Man with No Name
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- This article is about the popular film character played by Clint Eastwood; for other uses, see Man with No Name (disambiguation).
The Man with No Name is a stock character in western films, but the term usually applies specifically to the character(s) played by American actor Clint Eastwood in "spaghetti westerns" films of Sergio Leone.
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The Character
In three of Leone's most popular films, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Eastwood plays a character with the same mannerisms, wearing the same poncho and hat. Some fans believe that The Good, the Bad and the Ugly plays as a prequel of sorts to the earlier two — as Eastwood's character gradually acquires the clothing that he wears throughout the other films in the series. However, Christopher Frayling has pointed out in his massive Leone biography, Sergio Leone: Something To Do With Death, that the three films were not intended by Leone or his various script collaborators to be seen as a history of the exact same individual. Indeed, it was United Artists, not the filmmakers, who came up with the idea of specifically linking the three films together as a series by referring to the Eastwood character as The Man With No Name in all advertising materials for the movies.
The credits for both A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly list Eastwood's character as "Joe", and in the former, he is also addressed as "Joe" by the undertaker. In For a Few Dollars More, a minor character refers to him as "Manco"[1]
Characteristics
"The Man with No Name", as personified by Eastwood, embodies the archetypical characteristics of the American movie cowboy — toughness, self-reliance, and skill with a gun — but departed from the original archetype in his moral ambiguity. Unlike the traditional cowboy persona, exemplified by actors John Wayne, Alan Ladd, and Randolph Scott, the Man with No Name will fight dirty and shoot first, if required by his own self-defined sense of justice.
He is generally portrayed as an outsider, or even an outlaw. He is characteristically soft-spoken and laconic, speaking only when necessary, with as few words as possible.
Japanese Origin
Although ultimately based on Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, A Fistful of Dollars was directly (and illegally) adapted from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, a fact to which fans of Japanese cinema can attest, and which was the subject of a successful lawsuit by Yojimbo's producers.
The film's protagonist, a gruff, unconventional ronin played by Toshiro Mifune, bears a striking resemblance to the character later played by Clint Eastwood. Each is a quiet, eccentric stranger with a strong but unorthodox sense of justice and superhuman proficiency with a particular weapon (in Mifune's case, a katana; for Eastwood, a six-gun).
Like Eastwood's character, Mifune's ronin is nameless. When pressed, he gives the pseudonym Sanjuro Kuwabatake (meaning "thirty-something mulberry field"), a reference to his age and something he sees through a window.
Similar films
Other films featuring characters very similar to the Man with No Name include Leone's later Once Upon a Time in the West featuring Charles Bronson (Eastwood turned down the part) in a role somewhat akin to Eastwood's (known in the movie as "Harmonica" since he plays it); Eastwood's own films, High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider; and the more recent Last Man Standing starring Bruce Willis (directed by Walter Hill).
The Man with No Name was the inspiration for Roland of Gilead, the protagonist of Stephen King's epic seven-volume Dark Tower series. The Man With No Name is also the inspiration for the main character in the computer game Red Dead Revolver.
The Man with No Name was also carried over into the El Mariachi series. Throughout the series he is known only as "The Mariachi", the "Guitar Player", or in Once Upon a Time in Mexico simply as "El," short for "El Mariachi." In Desperado, Bucho, the antagonist, calls him "Juan", because Juan (John in English) is a very wide spread name. El Mariachi shares many of the same charecteristics of other Nameless gunmen, as the Mariachi movies share many characteristics with Western movies.
In the movie version of Paint Your Wagon although Eastwood's character bears little resembalance to the traditional Man with No Name he still lacks a name and is referred to simply as "Partner" throughout the movie. At the end he reveals that his name is Sylvester.