The Beguiled

Long before a lame drunk starts pointing a Flintlock pistol at startled school children, Don Siegel's The Beguiled is a siege film, one premised on hopeless, wartime longing and the incompatible desires experienced in unequal relationships. Clint Eastwood plays John McBurney, a grievously wounded Union soldier being nursed back to health by a half-dozen women in a Confederate sympathising seminary school. McB - so called by Pamelyn Ferdin's Amy, the (apparently) guileless adolescent who discovers his burnt-up, bleeding body - is Eastwood at his most louche, a bed-ridden stud pouring syrup into the ears of anyone who'll listen. He's arrogant and conceited, completely assured that his good looks and treacly manners will allow him to behave as he pleases. The women who fall under his spell, Geraldine Page's middle-aged headmistress; Elizabeth Hartman's virginal schoolteacher; and Jo Ann Harris' precocious teenager, each vie for this plucked rooster's attention. Variously, they extend offers of a salaried position, romantic love and, simply, sex as a way to secure their place in his affections. 

Siegel's film, adapted from Thomas P. Cullinan's novel by screenwriters Albert Maltz and Irene Kamp, uses bursts of memory and whispered thoughts to reveal the ways in which these people appraise themselves and each other. McB and Page's Martha - the characters experienced enough to actually have a past - exert themselves on the film using the former. While McB talks up his affinity for these untamed Southern lands we catch a glimpse of him, pre-injury and beaming ear to ear, as he sets crops alight. Before he was blasted into repose, McB experienced war as an adventure, one curtailed by his near fatal injuries. Martha recalls the last time she had an opportunity to roll around with a handsome man, and the shame she attaches to that relationship. We hear the hurried thoughts of the other women as they catalogue the school's ever-evolving relationships. Each one capable of incisive and pitiless assessment. There's a breaking point in The Beguiled though, an amputation performed under dubious pretext, after which all decorum is dropped. McB, having regained some mobility, rants and crashes about the house; desperately trying to cower these women and children. The revenge that sees his lifeless body sewn into a burlap bag is engineered, almost entirely, by the twelve year old who discovered him though. Amy, an overlooked but no less jealous member of the household, repaying Eastwood's brute for his boozed-up thrashings.

Pale Rider

Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider is a strange beast. Conceptually, it's an obvious retread of the actor-director's earlier western High Plains Drifter, to wit: a ghostly stranger appears out of nowhere to dispense a Biblical kind of justice on a threadbare settlement packed with wrongdoers. Whereas Drifter wallowed in cruelty and a windswept damnation, Rider position's Eastwood's phantom as a literal miracle, one that rides out of the imagination of a furious teenage girl, Sydney Penny's Megan, to answer her tearful prayers. Megan resides alongside a stream where her mother's partner, Michael Moriarty's Hull, sifts for enough gold to settle the debts he's accrued in the nearest town. The camp, little more than a dozen middle-aged men and their simpleton sons, are being pressured to abandon their duff claim by drunken, spoiling miners so that a greedy magnate can sweep in and unleash a deluge of industrial effluence on these autumnal lands.

Pale Rider, although routine in terms of premise is notable in how it contextualises its star. These means of presentation even differ based on who is currently appraising him. The audience, who are privy to whispered conversations and insert shots of an impossibly scarred body, are prompted to consider Eastwood's Preacher as a supernatural presence. A dead man returned to life to revenge himself on the killer who shot six bullets through him. Preacher is the same sort of wandering loner as Shane or Sanjuro; a kind of character that Eastwood has plenty of experience inhabiting and deconstructing. The defeated prospectors, used to a deranged sort of toil premised on fleeting shots at fortune, see him as their leader. A man of faith who is smart and resourceful enough to carry them to victory against their much braver and far more experienced, in the ways of warfare, persecutors. He's serene, self-assured and masculine in ways they cannot hope to be. 

Yet another interpretation comes from Megan and her mother Sarah, played Carrie Snodgress. They see this gunslinger in purely romantic terms, a figure of such tempestuous sexual energy that they both pick their moments to proposition him. Preacher demurs, at least in the case of Megan, reassuring these women that someone else - someone lesser - will find in themselves an ability to stick around, beyond the bloodshed he was summoned for, and make them happy. It's not even that Preacher is specifically sexless. After Sarah has confessed her hurried affections, he asks her to close the door of her sinking shack, to silence the echoing taunts of a crooked lawman, then he strides purposefully towards her. If anything his behaviour is suggestive of some pre-established, but fading, connection. Just as we are prompted to examine Preacher in archetypal terms, he also relates to others using similar parameters. Relationships are general; detail extraneous and unimportant. Even Eastwood's approach to violence in Pale Rider is unusual. Preacher's slaying of the seven lawman recruited to exterminate him is almost farcical in its arrangement. Eastwood concealing himself in ways that only make sense when considering this three-dimensional setting from the flat, two-dimensional perspective of a screen. 

Unforgiven (2013)

For better or worse, Lee Sang-il's retelling of Unforgiven accounts for a profound psychological shift, one akin to transformation. At journey's end Ken Watanabe's Jubei finds himself staring down a familiar shithole, drunk and out for blood. Lee's film treats this ferocity as a dead end for the character, rather than an aspect of his personality. In the 1992 original, Clint Eastwood's William Munny placed himself in a desperate, suicidal situation then reacted with supernatural calm to the violence directed at him. This is what allows him to clear a bordello. He doesn't hurry, he doesn't make mistakes. In this telling, Jubei has instead snapped, becoming a kind of demon. Lee's stormy, deteriorating mise en scene suggesting all the great damned Samurai from Ryunosuke Tsukue in The Sword of Doom to Ogami Itto in the Lone Wolf and Cub cycle.

Eastwood and Lee's films differ in how their heroes are communicated to us. After his massacre Munny seems to readjust instantly, compartmentalising his violence. It's easy for us to accept this too - the confrontation was cathartic, happening in response to a friend's murder. It's satisfying. The shift packing you off to bed after your umpteenth viewing on late-night television. Lee's film is the opposite. Jubei's moment almost seems like a fumble. Firearms play a key role - always disappointing in a chanbara - and Watanabe sleepwalks through the encounter. Jubei's violence is slow, a monster demonstrating deliberation in the midst of amateurs. It's messy, more like a scuffle, designed to not quite please. Men aren't cleaved by swords; weapons bite on bone then break. Jubei isn't the same kind of man as Munny either, he can't turn it on or off. Once he's tasted blood he's keyed in, fated to wander - seething - until his batteries run dry.

MAGNUM FORCE

Stephen Altobello talks us through how the 5.1 remixes prepared for DVD re-releases have messed with original artistic intent, fixing sound cues that may not have been broken. I'm not really sure I understand this particular revisionism. It seems to be predicated on an idea of the audience, rather than the actual audience. As if the film studios believe modern viewers can't stand to hear any sound effect they haven't already heard a million times before on TV.

It might make sense as an alternative, if the original track is damaged or has elements missing, but not as a replacement. It also speaks to a boring literalism with film sound effects as a locked, indexed idea rather than something fluid and imaginative. Unfortunately, Clint Eastwood seems particularly cursed by this movement. Recent issues of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly have had their buzz bullets replaced with dreary hollow-point rapports.

WILL BRUTALISE 4 FOODZ

Dreams do come true! Witness here a collage of inserts and test shots - the first available footage of the Hobo With A Shotgun feature, starring Rutger Hauer as the titular derelict. This on-the-noser is the bastard offspring of a contest to get your trail attached to the Canadian print of the Tarantino / Rodriguez double A-side Grindhouse, Jason Eisener et al won the day with a cheapy nasty about a roaming vigilante bum. Machete gets all the press, but this was the Grindhouse trailer buff Disaster Year was most looking forward to. Not much to go on here, but a grungy 70s vibe is firmly in place. I haven't seen smoke gags look that oily in a good long time. This brief tease is pushing all the right buttons: future-shock lawless, Enzo Castellari's John Carpenter cash-ins, even a whiff of Clint Eastwood's The Gauntlet. Head over to the film's website for a daily trickle.

Nessuni Dollari

Bah. My purchase of an Italian Blu-Ray of A Fistful of Dollars from eBay fell through. Trying times. There's a problem with some nebulous 'consignment' or other. I'm refunded, and the chap got on to me sharpish, so I can't complain. It's a shame though. It would have said Per un pugno di dollari on screen, and everything! The disc also had Italian and English Mono tracks, I coulda enjoyed gleaming scrub-up picture without the garish re-mixed sound effects MGM have recently stunk up the place with. I can't bare to watch the extended The Good, The Bad and The Ugly for precisely that reason: rotten multi-track sound augments fucking with Leone's soundscape. I don't need 'em. It ain't right.

In this whizz-bang hyper-age of DTS-HD Master Audio tweaks, studios have got it right in their heads there's no place for soundtracks as originally issued. While it's nice to have the option to blow your roof off, it's also nice to have the track the director originally signed-off on. Technology shouldn't trump artistry. I don't really need to know what a 60s exploitation western would sound like with contemporary foley. It'd sound stupid, and it does. I also have a profound distaste for Extended / Director's Cuts superseding Theatrical Cuts for re-issues. Both please or not at all.

A Fistful of Context

When preparing A Fistful of Dollars for its first television screening in the late 1970s, the ABC Network discerned that something was lacking from Leone's grubby little masterpiece: moral context. "Why, that no-good Eastwood stranger just wandered into town and had himself some murder. Why did he do it? He's too unkempt for altruism!" perhaps crossed their minds. This pop New Wave western amorality was simply too vague for mainstream televising sensibilities, so the network had Two-Lane Blacktop director Monte Hellman shoot a piecemeal introduction sequence. Presented below, this dreadful little addition recasts Eastwood's most iconic character as a collaborating fink, prepared to work for Harry Dean Stanton's shady government lawman to save his neck.



Designed to answer a question no-one was asking, this prologue raises an even more mind-bending predicament: who in hell caught The Man With No Name?

The only good to come out of this sorry mess is that the clip further aligns the Dollars hero with that other stalwart of 60s pulp punishment: James Bond. Both are in-pocket G-Man murderers with cruel streaks a mile wide.

The Gauntlet

The Gauntlet, a minor Clint action policer immediately notable for the dour slant it places on the lot of wild card detectives. Eastwood is Ben Shockley, a washed up beat cop, saddled with a cross country babysitting assignment. The mission is dressed up by his lizardy superiors with reams of complimentary double-talk. Shockley is flattered, told he is trusted and valued. Music to this burnout. Of course it's a crap shot. Sondra Locke plays the escortee, a mob witness and college grad hooker. Locke's initial disgust with Eastwood eventually matures into a beneficial codependency. She saves him as often as he saves her.

Action in Gauntlet is that of ever escalating demolition. Rather than grit-teethed firearms exchanges, we have protracted sequences of law armies riddling inert objects bloated with lead. The effect is dizzying. A central gambling conceit that underpins Locke and Eastwood's hapless adventure lends Gauntlet a future shocked vibe that reverberates throughout the film. Cities are rendered as empty, sun-bleached concrete landscapes, crawling with leathery insect cops. The briefly glimpsed countryside is lawless; notionally abandoned to hepcat bikers and their sex assault urges. Law seems to be pooling in the brutalist city castles, turning on their own as the lustful deviancies of the elites are uncovered.

The Dark Knight

I'm sitting in front of an 8 storey high screen. It's formatted for a 1.34:1 display - I'm watching a television the size of an office building. It swamps my vision. I can barely see anything but it. A blue glass building bursts into view, filling every inch of the canvas. We hurtle towards it. I'm crashing into it. Windows shatter and clowns take flight. I feel dizzy. IMAX. Unlike it's hero, The Dark Knight is a film that seems utterly without restraint. People die, buildings burn, and whole sequences are scored with nothing but a buzzing electronic reverb - a giant mechanical fly struggling to get out of a jar, twitching and clawing as a world implodes. Heath Ledger's one-man Al Qa'eda piloting Gotham towards extinction. Events steer down dark alleys into dangerous, upsetting territory. All this, despite the usual Summer baggage: July release date. 12A rated.

Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan and Christian Bale's Batman catches a glimpse of light at the end of his tunnel - rising lawyer Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) is cleaning up Gotham within the confines of the law, one swaggering disarmament at a time. Gangsters squabble and cower while Batman brutally ties up a loose-end from his previous outing. He's close to getting out. Grasping at a relationship with childhood sweet-heart Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). It's nearly over. Bruce Wayne can step down as The Batman. He can make himself a life. Then all fucking hell breaks lose. The Dark Knight is almost a half-billion dollar remake of Dirty Harry, a maverick law-man shedding rules and process to track a terrifying criminal. Like Scorpio, Heath Ledger's Joker is in it for the kicks, not the cash. He kills then cackles, holding an entire city to ransom. At that films' conclusion Callahan tracks and murders Scorpio, blowing a fist sized hole clean through him. Batman allows himself no such luxury. He will allow himself to punish, break and maim his foes, but not go as far as killing them. 

This note of personal temperance is what carries The Dark Knight; the abstract that simmers away as three scarred men clash and battle in a boiling hell. Unlike Batman Begins, were this code is callously jettisoned for a finale in which Liam Neeson's ninja terrorist is, more or less punished, The Dark Knight obsesses over Wayne's promise, and all that it implies. This line, that cannot be crossed, becomes an Achilles' Heel to be exploited by knowing enemies; a procedural blemish that can be ruthlessly stripped apart and used to undermine the potency of a figure premised on fright. Nolan makes text of the most basic (rational?) objection to costumed superheroics: why don't they just kill their colourful, murderous quarry? Why would a Superman suffer the indignity of Lex Luthor? Why wouldn't Batman just erase Joker? After decades of muscled-up monsters exterminating anything that raises an objection on the big screen (and with proxy war oil grabs looming large outside, in the real world), how do you examine the make-up of a hero? You give him a pledge, something he'd rather die than betray, then you dangle every single reason imaginable for him to break it. You tell lies about him. You reimagine him as a slathering beast. And in the end you chase his battered, fleeing body screaming and shooting. Then, hopefully, you make another film just like it. 

Frank Frazetta's The Gauntlet

By way of context for yesterday's post, I present Frank Frazetta's painted one-sheet for the 1977 Clint flick: The Gauntlet. Frazetta's probably most noted for overtly fantasy / mythical work, so it's always interesting seeing his art with a contemporary twist, especially in this render of bean-pole shitkicker Clint Eastwood. Less gleaming muscles, more sun-stare glare!