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juxtaposes the characters’ methods o f gaming their names, and thus
illustrates the contrast between their deeper motives as well.
W riters and directors, o f course, have motivations o f their own.
W ister’s intent was to describe his character, to show what this character
is all about, and emphasize not only those qualities but also that
observational way of leaming about them. Other, less important
characters could be named outright, but his main character was called by
a series o f nicknames— only for the reader’s sake, and not any other
character’s— to illustrate what was important about him at that point of
the story. The Virginian was nameless only to the reader.
In Leone’s case, there is the realization that the old motifs, some
stemming from W ister’s influence, were wom out. Using them, one
could only make movies that had been made before, with new faces
beneath the Stetsons. Out to recharge both the westem itself and his
place in Italian cinema, Leone created the antihero described in the
introduction, one who looked different than a westem hero and who
acted only for him self—a man who could kill four men from one gang
for the hope o f a job with another. His look was just the tip o f the
iceberg. “As the resultant Dollars trilogy progressed,” points out Lily
Parker, “it became clear that Leone was doing more than add violence
and so-called ‘antiheroes’ to the westem; he was increasingly subverting
it both formally and thematically” (6). Not only are the “heroes” less
heroic and the villains far more sadistic and insane than usual, but they
all exist in a west that totally lacks the morals and codes the westem
form had cliched. Parker discusses how Leone ups the ante with every
new film. Referring to For a Few Dollars More (Leone, 1965), she says
“By explicitly identifying him as a bounty hunter, Leone attributes a
particularly individualist and self-profiting motivation to Eastwood’s
character” (Parker 13). Bounty hunters are “unheroic” enough as it is, but
in the next film, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Eastwood isn’t even
an honest one; “not only is Blondie a bounty hunter, he is also a conman,
repeatedly collecting bounties on the same man . . . Thus it can be seen
that Leone’s Avaricious Hero, developed through his collaboration with
Eastwood, provided a significant departure from established models of
heroism within the cinematic westem” (Parker 14). Frayling said o f this
collaboration, “W hen [Eastwood] got there, he became one o f the few
actors in movie history to fight for less lines. He figured, as did Leone,
that the more mysterious and silent, the more interesting the character
would be” (43). And, as a consequence, his few words would have more