Clint Eastwood Collection Hits Bullseye

By Alice O’Neill

Fans have waited a long time to buy a boxed set of Clint Eastwood’s early spaghetti westerns by Sergio Leone. featuring Clint as the iconic loner with no name. The wait is over. The boxed set, officially titled Clint, available June 1, 2010, Eastwood in The Man With No Name Trilogy hits a bullseye.

This collection belongs in every home film library. Leone’s trilogy of lowbudget, high-impact films, set in the American West (but filmed in Spain and directed by an Italian), made Eastwood a major movie star with a following that forced Hollywood to sit up and take notice. Up until that time he was known only for his roles on TV, most notably as Rowdy Yates in the series, Rawhide.

I interviewed Eastwood before the Academy Awards in 2005 when he had been nominated for Best Director and Best Picture for Million Dollar.  I asked how important to his films was the music in each. “Very Baby important,” he told me, holding me with that famous Eastwood gaze that says, “Nothing matters right now except our conversation.” He went on to explain that he wrote the music himself. “I was very careful not to allow the music to overwhelm the visuals but to support them,” he said, adding, “I learned that from Ennio Morricone.”

When I recalled that Eastwood had made a name for himself with the Sergio Leone films, Eastwood brightened. “It was Morricone who wrote the music for the three spaghetti westerns,” Eastwood said. “If you’ve seen them you know the music.”

The first in the series, A Fistful of Dollars, hit U.S. movie houses in 1964. The stage was set for the former television actor to become an international sensation as the rough-hewn, silent Man with No Name.

The footloose renegade with a wacky sense of humor, a cheroot clenched in his teeth, and a squint that made villains squirm, caught the fancy of moviegoers and they became his fans for life. Those fans are now graybeards, and they’re still loyal. They, and anybody else who likes movies with Clint Eastwood, are in for a treat.

A Fistful of Dollars , has been called “a unique take on Japanese

writer/director Akiro Kurosawa’s film, Yojimbo.” That cynical samurai tale, in the hands of Sergio Leone, gets a different setting, the American West. The tale, which maintains the inner stuff of legend and iconic characters, works on a visceral level.

The follow-up film, For a Few Dollars More, teams Eastwood with Lee, who played the villain opposite Gary Cooper in High Noon.

In Dollars, Leone’s classic tale of revenge, Van Cleef again plays the villain to perfection.

The third film, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, is set in the American Civil War where violence is a given. Added to that conflict is buried gold, and classic criminals in a conspiracy that involves double-crosses and trayals that play out in a tension-filled finale with enough gun fights to satisfy any action fan.

Date of Release to Stores: June 1, 2010

A Breakdown Of What’s In The Collection:

A Fistful Of Dollars Blu-ray Disc Bonus Features:

(Catalog # M121526)

● The Christopher Frayling Archives: A Fistful of Dollars

● Commentary by Film Historian Christopher Frayling

● A New Kind of Hero

● A Few Weeks in Spain: Clint Eastwood on the Experience of Making the Film ● Tre Voci: A Fistful of Dollars

● Not Ready for Primetime: Renowned Filmmaker Monte Hellman discusses the Television Broadcast ● The Network Prologue with Actor Harry Dean Stanton

● Location Comparisons: Then to Now ● 10 Radio Spots ● Double Bill Trailer ● Theatrical Trailer

For A Few Dollars More Blu-ray Disc Bonus Features:

(Catalog # M121528)

● The Christopher Frayling Archives: For A Few Dollars More

● Commentary by Film Historian Christopher Frayling

● A New Standard: Frayling on For A Few Dollars More

● Back for More: Clint Eastwood Remembers For A Few Dollars More

● Tre Voci: For A Few Dollars More

● For A Few Dollars More: The Original American Release Version

● Location Comparisons

● 12 Radio Spots

● Theatrical Trailer 1

● Theatrical Trailer 2

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Blu-ray Disc Bonus Features:

(Catalog # M121527)

● Commentary by Film Historian Richard Schickel

● Commentary by Film Historian Christopher Frayling

● Leone’s West

● The Leone Style

● The Man Who Lost the Civil War

● Reconstructing The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

● IL Maestro: Ennio Morricone and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly – Part One

● IL Maestro: Part Two

● Deleted Scenes

â—‹ Extended Tuco Torture Scene

â—‹ The Socorro Sequence: A Reconstruction

● Easter Egg #1 Uno, Due, Tre

● Easter Egg #2 Italian Lunch

● Easter Egg #3 New York Actor

● Easter Egg #4 Gun in Holster

● Theatrical Trailer

● French Trailer

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Van Cleef