“I engaged Luciano Vincenzoni. (….) I wanted him to help me to construct a universe different from the previous films. Something different on the visual level. Still more realistic. With rain and mud. In the American West there is a leaden sun during the day. And during the night, there can be a deluge. Then in the morning the landscape is different (…) We also needed a documentary basis for a new story (…) I had read quite a lot about bounty killers. We started from there. We knew that this phrase would be in the title: “Where life counts for nothing, death can be worth more”. (…) I invest myself totally in every one of my stories. Nothing is ever gratuitous. At the start, For a Few Dollars More derived from my vendetta against the producers Jol­ly. But it quickly became a reflection on cinema. The cinema is the myth integrated to a tale. It is not the industry of dreams. It is the making of myths. My documentary contribution to the myth cannot exclude my universe as author, even if I prefer to show the worst of all, the bounty hunters. Perhaps it is nega­tive, but America is an immense terrain for such professionals. They move around following their information. They are conscious of their own technical worth. To our European eyes, they pervert the law, but, for Americans, they are useful. They elimi­nate harmful individuals. Sure, I also need to work on fantasy, so as better to achieve the choreography and the baroque in my cinematographic writing. Like the carillon clock which is the point of departure. I asked Morricone to start from this theme, which already existed, in composing the score”.

Sergio Leone, da Noel Simsolo, Conversations avec Sergio Leone, Stock, Paris, 1987