In the mid-1960s, an unknown Italian film director named Sergio Leone was given $200,000 and some leftover film stock, and set out to make a Western. With a script based on a samurai epic, a TV actor named Clint Eastwood, a composer named Ennio Morricone and a cameraman named Massimo Dallamano, Leone was expected to make what was essentially a throwaway film... what he ended up making was A Fistful of Dollars, the first in a trilogy of films that came to define the 'spaghetti western'.
The films that complete the trilogy, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly are, like, the first film, violent, cynical and visually stunning. With each film, Leone's visual style, offbeat sense of humour and elliptical way of telling stories became more and more sophisticated. Together they form the backbone of an important film genre that has influenced many contemporary filmmakers.