films ever made, easy, with the most EPIC ending EVER...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

You have to do the Tuco lines in that amazing Mexican accent..

Tuco: Hurrah! Hurrah for the Confederacy! HURRAH! Down with General Grant! Hurrah for General... What's his name? Lee! LEE! Ha ha. God is with us because he hates the Yanks too. HURRAH!
Blondie: [spits] God is not on our side because he hates idiots also.

Blondie: You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.

Tuco: You want to know who you are? Huh? You want to know who's son you are? You don't, I do, everybody does... you're the son of a thousand fathers, all bastards like you.

Tuco: I'll kill you.
Blondie: If you do that... you'll always be poor... just like the greasy rat you are.

Tuco: I'm an honest farmer!
Sheriff: [shows Tuco the wanted poster] Cut it out. Cut it out! So you're an honest farmer, recognize this man?
Tuco: Huh?
Sheriff: Yeah, it's you!
Tuco: Hey, who said so, huh? You can't even read!
[the Sheriff rolls up the poster]
Tuco: Roll it up, roll it up! I'll give you a good idea where you can put it!

Tuco: One bastard goes in, another one comes out.

Tuco: I'm looking for the owner of that horse. He's tall, blonde, he smokes a cigar, and he's a pig!

Angel Eyes: Why are you going under the name Bill Carson now?
Tuco: One name is as good as another. Not wise to use your own name. Like you! I'll bet they don't call you Angel Eyes! Sergeant Angel Eyes!

I'l have to watch those westerns you named . Funny as a kid i always thought all westerns are like Dollars , but when i grown up i found out they were dumb MURICAN movies until Leone came .

Also check out Django (1966) if you haven't seen it.

The Great Silence (1968) has Klaus Kinski and Ennio as well. Pretty brutal if I remember correctly. Though it has some cliches, but it is still far away from stereotypical western.
For me the greatest work by Leone is "Once Upon a Time in the West", because its every frame is beautiful and you can just relax and enjoy scenery. The Good the Bad and the Ugly is favorite movie from dollar ''trilogy". No comment on this.