A Fistful of Dollars

The film that started it, and an unlicensed remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, which Toho successfully sued over. A nameless drifter rides into a border town split between two criminal families and plays them against each other for profit, and Clint Eastwood becomes a star doing almost nothing.

Sergio Leone strips the American western of its decency and its heroes, keeps the iconography and the Morricone score, and invents a whole genre in the process. It cost very little and made a fortune.

Rougher than what followed, and the foundation of everything on this shelf.