Were there spaghetti westerns with a 'Man with no Name' before the Leone (non)-trilogy?
After reading
Is the man with no name the same character?
and specifically, this answer, I began to wonder about precursors of the 'Man with no Name' character, played by Clint Eastwood in the epoynmous trilogy of Sergio Leone's films (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; A Fistfull of Dollars; For a Few Dollars More).
Are there similar characters in earlier Leone films, or in earlier Spaghetti-western(-like) films which inspired Eastwood's character or which could be said to have 'developed' into it?
Best Answer
I have at least a partial answer myself (even though I'd like to hear others):
The direct inspiration for the Man with No Name character seems to have been the character of Sanjuro Kuwabatake, in the film Yojimbo: This is a samurai film by Akira Kurosawa, with the character played by Toshiro Mifune.
This character, in turn, was supposedly inspired by The Continental Op, a private investigator in the fiction of US author Dashiel Hammett; in his 1929 US novel Red Harvest, he exhibits a similar behavior to that of the Man with No Name and Sanjuro - plays both sides of a conflict in a town, supposedly switches allegiances but actually being more concerned with justice etc.
Of course, that does not tell me whether or not there were Spaghetti Westerns before 'For a Fistfull of Dollars'.
Pictures about "Were there spaghetti westerns with a 'Man with no Name' before the Leone (non)-trilogy?"
What were the names of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns?
Eastwood. \u2026 westerns (popularly known as \u201cspaghetti westerns\u201d) directed by Sergio Leone: Per un pugno di dollari (1964; A Fistful of Dollars), Per qualche dollari in pi\xf9 (1965; For a Few Dollars More), and Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (1966; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).How many spaghetti westerns were there?
Even though there were as many as 500 Spaghetti Westerns made between 1964-73, the sub-genre is still mostly associated with Sergio Leone whose A Fistful of Dollars (1964) is the first Spaghetti Western.Why is Clint Eastwood called The Man with No Name?
The reason to be called \u201cThe Man with No Name\u201d is because he has not called by an especific name or surname in the three westerns that had the leading role at mid's of 60's. In any case, in each film some character nicknamed him in some way.Who was first choice for the spaghetti westerns?
While there were many 'Eurowesterns' starting as early as the 1940s, it was A Fist Full of Dollars (Per un Pugno di Dollari) directed by Leone in 1964, that brought the genre to the fore and truly was the first Spaghetti western.Why Did Spaghetti Westerns Look Like That?
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