Your favourite part of the 'Dollars' trilogy

The most famous westerns of all time and made Clint Eastwood into an icon. But which is your favourite.

I love the first two, both are similar but For A few Dollars More is my favourite. The characters got more creative and the storyline better. The third one is penned down as the best of the trilogy. I do not see why. It doesn't carry on from the 2nd movie very well, I had hoped it would when I seen Van Cleef was involved. He looks, acts and dresses the same but is a totally different character. It took me up until the point where Eastwood found himself in the jail to figure that bit out. This final instalment is the worst of the 3 for me. I haven't included Eastwoods own follow-up (Hang 'em High), but that was better than I thought it would be.

The good, the bad and the ugly for me.

Tucco, blondie, angel eyes what a classic.

If you need to shoot, shoot don't talk.

Why did you like that one the most mate? I just didn't get the hype surrounding it and was really let down.

I think its a few dollars more which is my fave (the one with the pocket watch that plays the song for the duel shoot out.

Yes that's the one Adam. Catchy tune isn't it. Good choice!

The thing is this is a trilogy with connections through theme and specific symbolism, the same could be said of Capra's or Park Chan-Wook's trilogy's, rather than through direct storytelling.

For me as a overall piece the final film stands as the best of the lot, its far more Leone at his peak in scale and storytelling. While it still not be his best effort at a western it is for me the best of the "Dollars" films.

The first two films borrowed heavily from other films, especially the first which was pretty much a "Yojimbo" rip off. The second again seemingly to borrow from Kurosawa's theme when making "Sanjuro" as a thematic sequel to "Yojimbo". The idea of this similar character type but in a completely different story setting, a case where the spirit of the characters ideals and motives drive the story.

The final film gave the impression that Leone had finally found his own style and voice in making the previous two films. While he keep many of the same themes and character styles it was a much broader film in all aspects. The same influences can be seen in "Once Upon a Time in America" and again in what is his best western "Once Upon A Time in the West". The same could also be said about Morricone who for me produced his best work after those first two films.

Not really sure I'd say "Hang 'em High" was a follow up to these films at all in anything other than in terms of being his next project after he'd finished the "Dollars" films. If you were to look for a spiritual successor in Eastwoods films to this trilogy it would be in either "Pale Rider" or "High Plains Drifter".

In the end though what often stands "GBU" above the other two is in Mifune/Kurosawa you had better versions of Eastwood/Leone while covering the same film material in many ways. While still great films both fall short of what had been made before, "GBU" didn't suffer from that and only fell short in what came after from Leone himself in developing his storytelling.

I don't judge the trilogy as three separate movies (indeed, in my mind, choosing one over another is kinda missing the full impact of what they are as one body of exceptional work).
I judge them quite simply as a collection, a sublime body of work that has made more of an impression on me than any other movies in the history of cinema.

The sheer beauty of the cinematography and lighting. The visceral themes and scores provided by the classical composer Morricone. The perfect pacing from quiet, to tension to movement and back again to quiet. The grit dirt costumes and faces, traced with sweat and hollowed out to a realism that was at once comic-book but much more linked to the truth of life lived in desert heat than most American westerns ever evoked. Stark, stylistic, modernist yet so buried deep in the traditions of classic moviemaking.

And then the Angel - the blonde angel of death. No he isn't overtly the same character in all three - but myth is the deal in Leone's world not chronology or narrative.
And when Eastwood's glorious incarnation finally collects his old familiar poncho from beside the dead soldier in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone knows it's what the audience would have wanted - and he's sadistically kept them waiting for three hours. A master of tiny suspenses allowed to brood in the background before getting release (thus the watch, the extended preamble to the gunfights, the epic close ups.... the eyes.

For me the three Dollar movies was Leone's high point. I believe the rest of it was him almost trying too hard when he'd already achieved perfection. His later movies were over-wrought, overly theatrical and overly scripted. He began to think there was something higher than what the Dollar movies gave us but nope - Once upon a Time in the West is simply a self-important reworking of the dollar movies, similar themes not needing a retelling. The silences have become affected and indulgent. The purity of myth is dispensed with in favour of a hero with a past (Eastwood's character lives beyond the reality of a past. Only once does he hint at something and it's gone with the wind). Fonda is painted as caricature silent movie bad guy (with little of the subtlety of Van Cleef). Fonda even has the dark make-up around the eyes (just as in silent movies). He's pantomime. The motif of Ramon's chiming watch becomes the greatly overused motif of Harmonica's...Harmonica.
A Fistful of Dynamite - again too self-important, too much getting said and once again Coburn, whilst incorporating Eastwood's space as graceful assassin, has his past weighing him down to bring complexity where there was already too much of it on screen. When every character has his backstory in lights (just like Once Upon a time in the West) you know something pretentious is going down.
Once upon a time in America - once more bringing grandiosity where attention to simplicity might have been better.

The Dollar trilogy was simplicity made epic, it was classic themes stripped down and told clearly. It was a homage to the myth of the American West, not an historical re-telling of any truth. It was a perfect collage of image and sound and, I think, because of it, I regard the movies as high art.

Of course they also had some of the most delicious lines of dialogue in cinema history (most especially TGTBTU) - golden old school writing. "One b@stard goes in, another one comes out", "How much?" (Tuco in the gunshop) "There's two kinds of people my friend, those with loaded guns and those who dig...", "you may run the risks, my friend, but I do the cutting", "I don't think it's nice, you laughin' ", "I generally smoke just after I eat. Why don't you come back in about ten minutes", "Tell me Colonel, were you ever young?", "I get the wrong idea only when it suits me", "My mistake, four coffins" and on and on and on.