For a Few Dollars More
Short description
Two bounty hunters are tracking the same man: El Indio, a violent bandit with a large price on his head. One is a lone gunslinger who has turned his skill with a revolver into a living. The other is a former army officer, more formal and methodical but no less deadly. They start out as rivals competing for the same reward, but after a tense first encounter they agree to work together, since El Indio has escaped from prison and a substantial sum has been posted for him. One of them goes undercover inside the gang while the other shadows the operation from outside. Each man has his own reason for wanting the outlaw, and the two are not necessarily the same.
Sergio Leone directed and co-wrote the film with Luciano Vincenzoni, following A Fistful of Dollars, the first of the westerns he made in succession through the 1960s. Clint Eastwood plays the bounty hunter Manco, Lee Van Cleef is Colonel Douglas Mortimer, and Gian Maria Volonté plays El Indio. Klaus Kinski appears as a hunchbacked member of the gang, and Luigi Pistilli is among the bandits. Alberto Grimaldi and Arturo González produced, with backing from companies in Italy, Spain, Germany and the United States.
The film has an IMDb rating of 8.2 from roughly 299,000 votes and a TMDB rating of 8 from about 4,600, while critics' reviews give it 8.1, a close match between professional and audience response. It took in about 15 million dollars worldwide, a strong return for a western made in the mid-1960s.
What's left behind the scenes
- Screenwriter and director Sergio Leone did not want to film a sequel to the Western "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), but the "Jolly Film" studio refused to pay for the filming of "A Fistful of Dollars" until he agreed to make a sequel.
- Gian Maria Volonté did not speak English, and he required an interpreter on set.
- Despite the fact that Eastwood's poncho was never washed during the production of the Dollar Trilogy, it was periodically darned and patched. In the final scene of this film, Eastwood's character is shot several times with a Winchester, and consequently, several holes remain in the poncho. In this film, Clint wears the poncho backwards, and the patches covering the bullet holes are clearly visible in some scenes.
- Ennio Morricone began working on the film's music even before filming began, receiving detailed instructions from Sergio Leone, who often shot his films directly to the music.
- The entire film was shot without sound, so Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef returned to Italy after filming to record their lines, and sound effects were added to the film.
- At the beginning of the film, in the scene on the platform, the character of Lee Van Cleef tears down a poster of Guy, on which two zeros have been added. However, when the same poster is slipped under the door of the saloon, the drawn zeros are no longer present.
- Originally, Sergio Leone wanted Lee Marvin to play Douglas Mortimer.
- For the film, the set designer Carlo Simi built the town of El Paso in Spain. Director and screenwriter Sergio Leone later filmed it in his 1966 Western, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." The town still stands today and is now known as "Mini-Hollywood."
- The phrase “Alive or dead, you’re coming with me!” and the trick of putting a pistol in a holster were used in the RoboCop film.
- Henry Fonda and Jack Palance both auditioned for the role of Colonel Douglas Mortimer.
- This film is the second in the “Dollars Trilogy” and features a second main antagonist – the “bad” guy.
- The Man with No Name calls himself Monco. From Italian, “Monco” translates to “one-handed,” which is quite logical considering the character’s habit of fighting, drinking, smoking, etc., with his left hand, while his right hand is always on the pistol hidden under his poncho.
- Screenwriter and director Sergio Leone offered the role of Colonel Mortimer to actor Henry Fonda, but he declined the offer. Leone approached Charles Bronson with the same offer, which did not interest him, and Lee Marvin, who also refused because he had just agreed to participate in Elliot Silverstein's Western "Cat Ballou" (1965). Only after that did Leone turn to Lee Van Cleef, who had not appeared in films since the Western "How the West Was Won" (John Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall, Richard Thorpe, 1962), although he had been working on television. The actor initially thought he was being offered a role in a few scenes and was very surprised to find that this was not the case.
- During filming, Sergio Leone constantly felt that Gian Maria Volonté was acting too "theatrically," and he repeatedly filmed numerous takes of the same scene simply to tire out the actor and exhaust him. Once, Volonté even left the set in anger, but filming was taking place in the middle of the desert, he couldn't leave, so he returned to filming, but vowed never to appear in Westerns again.
- Lee Van Cleef was going through a not very easy and successful period in his life due to his excessive fondness for alcohol. He earned a living by painting and was very grateful for the offer to star in this film, after which his acting career began to improve again.
- According to Lee Van Cleef, he drew his revolver from its holster faster than Clint Eastwood.
- The character Aldo Sambrella is named Coheilio. This is an English transcription of the Spanish word “cuchillo,” which means “knife”.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
