The First Dollars Film

[dave jenkins]

[Dust Devil]

Well not quite.

[dave jenkins]

How does that translate? "A Dollar For Honor"?

[Dust Devil]

More likely ''A Dollar of Honor'', though I'm not 100% sure.

[dave jenkins]

Huh. Any idea what that's supposed to mean?

[Groggy]

It would refer to the opening of Rio Bravo, where Martin has to reach into the spittoon for a silver dollar, thus degrading himself. How that would apply to the entire film is beyond me.

[Groggy]

And the fifty dollar gold pieces that appear throughout the film: "That's how much Joe Burdett thinks a human life is worth."

[Leonardo]

More likely ''A Dollar of Honor'', though I'm not 100% sure.

Correct!

[dave jenkins]

The first dollars film?

Possibly - His Last Dollar (1910) - D W Griffith

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0001249/

But what was it called in Italy?

My interest in this is to determine where the "Dollar" titles, so beloved of SW productions, came from. SL didn't--heh--coin the term.

[Groggy]

True, and he was such a big fan of Rio Bravo that it's entirely possible this was the origin of the title.

[Leonardo]

But what was it called in Italy?

My interest in this is to determine where the "Dollar" titles, so beloved of SW productions, came from. SL didn't--heh--coin the term.

I have no idea whether "His last dollar" by Griffith was ever released in Italy, let alone whether it ever had an italian title.
But one thing is for sure, Rio Bravo was released in Italy under the title "Un dollaro d'onore" late 1959 and it was a massive hit here. To the best of my knowledge, there was no other movie released in Italy after WW2  with the word dollar in the title which had such a great success as "Un dollaro d'onore".
So my bet is that whoever changed the title  from "The magnificent stranger" to "FOD",  must have thought about "Un dollaro d'onore". Last but not least, don't forget that Leone when discussing the soundtrack for FOD with Ennio, asked him to create a trumpet sound similar to the deguello in "Un dollaro d'onore" and "The Alamo" (score by Dimitri Tiomkin).

[dave jenkins]

But one thing is for sure, Rio Bravo was released in Italy under the title "Un dollaro d'onore" late 1959 and it was a massive hit here. To the best of my knowledge, there was no other movie released in Italy after WW2  with the word dollar in the title which had such a great success as "Un dollaro d'onore".
So my bet is that whoever changed the title  from "The magnificent stranger" to "FOD",  must have thought about "Un dollaro d'onore". Last but not least, don't forget that Leone when discussing the soundtrack for FOD with Ennio, asked him to create a trumpet sound similar to the deguello in "Un dollaro d'onore" and "The Alamo" (score by Dimitri Tiomkin).

Ka-ching! I think we have a confirmed kill here.

[titoli]

I'm not 100% sure, but I seem to remember that the connection between the two titles had already been made in Frayling's bio. Anyway the poster posted by DJ, though pictorially beautiful and centered on the best scene of the movie, it has a misspelling of the title, as the correct one is:





where the first vocal is elided with an apostrophe.

[dave jenkins]

I'm not 100% sure, but I seem to remember that the connection between the two titles had already been made in Frayling's bio.

No. I just consulted the index in Frayling and there's nothing about the title. There's quite a bit about the use of the music from Rio Bravo, but that's as far as it goes. Frayling doesn't appear to know what the Italian title was. Maybe the connection was established in some other source?

Thanks for the spelling correction. Can you believe those guys on the other poster got it wrong? Typical Italian efficiency, what?

[Novecento]

Thanks for the spelling correction. Can you believe those guys on the other poster got it wrong? Typical Italian efficiency, what?

I'm not an Italian speaker, but is it a misspelling or rather a variant way of writing it without the spoken elision? Maybe they decided to go with the elision later on?