Happy Birthday Harry!
Clint Eastwood turns 96 years old today…”Dirty Harry” has given us so many cinematic masterpieces that it’s impossible to distill his incredible career in front of and behind the camera…there is so much to choose from!
From his early roles in TV, he became a movie star by going to Italy for a “spaghetti western”, then played perhaps his most iconic role of them all :
“Dirty” Harry Callahan is my favorite film of his – I have posted many stories about Eastwood, but as we celebrate some of his greatest roles, here’s a look at some of his most critically acclaimed and controversial work, a list I found at TheGuardian.com!
Tightrope
Richard Tuggle gets the credit, but Eastwood allegedly ended up directing most of this underrated thriller himself. In one of his most fearlessly uningratiating performances, he subverts his own macho persona as New Orleans cop Wes Block, whose sexual kinks are uncomfortably similar to those of the serial murderer his department is hunting.
I loved this film because he gives his character extra depth, and was unafraid to look beneath the surface.
In The Line Of Fire
Eastwood never balked at acting his age, and visibly gets short of breath as a veteran Secret Service agent, still depressed by his failure to protect JFK, who is forced into a battle of wits against John Malkovich. Smart directing from Wolfgang Petersen lifts this into almost-classic thriller territory.
This is a great action thriller – beautifully directed and acted…holds up to this day!
Two Mules For Sister Sara
After Coogan’s Bluff, Eastwood’s second film for Director Don Siegel was this spaghetti-adjacent western with an Ennio Morricone score, filmed in Mexico. Clint plays an American mercenary who rescues a nun (Shirley MacLaine) from bandits. They join up with Mexican revolutionaries to fight the occupying French forces. Breezy fun with an action-packed finale, and you’d never guess Clint and Shirley weren’t best mates on set.
You will see the Clint’s partnership with Director Don Siegel pays off soon after….
The Bridges Of Madison County
Eastwood’s no-nonsense directing style is perfectly suited to this Brief Encounter-type romance, adapted from a bestselling novel. He plays a peripatetic photographer who stops taking pictures of Iowa’s historic bridges long enough to have a passionate affair with a local housewife (Meryl Streep in frumpy frocks). Acting-wise, Eastwood wisely leaves most of the emoting to his co-star, with results that are genuinely affecting.
Eastwood didn’t make many films like this, and it’s his own directing touch that makes it work.
Thunderbolt And Lightfoot
Michael Cimino made his directing debut with this likable buddy caper movie set in rural Montana. Eastwood gives one of his most underrated performances as a fugitive bank robber who teams up with Jeff Bridges’ cocky young drifter. Knockabout comedy rubs shoulders with brutal violence, new Hollywood-style, as a getaway goes horribly wrong and the typically 1970s ending is a heartbreaker.
An unbelievably great “buddy” film from the early 70’s with an Oscar nominated performance by Jeff Bridges!
See more about it here!
The Beguiled
With three releases cementing and subverting his tough guy persona, 1971 was a watershed year for Eastwood. In Siegel’s unnerving southern gothic thriller (remade in 2017 by Sofia Coppola), he plays a wounded Yankee soldier trapped in an all girls’ school in rural Mississippi, where his attempts to manipulate the women’s emotions only result in him being systematically unmanned.
This is another Don Siegel collaboration, as is this next film, Clint’s directorial debut!
Play Misty For Me
Sixteen years before Fatal Attraction, Eastwood made his directing debut with a psychological thriller in which his strapping DJ is reduced to a nervous wreck by a slip of a woman (Jessica Walter AKA Arrested Development’s Lucille Bluth) as their initially casual relationship leads to jealousy, stalking and scissor attacks. Filmed in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where, from 1986 to 1988, Clint would serve as mayor.
Yes, Clint Eastwood made the original “Fatal Attraction” and it’s a terrific gem – one of three films he made with Director Don Siegel in 1971 – because while Clinton directed “Misty”, Siegel has a role in the movie!
See this triple play of classic films here!
A Fistful Of Dollars
Hitherto best known as Rowdy Yates from TV’s Rawhide, Eastwood took a risk in playing a poncho-clad anti-hero, The Man With No Name, in a low-budget Italian production with a Morricone score. The gamble paid off. Leone’s unauthorised remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (itself a reworking of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest) gave birth to the spaghetti western subgenre. And a screen icon was born.
Perhaps one of the most important westerns ever made!
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Eastwood controversially ousted Philip Kaufman to take over directing on one of his most enjoyable westerns. A farmer hunts down the soldiers who murdered his family, but vengeance is deferred while he acquires a surrogate family of misfits, including Chief Dan George as the Cherokee who can’t sneak up, and Sondra Locke in the first of six films she made with Clint, her real-life partner.
An interesting choice for The Guardian, as this isn’t remembered as much among Eastwood’s filmography, but it is a great western.
Dirty Harry
Eastwood added another signature role to his repertoire in the first of five films featuring poster boy for police brutality Inspector Harry Callahan, as he goes after the psychopath terrorising San Francisco. Director Siegel keeps it gritty and exciting, and Clint, road testing a 1970s pompadour, makes Harry cool, instead of just a vigilante thug.
This is a brilliant film – filled with iconic lines like this one:
There were four sequels to “Dirty Harry”, and the first one called “Magnum Force” didn’t make this list but is a worthy followup – see a terrific moment from it here:
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
The final part of Leone’s Dollars Trilogy adds Eli Wallach as comic foil to the dream team of Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef, who last met in For a Few Dollars More (1965). All three play scumbags on the trail of buried treasure, set against an epic American civil war backdrop. The squinty showdown in the cemetery, choreographed to Morricone’s score, is peak cinema.
This is a masterpiece. Check out the trailer:
Unforgiven
Eastwood stars in this Oscar-winning western as William Munny, a widowed pig-farmer who thinks his bounty hunting days are over (“I ain’t like that any more”) until he hears about a $1,000 reward on the heads of men who slashed a sex worker’s face. But first he has to get past Sheriff Gene Hackman. With the director-star completely in control of his screen persona and drawing on his history of playing violent men, he builds without irony towards a showdown that is more tragic than cathartic.
The film won Best Picture for Eastwood, and it’s a timeless classic….bravo to The Guardian for a great list…
Now, what was left off: so much! Here are a few of Clint’s other great films:
Million Dollar Baby, Escape From Alcatraz, his only musical Paint Your Wagon, and his most recent film:
Juror #2 is terrific as well – now add Hang ’em High,Mystic River, A Perfect World, High Plains Drifter and more…what a career!
Happy birthday Clint!
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Categories: 70's Cinema, Academy Awards, Action Films, Art, Cult Movies, Exploitation films, Film Fight Club, Film Noir, Great Films, Hollywood, Movies, Obscure Movies, Pop Culture, Revenge Movies, Talent/Celebrities, True Hollywood Mystery
johnrieber 
I well remember Play Misty For Me, still living at home I went to see it with my Mum and we both were really wrapped up in the story.
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Thanks for sharing that!
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