The Clint Eastwood Star Collection [4 Discs]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

This set has 4 of Clint's best westerns: A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and Hang 'Em High.

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 4
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo
• Encoding: NTSC
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Features:
  • cc

AWARDS

• Telluride Film Festival

•     Film Presented - 1989
•     Film Presented - 1979

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Sergio Leone, Ted Post

• Producer:

  Arrigo Colombo, Giorgio Papi, Alberto Grimaldi, Leonard Freeman

• Screenwriter:

  Sergio Leone, Duccio Tessari, Victor A. Catena, G. Schock, Luciano Vincenzoni

• Screen Story:

  Fulvio Morsella, Mickey Knox

• Screenwriter:

  Age, Furio Scarpelli, Leonard Freeman, Mel Goldberg

• Cinematographer:

  Massimo Dallamano, Tonino Delli Colli, Richard H. Kline, Leonard J. South, Leonard Sough

• Composer (Music Score):

  Ennio Morricone

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Bruno Nicolai

• Composer (Music Score):

  Dominic Frontiere

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  John Capter, Jr.

• Editor:

  Roberto Cinquini, Eugene Alabiso, Adriana Novelli, Giorgio Serralonga, Nino Baragli, Bill Brame, Gene Fowler, Jr.

• Art Director:

  Carlo Simi, John B. Goodman

• Set Designer:

  Carlo Simi, Arthur Krams

• Costume Designer:

  Carlo Simi, Gene Murray, Glen Wright

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Gonzalo Gavira

• Makeup:

  Rino Carboni

• Special Effects:

  Giovanni Corridori, Eros Bacciucchi, George Swartz

• First Assistant Director:

  Giancarlo Santi

• Camera Operator:

  Franco di Giacomo

REVIEWS:

• Produced between 1964 and 1966, the films in director Sergio Leone's Man with No Name trilogy -- A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly -- were not released in America until 1967. The rapid succession of releases belied Leone's significant growth between each installment. Though A Fistful of Dollars was skillful and original, the production values were notoriously cheap and the characters were not fully realized. For a Few Dollars More improves on just about every aspect of the previous film, honing the mythic quality of the players. Leone elevates his style to another level; his operatic vision is in full flower here. Though clearly performing in the same minimalist style, Clint Eastwood significantly masters the subtleties of his gritty, nihilistic character. Watch for famed German actor Klaus Kinski as the hunchback who has a match struck on his neck by Lee Van Cleef. ~ Brendon Hanley, Rovi
• The last and grandest film in the "Dollars" trilogy, Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1966) is actually a prequel, featuring Clint Eastwood's serape-less Blondie in a search for stolen gold during the Civil War. While the titular trio's quest seems simple, Leone renders the proceedings epic through the constant intrusions of a chaotic, war-torn universe. Rather than an ideal space, Leone's widescreen desiccated western landscape is a harsh environment ruled by brutality, but, as Eastwood's ironically labeled "Good" affirms upon witnessing a fruitless military battle, state-sanctioned bloodshed is even more destructive than individual venality. Still, Blondie's dry wit and Eli Wallach's buffoonish "Ugly" inject the violence with dark humor, while Ennio Morricone's famed score alternates between stately and tongue-in-cheek. In a final shootout set in an enormous circular cemetery and composed of extreme close-ups of the three leads, Leone sends Eastwood's Man With No Name out on a properly operatic yet wry note. The "good" triumphs, but, in Leone's West, it's all relative. Greeted with critical disdain for its stylistic flourishes and sadism, The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly became a hit, and Leone's artistic influence can be seen from Eastwood's directorial work to John Woo's action theatrics. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
• The hugely influential A Fistful of Dollars launched the careers of star Clint Eastwood, director Sergio Leone, and composer Ennio Morricone. Essentially a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, the film was one of the first low-budget, Italian-made "spaghetti westerns" to reap a significant amount of money and develop a cult following in the U.S. marketplace. Though John Ford's 1956 film The Searchers marked the of end the traditional western, Leone's "Man with No Name" trilogy ushered in a new, highly stylized version of the genre, revitalizing it in the late 1960s. Dollars and its companions, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, are raw portrayals of suffering and violence which blur the lines of good-versus-bad. Eastwood's cold, squinting, anti-hero is at the heart of the new amorality; it would be a role that would influence the rest of his career. For Leone, the trilogy would be a training ground for his masterpiece, the big-budgeted Once Upon a Time in the West. Morricone went on to become one of the most prolific, instantly recognizable composers in movie history. ~ Brendon Hanley, Rovi
• When Hang 'em High first appeared, it was dismissed by many critics as a pale shadow of the Italian-made Westerns that Clint Eastwood had made with director Sergio Leone during the mid-'60s. In fact, the movie offered far more than was perceived by most reviewers, and a range of virtues that set it apart from the Leone films. Eastwood's portrayal of Jed Cooper, for a start, was a surprisingly subtle and complex performance, displaying a range of varied and conflicted emotions just below the surface that made his character far more fully developed than any of his prior portrayals. Pat Hingle was equally important to the movie's success, bringing a deep and serious interpretive talent to the part of Judge Adam Fenton. He was based on the real-life figure of Isaac Charles Parker (1838-1896), the judge in charge of the U.S. Court for the Western District of Arkansas, based in Fort Smith. In his 21 years on that bench, Parker issued 160 death sentences, resulting in 79 executions. His first week at Fort Smith resulted in rulings leading to a six-man hanging, very much like the one depicted in Hang 'em High, complete with a huge crowd of on-lookers, hymn-singing, and prayers, as well as massive press coverage. Eastwood and Hingle's scenes together are so good that one just wants to replay them, though Hingle's greater experience does show his performance coming from a much deeper place inside of himself than Eastwood's. They get extraordinary support by a uniformly good cast: Dennis Hopper, barely recognizable as a lunatic called "The Prophet," who dies in the opening minutes of the film; James Westerfield in a wryly ironic portrayal of a doomed prisoner; Bob Steele as the conscience-stricken Jenkins; Bruce Dern as the manipulative and bloodthirsty Miller; James MacArthur as the preacher, leading the prayers and hymns at the mass-hanging; Bert Freed as Schmidt, the taciturn hangman; Ben Johnson as Bliss, Fenton's best deputy marshal; and Michael O'Sullivan as the hapless murderer Francis Duffy, leaving this earth after giving a mournful speech, in the kind of scene that could make a career. Director Ted Post pulls all of these elements together into a graceful, compelling, spellbinding whole that's as much a serious drama as a Western, and as much an epic about the settling of the west. Very much in the manner of The Wild Bunch and William S. Hart's Tumbleweeds, among other classics of the genre, it is a personal, character-driven tale of revenge. Eastwood would make more artful and ambitious Westerns in the '70s and beyond, but Hang 'em High -- which was co-produced by his fledgling company, Malpaso -- was an exceptional beginning and his best work in the genre up to that time. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi