Per un pugno di dollari

A stranger comes to a bordertown controlled by two gangster clans, the Baxters and the Rojos. He shoots some members of one of the clans, but instead of working for the other clan, he plays on both of them.
“The film begins with Clint Eastwood’s character approaching a well in a sun-baked landscape of harsh light and white-washed stone buildings. Whereas many Spaghetti Westerns sought to make their Spanish locations look as much like the American-Mexican border region as possible, Leone’s expansive wide-screen vistas highlight the landscape’s slightly alien feel, creating a setting that certainly doesn’t look European, but doesn’t quite look American either. Leone was a great admirer of surrealist art, and it is perhaps no coincidence that the Spanish locations of his Westerns are the same arid dreamscapes Salvador Dalí employed in many of his nightmarish images of the Thirties.” (Dan Edwards)