The Beguiled

The same year they collaborated on Dirty Harry (1971), Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood made this curiosity. The Beguiled (1971) is a bizarre mood piece, exploring sexual hysteria in decidedly uncomfortable fashion. It's morbidly fascinating, and Eastwood excels in a role that requires him to act.

Late in the Civil War, wounded Union Corporal John McBurney (Clint Eastwood) takes refuge in a Louisiana girls school. McBurney manipulates the girls, drawing the particular attention of repressed teacher Edwina (Elizabeth Hartmann) and flirty Carol (Jo Ann Harris). Even stern headmistress Martha Fernsworth (Geraldine Page) takes a shine to McBurney, shielding him from Confederate patrols. But when McBurney pushes things too far, the girls plot a fiendish revenge.

The Beguiled is an odd duck. Its style recalls European art cinema more than Siegel's usual action fare. Beyond the narrative psychodrama, it's dripping with sexual symbolism, portentous narration and elliptical flashbacks. The oddest moment is Martha's vision of an orgy staged as religious art, a tableaux recalling Pasolini. Siegel lets the atmosphere run wild, helped by the creepy setting and Bruce Surtee's moody photography.

The sexual politics are inscrutable. McBurney crudely represents the male Id. He's a swooning romantic who's a leching Lothario; in his very first scene, he smooches the 12 year old Amy (Pamelyn Ferdin). He's an hero whose stories of wartime heroics are a lie. Representing the abolitionist Union, he promises slave Hallie (Mae Mercer) freedom before threatening to rape her. When his masculinity's challenged he resorts to threats, threatening to loose Union soldiers on the school until he "gets his fill" of the girls. How much is act, how much honesty remains unclear.  

If McBurney's a chauvinist pig, the women are stock archetypes. Martha's rigid demeanor hides shameful secrets and unacknowledged longings. Most disturbingly, she falls for John after noticing his resemblance to her brother! Edwina (rigid innocent) and Carol (flirtatious tart) represent other easy female types. All are eager to screw or (figuratively) castrate their guest. Not exactly flattering.

In this regard, The Beguiled is schizophrenic. Perhaps Siegel wants to contrast the male madness of war with female sexual repression (highlighted, perhaps, by the opening montage of Matthew Brady photos). In this view, both are equally destructive. It's an awkward point to argue: however nasty McBurney acts, it's hard to read the film as feminist. Ultimately he's victimized by both men and women, his churlishness almost justified.

The Beguiled is memorable even if you stick to the surface. The movie starts off as moody melodrama, then slowly transforms into horror film. Between the baroque symbolism and hothouse sexuality, the movie tilts perilously close to camp - but Siegel retains an even keel. The terror builds through very personal traumas (dismemberment, animal cruelty) towards a disturbingly muted finale. McBurney's fate is an unremarkable tragedy in a country torn by madness.

Clint Eastwood does remarkable work. Having made his bones playing macho action stars, Eastwood seemed to relish sending up that image. His "McB" is a sleazeball from the word go, callously manipulating girls innocent and learned throughout. He's a thoroughly selfish character, eager to assert his machismo by hook or crook. For actors who know Clint as a monosyllabic squinter, it's a revelation. Outside of Unforgiven, it's easily his best performance.

Geraldine Page (Hondo) proves appropriately domineering. Between her warped sexuality and callous attitude towards McBurney's life and limb, she makes Mrs. Appleyard look well-adjusted. Among the girls, Elizabeth Hartman and Jo Ann Harris obviously stand out - though Mae Mercer's strong-willed slave makes an impression. Scabby character actors Matt Clark, Charlie Briggs and Charles Martin represent the only other male interlopers.

The Beguiled is a strange movie no matter how you slice it. Art film? Character study? Hothouse melodrama? Psychological horror? Misogynist fantasy? Either way, it's refreshingly different.

Charley Varrick

Don Siegel's '70s output has an eclectic quality, from hits like Dirty Harry to puzzlers like The Beguiled. Charley Varrick (1973) marks his best work from this period, a no-nonsense thriller that crackles from start to finish.

Charley Varrick (Walter Matthau) and three accomplices rob a New Mexico bank. The heist goes badly, with only Charley and sidekick Harman (Andy Robinson) escaping, netting just $2,000. But Charley discovers they've actually stolen over $700,000 of laundered mob money. Crooked banker Boyle (John Vernon) sends mob enforcer Molly (Joe Don Baker) to collect the debt, forcing Charley and Harman to keep their wits about them.

One's impressed with Charley Varrick's simple craftsmanship. Siegel and writers Dean Riesner and Howard Rodman shape a slow-burn plot. After an opening burst of action, the movie sketches the characters in terse expository dialogue. Charley's revealed to be a stunt pilot and crop duster, both of which come in handy later on. He's shown at the top of his game, deceiving rube lawmen with disguises and criminals with clever booby traps. Unlike the impulsive Harman, he measures the situation fast enough to craft his next move. He beds Boyle's assistant (Felicia Farr) and goads Molly into an uneven showdown.

Siegel's sparse plot and deliberate pacing allows plenty of atmosphere, not just from the Nevada locations. Varrick's world is alternately seedy and dangerous, mixing high-priced call girls with ruthless violence. Molly demonstrates his ruthlessness time and again (watch him pick on a wheelchair-bound storekeeper), but makes an impact just huffing his pipe. The bad guys rely on brute force, making them an easy mark for Charlie. If the finale strains credulity, well, how often do you get to see a car-vs.-crop duster duel?

Walter Matthau proves an ideal antihero. He's no action star but a weathered professional, using wits and skill to stay a step ahead of the mob. Andy Robinson gives a layered turn far removed from his psychotic Scorpio Killer. Joe Don Baker (Junior Bonner) makes a superb villain, displaying understated ferocity in every scene. John Vernon (Topaz) plays a banker and Tom Tully (The Caine Mutiny) makes his final screen appearance.

Charley Varrick is a solid caper. The decade produced its share of classic thrillers, and Varrick stands among the best.

Coogan's Bluff

Coogan's Bluff (1968) was Clint Eastwood's first collaboration with director Don Siegel, and his first Stateside hit after the Dollars trilogy. A forgettable crime drama, today it's most interesting as a dry run for the far more successful Dirty Harry (1971).

Walt Coogan (Clint Eastwood) is a renegade Arizona cop who plays by his own rules. He's sent to New York City to extradite a criminal (Don Stroud), only to find his job complicated by a condescending New York policeman (Lee J. Cobb), a feminist parole officer (Susan Clark) and everything bad about John Lindsey's New York: hippies, hoboes and hookers. Things go from bad to worse when Stroud escapes from custody, forcing Coogan to embark on a gruelling investigation in the Big Apple.

From 1967 to 1971, Clint Eastwood desperately tried to parlay his success in Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns to Hollywood stardom. His early Americans films, for this reviewer at least, aren't a pretty sight: the turgid faux-Leone Westerns Hang 'Em High and Two Mules for Sister Sara, the underwhelming Guns of Navarone rehash Where Eagles Dare. And that's not even mentioning Paint Your Wagon. It wasn't until Dirty Harry that Eastwood shed his Italian baggage, cementing his iconic status and opening the door to a long and fruitful career.

Coogan's Bluff is another exercise in dues-paying. Herman Miller's sophomoric script milks the fish out of water premise for all it's worth, placing a naive cowboy in the midst of big city crime and counterculture. The film stridently posits Coogan as the righteous antithesis to late '60s hedonism, and his misadventures in Liberal Land overwhelm the paper-thin plot. Siegel stages a few neat scenes (a tense opening spoofing For a Few Dollars More, a nasty barroom brawl), only to end the film with a goofy motorcycle chase and a mixed message finale.

Clint is an assured screen presence as always, but Coogan is probably his most unlikeable character, a mean, racist womanizer who unwittingly embodies everything negative about the cowboy stereotype. It's hard to garner much sympathy for him no matter how many jerk cabbies tell him off. Lee J. Cobb (On the Waterfront) is wasted as a snobbish NYC detective and Don Stroud makes a boring villain. The female characters don't speak well for Eastwood and Siegel's worldview, least of all Susan Clark, a "feminist" who's secretly waiting to be ravished by Clint. The supporting cast includes a few gems: Betty Field (7 Women), James Edwards (The Set-Up), Tom Tully (The Caine Mutiny), Seymour Cassel (Convoy).

Coogan's Bluff is for confirmed Clint Eastwood fans only. Clint was still a long way from refining his persona, and this early effort is best left forgotten as a relic of its time.

Dirty Harry

One of Hollywood's best-remembered crime sagas, Dirty Harry (1971) is a high point in director Don Siegel's career. It rescued Clint Eastwood from his post-Sergio Leone rut and gave him an even more badass and iconic character than The Man With No Name. Attacked as a "fascist" film for its apparent endorsement of police brutality, it's best viewed as a straightforward, action-packed thriller rather than a serious statement on law and order.

A psychopath named the Scorpio Killer (Andy Robinson) is terrorizing San Francisco, murdering citizens seemingly at random. Detective Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) is on the case, but his rough, two-fisted methods of crime-fighting are hamstrung by his bureaucratic superiors. As Scorpio's body count rises, the authorities seem willing to give into the killer's demand, and Harry decides to wage a one-man war against Scorpio before it's too late.

Dirty Harry embodies the conservative "backlash" to the late '60s wave of civil rights activism, anti-war protests, hippie hedonism and sensationalist crimes (Charles Manson, the Zodiac Killer). Don Siegel and his writers - including Harry Julian Fink (Major Dundee) and (surprise!) an uncredited John Milius - stack their deck as badly as the most obnoxious liberal "message" film: opening with a list of slain San Francisco cops throws a gauntlet at the Warren Court and do-gooder liberals. Scorpio is a giggling, long-haired psychopath, a hippie Zodiac whom even Stanley Kramer would want exterminated. He further "ingratiates" himself with the audience by mumbling about his right to an attorney, hijacking a bus full of kids, and paying a man to beat him up to frame Callahan. Why would you abolish the death penalty with this guy on the loose?

Even worse are Harry's mush-brained superiors, John Lindsay clones more concerned with criminal's rights than crime. Besides the constipated Mayor (John Vernon) and Harry's hand-wringing superiors, there's also a Judge (William Paterson) who's also a Professor at Berkeley! These intellectual buffoons improbably let Scorpio go because of Harry's rough treatment of him, and the warrantless search of his dwelling. I'm no Constitutional expert but in these circumstances, wouldn't the latter constitute probable cause? Not that it matters all: Harry goes beyond a reasonable attack on judicial activism to chewing out the 4th Amendment: "I'm all torn up over the suspect's rights!" In a perverse echo of High Noon, Harry disgustedly quits the force at film's end, the law not being good enough for his super-Constitutional vigilantism.

The message is morally dubious, but Dirty Harry works perfectly as a straight crime thriller. Siegel provides a crisp pace, a tense, gritty atmosphere, a snappy script and fast-paced, brutal action to keep things moving along. The shootouts are tense and well-staged, and key scenes are wonderfully suspenseful and cathartic. Some well-directed if not flashy sequences help too, including an effective zoom-out from the stadium and a few well-placed (but subtle) tracking shots, including a nice one after Harry visits his bed-ridden partner. Lalo Schriffin's scatty score is one of his best. It's hard to complain about message when everything is so damned entertaining.

Clint Eastwood gets his greatest, most iconic role with Harry Callahan. He had played a similar character in 1968's Coogan's Bluff but really comes into his own here. His early scene shooting down a trio of bank robbers while munching a hot dog is a career-defining moment, culminating in the famous "Do I feel lucky?" bit. With his swagger, irreverence and sarcasm, Eastwood steals the mantle of Conservative Movie Star from John Wayne, and continues as the standard bearer for American machismo up through Gran Torino.

The supporting cast has less to do. Andy Robinson invests Scorpio with a wonderfully perverse, nasty flavor, making him among cinema's most hateable villains. John Vernon (Topaz) and John Larch (How the West Was Won) are one-dimensional liberal stereotypes. Reni Santoni has a good part as Harry's green partner. Albert Popwell makes the first of four appearances in the series, here playing the gentleman to whom Harry's famous query is directed.

Dirty Harry is very much a product of its time, but remains a hard-nosed, satisfying entertainment. Yeah, it is obnoxious and dubious in its "message," but who cares? Frankly, I'd rather watch this bellicose expression of right-wing values than the liberal equivalent: The Chase, anyone?

True Grit/The Shootist

Tonight TCM showed two of John Wayne's best late-career Westerns: his Oscar-winning turn in Henry Hathaway's True Grit (1969) and his final role in Don Siegel's The Shootist (1976). For the sake of space, and because the two films have a strong proximity to one another, we'll do another double-barrelled review. Each shows Wayne at his best, albeit in two very different roles, as he wound down of Hollywood's greatest careers.

True Grit


The Duke received long-overdue Oscar recognition for his colorful, scenery-chewing role as the one-eyed, hard-drinking Marshal Rooster Cogburn. As with many of his later films, True Grit is a so-so story made into something special by its star. It has its share of flaws, most notably a pair of dud leads, but Wayne and Henry Hathaway make it into a fun, boisterous old-school Western.

Strong-willed Arkansas farm girl Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) goes on a vendetta against Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), the drunken vagrant who murdered her father (John Pickard). Mattie enlists the help of the colorful Marshal Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne) and arrogant Texas Ranger Labeouf (Glenn Campbell) to track down Cheney, who has fallen in with bandit Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall).

Above all, True Grit is a wonderfully old-fashioned Western. Free of the more broad and obnoxious humor of many of Wayne's films, it's nonetheless a very accessible Wayne Western, with a laid-back charm to hook even casual Western fans. The movie has fun with Wayne's usual image, casting him as a drunken wastrel and scoundrel who's likeable in spite of himself. The film moves at a brisk clip, and there's enough action and humor to keep any viewer interested. It may not be a masterpiece, but it sure is entertaining.

The film suffers from the shortcomings of many later Wayne films. The most egregious is the requisite Duke sidekicks: Mattie and Labeouf are thoroughly obnoxious characters, and we almost root for their demise later in the film. The villains are under-developed and silly, particularly the turkey-clucking idiot. After the excellent showdown between Cogburn and Pepper's gang, the denouement with Chaney and Mattie seems anti-climactic. Fortunately, the production values and overall entertainment value are enough to compensate for the flaws.

Hathaway delivers a first-class production full of exciting, well-staged action scenes and beautiful vistas. Lucien Ballard delivers some gorgeous cinematography; his vistas of timber-strewn mountains and autumnal forests compare favorably to his work on Peckinpah's Ride the High Country. The brisk pacing and well-told if slight story greatly benefit the film, as does Marguerite Roberts' witty, authentically-rustic script. Elmer Bernstein's score is fine although not among his best work.

Wayne is above all having fun here, and his spirit is infectious. He chews lots of scenery, cracks wise and kicks ass, relishing his self-effacing role as the "one-eyed fat man". The scene where Cogburn faces off against a quartet of baddies, twirling a rifle in one hand, a pistol in the other, and holding the reins in his teeth, is the epitome of old-fashioned badassery, the Duke at his macho best. It's not a patch on his more Oscar-worthy turns in Red River and The Searchers, but it's a damn sight better than his slumming in Rio Lobo, The Undefeated and Chisum.

The rest of the cast is hit-and-miss. Kim Darby is beyond obnoxious as Mattie, and in the young sidekick role, singer Glenn Campbell is unbelievably wooden. These two bog down much of the film and it takes the Duke's best efforts to balance out their nonsense. Robert Duvall does well as a likeable villain, but Jeff Corey's (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) snivelling killer is underdeveloped. The great Strother Martin (The Wild Bunch) has a fun cameo, and Jeremy Slate (Born Losers) and Dennis Hopper turn up as bit-part baddies.

The Shootist


The Shootist, Wayne's final film, is a horse of an entirely different color. A revisionist Western by Don Siegel (Two Mules For Sister Sara), it isn't a terribly original film, borrowing liberally from The Gunfighter and Ride the High Country. That pales compared to the film's inevitable poignancy: Wayne, who would later die of cancer, playing a legendary gunfighter dying of cancer, remains the greatest, most pitch-perfect send-off a movie star ever had.

Aging gunslinger J.B. Books (John Wayne) finds out from his friend Doc Hostetler (James Stewart) that he's dying of terminal cancer. With only a few weeks to live, Books hopes to die peacefully, but he's made too many enemies to do so. While fighting off publicity-hounds and glory-seeking assassins, he romances hotel manager Bond Rodgers (Lauren Bacall) and teaches her surly son Gillom (Ron Howard) the tricks of the trade. Unable to escape his past, Books sets up a final showdown with a trio of local troublemakers (Richard Boone, Bill McKinney and Hugh O'Brian).

The Shootist is the perfect epitaph to Wayne's career. After decades of embodying the American character, the Duke was slumming, getting by purely on charisma and iconography. Between True Grit and The Shootist was a parade of mediocre-to-awful Westerns with little to recommend them besides the star (The Cowboys being a notable exception). Given a chance to go out with a bang, Wayne grabs the opportunity head-on, showing that, besides his undeniable star power, he was a damn fine actor too.

The Books character is schizophrenic. Siegel wants to subvert the Duke's righteous image, creating a character theoretically darker than even Ethan Edwards. Books is introduced gut-shooting a would-be highwayman and leaving him to die; he later shoots another wounded man in the head. And yet Wayne's iconography overcomes the revisionism. A well-chosen montage of old favorites (including clips from Red River, Rio Bravo and El Dorado) emphasizes his indomitable, righteous persona, and we identify Books with those iconic heros rather than the scumbag Siegel wants us to see. It's a credit to Wayne that he's able to balance both interpretations, and gives one of his very best performances: subtle, subdued and quietly powerful.

As with our previous film, if anyone other than Wayne were the lead, The Shootist probably wouldn't work. The plot is a reworking of Henry King's The Gunfighter (1950), except that Books won't accept Gregory Peck's passive fate in that film. Gillom is a typical naive young pup - a character that's been done before, and rarely better. As in our previous film, the villains are badly handled; Hugh O'Brian at least has a cool intro, but none of them do anything before the final showdown. One element which does work is the wonderfully-tentative romance between Books and Bond, which enhances the film's autumnal nature; it's two lonely people connecting in the twilight of their lives, and it's wonderful.

Siegel handles a classy, economic production. His direction is appropriately subdued and elegiac, with Bruce Surtees' gorgeous photography and Oscar-winning art direction by Robert Boyle and Arthur Jeph Parker (the cavernous saloon is a particularly impressive work) sweetening the deal. The violence is bloody but lacks the flair of a Peckinpah flick, which would not fit the material. Many people complain about the set-up and staging of the final showdown, but as a bravura set-piece it's fabulous, with a wonderfully muted conclusion. Elmer Bernstein contributes a low-key, mournful score that fits the film perfectly.

Lauren Bacall gives a fine late-career performance, cast against type as the brittle but sympathetic hotel lady. Ron Howard is adequate but little more. "Guest stars" and old Wayne buddies James Stewart (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), John Carradine (Stagecoach) and Harry Morgan (How the West Was Won) shine. Scatman Crothers (The Shining) has a nice bit, though Richard Boone (The Alamo), Hugh O'Brian (TV's The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp) and Bill McKinney's (The Outlaw Josey Wales) villains aren't around long enough to make an impression.

Two Mules For Sister Sara

To make up for six days without a review (though to be fair I have been busy to some extent), here's your second review of the day. I did rewatch Full Metal Jacket in the past week, but I was tired of reviewing Kubrick films and decided to give that one a pass for now, and I found Glengarry Glen Ross of little interest, a completely uncinematic and dull film that defines "filmed play". So after posting my review of Vera Cruz earlier today, here's my commentary on Don Siegel's Two Mules For Sister Sara (1970), also set during the French occupation of Mexico, but despite the best efforts of super-cool Clint Eastwood and a surprisingly attractive Shirley Maclaine, it's not nearly as good as the former.

Hogan (Clint Eastwood) is an American gun-for-hire who rescues the attractive Sister Sara (Shirley Maclaine) from being raped by a gang of thugs in the middle of the Mexican desert. After some snappy dialogue and some close brushes with French troops and rattlesnakes, the two fall in together, finding out that each is working for the Juarista - Hogan for money, Sara for devotion to a righteous cause. They team up to help Juarista Colonel Beltran (Manuel Fabregas) destroy the French garrison in Chihuahua, where Sara worked - only Hogan finds out that Sara isn't actually a nun at all (as if that needed explaining).

Like a great many of Clint Eastwood's immediate post-Sergio Leone films (Hang 'Em High, High Plains Drifter), Sister Sara does its best to ape Leone's films in style and appearance, with Clint playing yet another Man With No Name clone. Reportedly co-writer Budd Boetticher (the director of such cult "adult Westerns" as The Tall T and Buchannan Rides Alone) was rather pissed off that the producers turned his original story into a "typical Clint Eastwood thing", and there's no small degree of truth to that. While Don Sigel made some great films through his career, several with Eastwood (Dirty Harry, Coogan's Bluff), Sister Sara is far from his finest hour, yet another early '70s Leone-lite Western that doesn't come close to the style and artistry of the films it tries to emulate.

The film starts out strongly with an iconic Eastwood intro; with a sleazy thug holding the half-naked Maclaine at gun-point, Clint coolly tosses a dynamite stick their way. The early scenes of Hogan and Sara together are wonderful, aided in no small part by the witty screenplay; the scene where Sara tries to remove an arrow lodged in the drunk Hogan's shoulder is a particular high-point. But about half-way through, as the film's main plot and side characters are introduced, the movie slows to a dead crawl and never really picks up again. The supporting cast is straight from central casting: the Juaristas are virtuous and heroic, the French decadent fascist slobs, and there are some poor helpless peasants in between, crying and staring at the atrocities from the edge of the frame. All of this has been done before and elsewhere, and better; when Hogan's only interest is mercenary, it's hard to care about the shallow ciphers he's helping, however noble and heroic they may be. Before long, we just wish that the interminable scenes of French atrocity and Juarista planning were replaced with more scenes of our two leads duking it out.

Sigel's direction, despite some nice photography by Gabriel Figueroa, is generally rather flat and un-inspired. Sigel can't really pick up the pace in the middle sections, and even the final battle is rather underwhelming given all the build-up (having, as in Vera Cruz, all the usual gimmicks, with repeating rifles, dynamite and Gatling guns in prominent use). While the outdoor scenes are beautiful and well-shot, the sets in the later segments are quite obviously sets. The strongest point of the film is undoubtedly the witty, well-written script by Boetticher and Albert Maltz. Ennio Morricone contributes a rather blah score that sounds like he just tweaked a few of his Dollars trilogy themes and called it a day.

Clint Eastwood is at his bad-ass best, playing the gruff, quick-shooting stranger, this time with a sharp tongue and a healthy sexual appetite (though not nearly as crude as the rapist "Stranger" from Clint's next Western, High Plains Drifter). Shirley Maclaine, whom I usually find rather mousy however charming she can be (The Children's Hour, The Apartment), is unusually attractive as the title character, and has a lot of fun as the whore in nun's clothing, whose occasional drinks and lapses into profanity threaten to reveal her true identity. The two leads have great chemistry and work wonderfully together. The rest of the cast is non-descript, playing as mentioned above rather broadly drawn caricatures; whenever the camera isn't on our two protagonists it drags, and that's much of the second half.

Two Mules For Sister Sara isn't a bad film by any means - if nothing else, it's worth watching for Clint and Shirley, who have a lot of fun with the slight material. But for the most part, I would only recommend it for non-discerning Clint Eastwood and Western fans.

Rating: 6/10 - Use Your Own Discretion