This Is the Greatest Western Hero of All Time (And It's Not Even Close)

The history of cinema is filled with epic motion pictures about the American West. Lawmen like Wyatt Earp and outlaws like Billy the Kid have been depicted on screen with interpretations that range from celebration to morally gray portraits. More fictionalized Western heroes, played by genre icons like John Wayne and Gary Cooper, often displayed clichéd white knight personalities who delivered swift justice against ruthless men. When Clint Eastwood appeared as the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, he broke the mold of Western heroes that came before him.

The release of Leone’s first Spaghetti Western, which premiered in Italy in 1964 and hit the United States in 1967, arrived at a turbulent time. The trust in American institutions was eroding due to the Vietnam War, as well as the youth movement pushing back against the political establishment and law enforcement. The public no longer responded warmly to the traditional Western hero, complete with a white hat and a sheriff’s badge. Eastwood’s strong but largely silent gunslinger embodied the kind of disruption that society’s youth was screaming for. His influence on the genre is why the Man with No Name is often considered the greatest Western hero.

The Man With No Name Was Inspired by Toshirō Mifune From ‘Yojimbo'

Marc Eliot’s book American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood details how Leone made A Fistful of Dollars after watching Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, featuring Toshirō Mifune as a drifting ronin warrior who provokes rival gangs into war. Leone was inspired to remake it unofficially as an American Western made in the Italian style, later settling a copyright lawsuit with Kurosawa. Eastwood was cast partly due to the international popularity of his CBS television series Rawhide. This would become his first lead role in a major motion picture. Wearing a poncho, the Man with No Name—called 'Joe' in this film, and 'Blondie' or 'the Stranger' in the sequels—gets caught in a blood feud between the Rojo brothers and the Baxter family, led by Sheriff John Baxter, in San Miguel..

The beats of A Fistful of Dollars are not very different from traditional Westerns. The hero arrives in town, is drawn into violence by the villains, nearly dies, and mounts a comeback to get revenge. But the Man with No Name has no backstory, nor does he preach a moral code. He is a mythical presence who walks a fine line between action and restraint, only explaining his deeds subtly. At one point in the film, the Man with No Name comes to the aid of the captive Marisol (Marianne Koch) by raiding the Rojos’ hideout. When the innocent woman asks why he saved her, Eastwood’s quiet loner briefly reveals, “I knew someone like you once, and there was no one there to help.” Moments like this earn the audience's trust in an otherwise guarded character.

The Man With No Name Is the Ultimate Cinematic Antihero

What makes the Man with No Name so different from Earp, Doc Holliday, and Jesse James-type personalities depicted in movies is his lack of allegiance. He never shows up in a town to necessarily restore order nor intentionally create chaos to harm the public. He intervenes against corruption, often using his six-shooter and dynamite. On some occasions, the Man with No Name is influenced by money, as seen in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, where he’s driven to find Confederate gold. Other times, he goes against his loner status to fulfill a shared mission to catch a common enemy, as depicted in his partnership with Colonel Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) in For a Few Dollars More. The moral ambiguities of the character are what drew Eastwood to the role, which he explained in Howard Hughes’s book, Once Upon a Time in the Italian West.

"In Rawhide, I did get awfully tired of playing the conventional white hat... the hero who kisses old ladies and dogs and was kind to everybody. I decided it was time to be an antihero."

Eastwood’s physicality and Leone’s cinematic vision helped to redefine the Old West hero. The legendary actor brought devil-may-care charisma and a poncho, beard, and cigar. His minimalist approach to the Man with No Name complemented Leone’s ability to communicate the loner’s dangerous power by framing him in low-angle shots in tense standoffs and tight close-ups on those signature steel eyes. The second he draws his revolver, there is no one with a faster draw. The Man with No Name represented an unholy marriage between the power of the performer and the power of the visual medium.

Though Eastwood has made successful attempts at reinventing the Man with No Name character in Western classics such as High Plains Drifter and Unforgiven, the character’s influence goes far beyond the genre. Both Mel Gibson’s Mad Max and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine carry the same kind of cynical but dangerous personas as Eastwood’s iconic antihero, despite both having fleshed-out backstories. Additionally, Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken in Escape from New York embodies the same disruption of corrupt authoritarianism, without preaching a sense of justice. If the Western heroes of the past were aspiring to a better world, the Man with No Name simply exists to survive the fractured one.

A Fistful of Dollars is streaming for free on Tubi in the US.

Release Date January 18, 1964

Runtime 99minutes

Writers Ryûzô Kikushima, Akira Kurosawa, A. Bonzzoni, Víctor Andrés Catena, Sergio Leone, Jaime Comas Gil