In 1964, Italian director Sergio Leone redefined the Western movie genre with A Fistful of Dollars. Eschewing the relatively simplistic morality tales of earlier films, Leone’s protagonist wasn’t a noble hero, but an opportunistic gunslinger who pits two rival Old West gangs against each other to score a big payday. Despite the moral complexity of it all — or, more likely, because of it — A Fistful of Dollars was an international success that proved three things: audiences were ready for a new kind of Western, America no longer had a monopoly on the genre, and Clint Eastwood was a bankable movie star.
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