A Fistful of Dollars
1964 film directed by Sergio Leone
A Fistful of Dollars (Italian: Per un pugno di dollari, "For a Fistful of Dollars") is a 1964 spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood in his first leading role, alongside Gian Maria Volonté, Marianne Koch, Wolfgang Lukschy, Sieghardt Rupp, José Calvo, Antonio Prieto and Joseph Egger. The film, an international co-production between Italy, West Germany and Spain, was filmed on a low budget (reported to be US$200,000), and Eastwood was paid $15,000 for his role.
Released in Italy in 1964 and in the United States in 1967, the film initiated the popularity of the spaghetti Western genre. It is considered a landmark in cinema and one of the greatest and most influential films of all time. It was followed by For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, both also starring Eastwood. Collectively, these three films became known as the Dollars Trilogy, or the Man with No Name Trilogy, after the United Artists publicity campaign referred to Eastwood's characters in all three films as the "Man with No Name". All three films were released in sequence in the United States in 1967, making Eastwood a national celebrity.
The film has been identified as an unofficial remake of the Akira Kurosawa film Yojimbo (1961), which resulted in a successful lawsuit by Toho, Yojimbo's production company. Kurosawa wrote to Leone directly, saying, "Signor Leone, I have just had the chance to see your film. It is a very fine film, but it is my film.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “A Fistful of Dollars” is 1964 film directed by Sergio Leone. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Fistful, Dollars and film, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “1964 film directed by Sergio Leone” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q76479. VIAF identifies the subject as 316753602. The Library of Congress control number is n2007061930. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 1967 and 1961.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Fistful of Dollars” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.