At 94 going on 95, there’s a sense that Juror No. 2 – his 40th directorial effort – is Clint Eastwood’s last movie. Taken together, his age and the film’s low-key reception suggest it’s the end of the road.
Eastwood first became famous as a highly bankable movie star with demonstrable international appeal. But starting in 1971, he began directing many of his own movies, plus some in which he didn’t appear.
Here are five that particularly caught my fancy, all of which involve Eastwood starring as well as directing.
Play Misty for Me (1971)
Eastwood’s directorial debut, Play Misty for Me is a psychological thriller in which he plays a jazz disc jockey who enters into a casual sexual relationship that turns toxic when the woman’s obsession morphs into violence. Although not original in plot development, it’s well executed, atmospherically photographed, and abundantly provisioned with scary moments. To quote critic Roger Ebert, “in the business of collecting an audience into the palm of its hand and then squeezing hard, it is supreme.”
The movie also introduced what became something of an Eastwood directorial trademark. It came in on time and on budget. Having been appalled at the waste he observed while filming Paint Your Wagon in 1969, Eastwood had learned what not to do.
High Plains Drifter (1973)
I’ve always thought of High Plains Drifter as Eastwood’s nod to the Italian director Sergio Leone, the inventor of the stylized “spaghetti Westerns” that first vaulted him to fame in the 1960s. The mysterious stranger in the movie bears more than a passing resemblance to the “Man with No Name” from the Leone series.
Thematically, the movie is about justice, or – if you prefer – retribution. As gradually revealed, Eastwood’s character is the ghost of a U.S. Marshal who had been murdered at the behest of the citizens of a small frontier mining town. And he comes back to settle the score.
This supernatural dimension is effectively underlined by the opening and closing scenes. In the opener, Eastwood emerges from the desert through a heat haze as if he were an apparition. In the closer, he similarly disappears back into it.
Unforgiven (1992)
This Western brought Eastwood firmly into Academy Award territory. He won for Best Director and (as producer) Best Picture.
Set in the 1880s, Unforgiven’s theme is reminiscent of High Plains Drifter. Both are about justice/retribution of the extra-judicial variety. And the picture it paints is an unvarnished one. There are no heroic good guys, just different gradations of unsavoury.
Eastwood plays a retired gunfighter and widower with two children. Struggling to make ends meet as a hog farmer, he reluctantly becomes a bounty hunter. And rather than being sponsored by the legal system, the reward has been posted by a group of prostitutes who are angry at the lack of justice for one of their own.
It’s a violent, unsentimental and dark film. It’s also absorbing.
The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
For a change of emotional ambience, this Eastwood-directed adaptation of a bestselling novel co-stars him with Meryl Streep in a bitter-sweet depiction of an intense but brief (four days) romance. He is a photojournalist who comes on assignment to 1965 Madison County, Iowa, and she is an unfulfilled married woman with two children. To say that it works is an understatement.
Time’s Richard Corliss hit the nail on the head: “It is about the anticipation and consequences of passion – the slow dance of appraisal, of waiting to make a move that won’t be rejected, of debating what to do when the erotic heat matures into love light.”
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Million Dollar Baby wasn’t the first Eastwood movie to court controversy, the specific bone of contention this time being assisted dying. And true to form, Eastwood didn’t apologize for his narrative choices.
The story relates the evolving relationship between a cantankerous boxing trainer and a young woman who wants him to teach her the tricks of the pugilistic trade. He’s not at all keen but eventually succumbs. Then, fighting for the championship, she ends up as a suicidal, ventilator-dependent quadriplegic who desperately wants to die. Initially horrified, he finally honours her request.
Response from both critics and the box office was overwhelmingly positive. Eastwood picked up two more Academy Awards – Best Director and Best Picture (he was co-producer). To quote Roger Ebert again: “Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby is a masterpiece, pure and simple.”
Given the quality of Clint Eastwood’s long and illustrious career, it would’ve been nice for his latest effort to send him off with another resounding hit. Life, however, doesn’t always deliver picture-perfect endings.
Troy Media columnist Pat Murphy casts a history buff’s eye at the goings-on in our world. Never cynical – well, perhaps a little bit.
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