Timeless appeal of the outsider hero

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, January 10th.

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Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a classic movie from 1964 with worldwide appeal. Here’s movie reviewer Max Belz.

MAX BELZ: Like jazz or baseball, westerns are an American creation. And they’re a creation that resonates around the world.

Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars came out just over 60 years ago. Clint Eastwood stars as the laconic and extremely cool "Man with No Name." He rides into San Miguel, a windswept and forlorn town that looks like it's on the edge of the earth, a town in the grips of a violent feud between two outlaw families.

It’s a spaghetti western. That is, a movie made by an Italian studio and based in the epic setting of the American West. That was a common practice in the 60s and all of the English dialogue is dubbed since most of the actors spoke Italian.

MAN: Everybody here has become very rich or else they are dead.

After arriving, the Man with No Name joins one clan as a hired gun but feeds information to the other gang.

MAN WITH NO NAME: I gotta tell you before you hire me, I don’t work cheap.

Soon, he’s embedded himself in each of the groups and plays them off against each other in a flurry of gunfighting. The movie has its share of bloody shoot-outs and the violence earned it an R rating.

AUDIO: [Gunfire, shootout]

Two sequels–For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly–came later in the 60s, but A Fistful of Dollars is a remake of a Japanese movie by famed director Akiro Kurosawa, set in feudal Japan featuring a wandering samurai. That movie in turn is based on an American movie from the 40s. It’s a story that echoes across cultures. First an American noir thrown back to feudal Japan, then reappearing in the American West.

The settings of these stories are lawless.

AUDIO: [Horse whinnying]

In A Fistful of Dollars, no one lives freely, and the town is a cloud of theft and murder. So why does this story find a place in different cultures and time periods?

MAN: See that’s what I want to talk to you about, he’s feeling real bad. Huh? My mule. See, he went and got riled up when you fired those shots at his feet.

The Man with No Name is a renegade who can destroy all the bad guys by himself. He’s strong enough to vanquish two gangs at once. In he rides to bring order and lay down the law, but he’s not beholden to this particular place. He's a man with no name, no home--an outsider rambling in and setting it right. He’s a law unto himself and the expression of that law.

Fistful of Dollars draws strong parallels to the crucifixion and resurrection. After one of the gangs beats the man with no name and pierces his left hand, he sneaks out of the town in a coffin. He recovers in a cave and returns to the town a few days later nearly invincible, even stronger than he was before. Though he’s beaten beyond recognition, he rises again to defeat his foes.

Clint Eastwood is exceptionally cool in this movie. He only speaks when he needs to, unfazed by danger. The score by Ennio Morricone is stirring, cuing different parts of the story like an opera. The movie has an exaggerated quality too with hyper close-ups and overdone emotions. But it’s a style, and you get used to it.

MAN: There you are. Now take this money. It’s enough to live on for awhile. Now get across the border. Put some distance between yourselves and San Miguel as possible. How can we thank you for what you are doing? Don’t try. Just get going before the Rojos get here.

The character of an outsider setting things right pleases viewers across cultures, times, and places because we wish for such a hero. It’s like Odysseus returning home and scaring off the suitors to win back Penelope. So with The Man with No Name we have a character, who like Jesus Christ himself, enters the fray, but stays above it. And who battles the enemy so there can be peace, and who delivers judgment in the same stroke as he offers protection and freedom.

I’m Max Belz.

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