| Man with no name (Italian: Uomo senza nome) |
|
|---|---|
| Dollars Trilogy character | |
| First appearance | A Fistful of Dollars |
| Last appearance | The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly |
| Created by | Sergio Leone |
| Portrayed by | Clint Eastwood |
| Information | |
| Nickname(s) | "Joe" (A Fistful of Dollars) "Manco" (For a Few Dollars More) "Blondie" (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), The Man From Nowhere, "Señor Ninguno" ("Mr. Nobody"), Mr. Sudden Death, Nameless |
| Aliases | The Stranger, The Hunter, The Bounty Killer |
| Occupation | Bounty Hunter/Bounty Killer |
| Nationality | American |
The man with no name (Italian: Uomo senza nome) is a stock character in Western films, but the term usually applies specifically to the character played by Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's "Dollars Trilogy."
In 2008, Empire chose "The Man With No Name" as the 43rd greatest movie character of all time.[1]
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In the 2011 animated feature film Rango, the title character (played by Johnny Depp) has a vision of the "Spirit of The West" (voiced by Timothy Olyphant), who looks and sounds exactly like "The Man with No Name". Rango identifies the character as the Man with No Name, and the character's golf cart is full of Oscars, a reference to Clint Eastwood's successful career. During the film's end credits, a silhouette of Eastwood as the Man With No Name (modified from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) is used when Olyphant receives his credit.
In Back to the Future Part III, Marty McFly calls himself "Clint Eastwood", dresses in a hat and poncho resembling "The Man with No Name", and borrows a trick from A Fistful of Dollars to defeat "Mad Dog" Tannen.
George Lucas attributes the character of Boba Fett to the Man with No Name in the DVD commentary on The Empire Strikes Back. Han Solo's original costume and charming rogue gunslinger mannerisms also reflects the Western's influence on Star Wars.
The popularity of the character brought about a series of spin-off books, dubbed the "Dollar" series due to the common theme in their titles, written by Joe Millard and Brian Fox. They included novelizations of A Fistful of Dollars, written by Frank Chandler and For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly by Joe Millard and are as follows:
In July 2007, American comic book company Dynamite Entertainment announced that they were going to begin publishing a comic book featuring The Man With No Name. Set after the events of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the comic will be written by Christos Gage. Dynamite refers to him as "Blondie", the nickname Tuco uses for him in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.[2] The first issue was released in the Spring of 2008, entitled, The Man with No Name: The Good, The Bad, and The Uglier.[3] Luke Lieberman and Matt Wolpert took over the writing for issues #s 7-11.[4][5] Initially, Chuck Dixon was scheduled to take over the writing chores with issue #12,[6] but Dynamite ended the series and opted to use Dixon's storyline for a new series titled The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The new series is not an adaptation of the movie, despite its title.
Stephen King stated in the re-release of the first four books of his Dark Tower series that the main character Roland Deschain, also known as The Gunslinger, was based on Clint Eastwood's portrayal of The Man with No Name.
A Fistful of Dollars was directly adapted from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. It was the subject of a successful lawsuit by Yojimbo's producers.[7] The film's protagonist, an unconventional ronin played by Toshirō Mifune, bears a striking resemblance to Eastwood's character: both are quiet, gruff, eccentric strangers with a strong but unorthodox sense of justice and extraordinary proficiency with a particular weapon (in Mifune's case, a katana; for Eastwood, a revolver).
Like Eastwood's character, Mifune's ronin is nameless. When pressed, he gives the pseudonym Sanjuro Kuwabatake (meaning "thirty-year-old mulberry field"), a reference to his age and something he sees through a window (although, regarding the age he jokes 'Closer to forty actually'). The convention of hiding the character's arms from view is shared as well with Mifune's character typically wearing his arms inside his kimono, leaving the sleeves empty.[8] Prior to signing on to Fistful, Eastwood had seen Kurosawa's film and was impressed by the character.[9] During filming, he did not emulate Mifune's performance beyond what was already in the script. He also insisted on removing some of the dialogue in the original script, making the character more silent and thus adding to his mystery. As the trilogy progressed, the character became even more silent and stoic.
Yojimbo is itself believed[10] to have been based on Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest.[11] Kurosawa scholar David Desser and film critic Manny Farber, among others, state categorically that Red Harvest was the inspiration for the Kurosawa film Yojimbo.[12] Leone himself clearly believed this theory, stating:
"Kurosawa's Yojimbo was inspired by an American novel of the serie-noire so I was really taking the story back home again."[13]
Although Kurosawa never publicly credited Hammett, he privately acknowledged Red Harvest as an influence.[14] The name of the lead character in Hammett's Red Harvest is also unrevealed — a man with no name — and identified only as a Continental Op after the detective agency he works for.[15]
A subsequent film, Last Man Standing (1996), starring Bruce Willis is a credited remake of Yojimbo.
The "Man With No Name", as personified by Eastwood, embodies the archetypical characteristics of the American movie cowboy — toughness, exceptional physical strength or size, independence, and skill with a gun — but departed from the original archetype due to his moral ambiguity. Unlike the traditional cowboy, exemplified by actors John Wayne, Alan Ladd, and Randolph Scott, the Man with No Name will fight dirty and shoot first, if required by his own self-defined sense of justice. Although he tends to look for ways to benefit himself, he has, in a few cases, aided others if he feels an obligation to, such as freeing a couple held captive in A Fistful of Dollars and comforting a dying soldier after the bridge explosion in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
He is generally portrayed as an outsider, a mercenary or bounty hunter, or even an outlaw. He is characteristically soft-spoken and laconic. The character is an oft-cited example of an anti-hero, although he has a soft spot for people in deep trouble. While rescuing the young mother Marisol (Marianne Koch) in A Fistful of Dollars, he responds to query about his motives with a curt "I knew somebody like you, once ... and there was no one to help." This, along with the comment "I never found home that great" and stating that he hails from Illinois, sums up the only personal history the viewer ever receives about the character.
The character's distinctive appearance consists of a battered brown hat with a telescope crown, pale blue shirt, dark blue jeans, tan boots, a sheepskin vest, and a patterned sarape, or "poncho." In contrast with other Western heroes of the early- to mid-1960s, The Man is unshaven, almost to the point of sporting a full beard. He habitually smokes a cigarillo while working.
His preferred weapon is a Colt Peacemaker .45 LC, which has diamondback rattlesnake grips on it. He is very skilled with this weapon and can draw and empty it in less than a second. However, in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, he uses a Colt 1851 Navy instead (the film is set in the Civil War, and the Colt Peacemaker was not available then). His 1851 Navy has the same grips on it as his Peacemaker.
Due to budget considerations, Eastwood made the initial investment for his character's appearance and demeanour. Most of the clothing was purchased second-hand in California (with the exception of the sarape or poncho, which was provided by Leone); the gunbelt, holster, and boots were from Eastwood's previous TV series Rawhide. The Man's trademark cigars were also from California; their harshness put Eastwood in what he called a "scratchy mood", which aided in his characterization. The trademark squint was partly due to these cigarros.
Director Leone has admitted that the iconic olive green poncho, so indelible to the character now, was less a style decision than an attempt on his part to make the conventionally built Eastwood look more like the actor he originally had in mind: American muscleman Steve Reeves, fresh from his years starring in Italian Hercules movies.
Man with No Name at the Internet Movie Database