"Is
the question indiscreet?" "No, your question isn't indiscreet ... but the answer could be."
-- Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef
"For a Few Dollars More," the second film in Sergio Leone's justly-celebrated "dollars" trilogy, is the very definition of a "transitional" film. Throughout, you get the sense that Leone is chafing against the very paradigms he minted in his first "dollars" film, "A Fistful of Dollars." The setup is remarkably similar -- once again, Clint Eastwood rides into town, the gunman without a past, the grizzled anti-hero, pretending loyalty to a vicious gang led by a psychopath played by Gian Maria Volonte, exposed as a traitor and sadistically beaten, reemerging and blowing away the baddies in a suitably theatrical final showdown, riding off into the sunset a much richer man. And as in the previous film, Leone masterfully mixes tension, gallows humor, and exquisitely framed face-offs.
Yet this film is not the neat, compact parable that "Fistful" is -- not surprising, given that the first film's scenario was based on Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" (which was based on Dashiell Hammett's "Red Harvest"), and the last thing you can say about Kurosawa is that he is unwieldy. This time out, longeurs and digressions abound. The opening three-minute shot follows a lone horseman who is ambushed by a long-range sniper -- significantly, we are never told who the sniper or victim are. For the first time, Leone is stretching out within the cinematic form; in subsequent films he expands on this strategy, culminating in the epic 17-minute opening of "Once Upon a Time in the West." Later, a long, withering monologue by a crazed old man about the coming of the railroads and the end of the Old West appears out of nowhere, but prefigures the Civil War railways of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," and the metaphor of railway-as-civilization that gives "Once Upon a Time" the most powerful thematic kick of any of Leone's westerns.
Even more
intriguing is how Leone deflates some of the ultra-tough male conventions he set
up in the first film. In "Fistful," Eastwood's nameless protagonist was a force
of nature, playing rival families off each other like pawns, remaining above the
action even when embroiled in it, seemingly invincible. In "For a Few Dollars
More," not only does he have a name (Manco, the only time he is named in the entire
trilogy), but far from being all-powerful, he looks downright foolish at times
as he fails to match wits with Col. Douglas Mortimer (Lee van Cleef), the experienced
Civil War vet who eventually aids him. Yet Mortimer himself cannot be considered
the equivalent of the Eastwood character from the first movie, for beneath his
collected exterior lurk regret and hidden reasons for vengeance, another trope
that will find full expression in Charles Bronson's character in "Once Upon a
Time." In a role that is a far cry from the Bad in "The Good, the Bad, and the
Ugly," Van Cleef grabs the spotlight, his narrowed gaze suggesting irreconcilable
sadness even as his Van Gogh nose and lean body paint a striking picture of coolness
under fire. Eastwood, of course, is too charismatic an actor to fade into the
background, and as expected, he walks away with the film's best one liners, including
an unforgettable punch line after his last assassination: "No problem, old man
... just thought I had a problem with my adding."
But both
Eastwood and Van Cleef play second fiddle to Volonte, whose villainous Indio also
breaks the mold. In "Fistful," Volonte was a contained yet flamboyant psychopath,
unrivalled in cruelty; here, he has a field day playing a full range of emotions,
from self-mockery to calculation to anguish to regret for a woman whose murder
he was responsible for. And like Eastwood and Van Cleef, he is also eminently
fallible: he spends half the film skulking around in prison rags (he begins the
movie incarcerated and disgraced), and later is even taken hostage by one of his
own henchmen. He is also possessor of the film's most striking element, a musical
pocket watch that he plays during his showdowns. Ever the showman, Leone uses
the watch no less than three 
times
in the film, and the great Ennio Morricone seamlessly merges the chimes with his
score, even as he creates unique sound signatures for his major players (the familiar
sliding whistle for Eastwood, a mouth harp for Van Cleef). Yet even with this
iconography being bandied about, when we get to the final duel between Indio and
Mortimer, you feel the vulnerability of the participants, and even the humanity
behind their blood lust. While "For a Few Dollars More" may conceptually be the weakest of Leone's "Dollars" trilogy -- the central bank robbery plot is well executed, but lacking in true ingenuity, and the deliberate echoes of the earlier film come off as a lack of fresh ideas rather than homage -- it is a keystone to understanding his later films, and its characters' understated vulnerability stands apart from the iconic figures that populate his other westerns. The answer to Colonel Mortimer's past may be indiscreet, but the shadings Leone plays with here are anything but.