Clint Eastwood – DON'T PUBLISH

Clint Eastwood, who has died aged XXX, was one of the most successful, popular and respected figures in the history of American filmmaking. As an actor he became a star of truly iconic status, while many of the nearly 40 features he directed (through his own production company) are now regarded by film critics and historians as substantial achievements, with a fair number celebrated as classics. Yet it was not until 1992, with the multi-award-winning Unforgiven, that he achieved widespread international acclaim as a distinctive cinematic artist of outstanding talent.

Born to blue-collar parents shortly after the start of the Depression, Eastwood spent his first decade travelling around California as his father sought work. The hardship and loneliness he experienced during those years influenced him deeply, fostering a wariness of institutions and authority figures and a keen sense of injustice and inequality, which in turn inflected many of the films he would make. After leaving school, he worked in various jobs, served in the army and attended Los Angeles City College, before his tall, athletic physique led to an acquaintance recommending him for an audition at Universal. Numerous undistinguished bit-parts ensued; far more momentous was his being cast as Rowdy Yates, handsome young ramrod in the long-running TV western series Rawhide (1959 to 1965). 

Eastwood was not particularly fond of the role or the gruelling work schedule, but used his time playing the wagonmaster’s sidekick to learn about directing; moreover, the series’ success led to his being invited to Europe by the then little known Sergio Leone to take the lead in the Italian western A Fistful of Dollars (1964). Appreciative of the chance to play a cool, laconic, seemingly amoral antihero, Eastwood amplified the Man with No Name’s enigmatic charisma by persuading Leone to cut his already sparse dialogue still further. A surprise hit that created a worldwide appetite for ‘spaghetti westerns’, the film was followed by For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966); Leone’s ‘Dollars trilogy’ turned Eastwood into an international star.

The trilogy made Eastwood enough money to set up The Malpaso Company, which was involved in all his subsequent films. The first production, unsurprisingly, was the Leone-esque western Hang ’Em High (1968); more rewarding were five films directed by Don Siegel, which not only built on Eastwood’s stardom but enabled him to stretch himself as an actor: most notably, The Beguiled, Dirty Harry (both from 1971) and 1979’s Escape from Alcatraz (the last making quasi-Bressonian use of his famously restrained – some would say limited – acting style) provided intriguing studies of troubled masculinity, a theme which would recur throughout Eastwood’s own career as director.

In 1971 Eastwood made his debut behind the camera as well as starring in Play Misty for Me, a taut thriller – clearly influenced by Siegel – about a radio DJ stalked by a fan he slept with. He followed it with High Plains Drifter (1973), a baroque western again paying homage to Leone. Then, against expectation, he directed (this time without taking a speaking role) Breezy (1973), a tender, non-judgmental, admirably unsentimental account of the fragile romance between a middle-aged man and a young hippie. The unlikeliness – and, indeed, commercial riskiness – of the project presaged the director’s many later forays beyond the crime and western genres that had brought him fame, just as his next film – The Eiger Sanction (1975) – exemplified his then occasional lapses into heroic hokum or artistic misjudgement.

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), however – which Eastwood took over when he felt writer-director Philip Kaufman was working too slowly – revealed what a fine director he could be. Indebted neither to Leone nor to Siegel, it exhibited a sure, strong sense of narrative, character, purpose, place, pace and composition. Just as his own performance exuded a new confidence and complexity, so his mise-en-scène felt bold and to the point, acutely aware of generic traditions while happy to ignore or work against conventions should the drama demand. The storytelling was vibrant and lucid, offering fascinating insights into issues of heroism, revenge and justice, alienation and community, race and gender – themes treated with a light touch, serious yet tempered with irony and wit. It announced Eastwood’s maturity as a director.

Nevertheless, it would be a decade before his skills in this capacity were widely acknowledged, largely because he alternated intriguingly quirky, quietly impressive projects such as Bronco Billy (1980), Honkytonk Man (1982) and Tightrope (1984) – mostly directed by Eastwood despite writer Richard Tuggle being afforded the credit – with appearances in a number of comparatively lacklustre crime and action movies (some of which the star directed). In two action comedies about a bare-knuckle fighter – Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and Any Which Way You Can (1980), which number among his biggest box-office hits – his co-star was an orangutan. 

In the late 80s, however, he hit his directorial stride with a string of ambitious, adventurous, imaginatively crafted films that included Bird (1988), White Hunter Black Heart (1990), Unforgiven (1992), A Perfect World (1993) and The Bridges of Madison County (1995). Thereafter, while his output was uneven, there was very little that was without interest, and many features ranked among the finest of their year: Space Cowboys (2000), Mystic River (2003), Million Dollar Baby (2004), the Pacific war diptych Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima (both 2006), Changeling (2008), Gran Torino (2008), American Sniper (2014), Sully (2016) and Richard Jewell (2019) were the most satisfying, but even his lesser achievements had their virtues.

Many of Eastwood’s films from the late 80s onwards were difficult to categorise in terms of genre, given that he played fast and loose with conventions, focusing on flawed characters and unusual narratives; moreover, the range of subject matter was remarkable. (Eastwood told this writer that he liked to keep himself fresh by embracing the inevitability of change.) Many of the films were based on real people or events, but even the outright fictions are firmly rooted in a recognisably human reality. Certain themes and motifs recur: troubled or toxic masculinity; the strength and determination of women in a patriarchal world; the vulnerability of children; racial, sexual and social tensions; the struggle to survive against the persistent possibility of loneliness and failure, violence and death; the nature of heroism and the interplay of idealism, compromise, hypocrisy and corruption; the healing potential of love, friendship and community; then, latterly, the expectations and experience of growing old. There was, in short, a great deal of darkness in his work, both visually and philosophically.

Indeed, form and content complemented one another very fruitfully in his best films. Stylistically, there was considerable consistency. Famous for filming quickly, preferring single takes and a familiar team of long-term collaborators, Eastwood favoured a mise-en-scène as unassertive and understated as his acting. Music (sometimes written by himself) was generally used sparingly and subtly; camera movements and cutting were eloquent but unemphatic; big dramatic scenes were often eschewed. In some ways, Eastwood seemed a successor to Howard Hawks and John Ford, though his ‘classicism’ always allowed for experimentation; an avowed lover of jazz, he happily combined traditional tropes with flexibility and improvisation. Averse to rhetorical excess, he trusted in his viewers’ capacity to respond to an aesthetic notable for its balance, discretion, restraint and quiet, unsentimental compassion. Having himself grown up with radio, rather than providing audiences with too much information, he preferred to draw them into a film by stimulating their imaginations.

The fundamentally unpretentious honesty, modesty, wit and intelligence of Eastwood’s work seemed, perhaps, to reflect his own personality; clearly, for much of his later career, he selected projects with which he could identify on some level. He knew his interests, his strengths and his limitations, and remained true to them. He was not only a towering figure in the American cinema – and, indeed, in international mainstream film –  but a major artist fully deserving of serious critical attention, analysis and acclaim.