I liked him in Rawhide, Hang 'em High, Coogan's Bluff and Kelly's Heroes. I didn't mind him in Paint Your Wagon. Two Mules For Sister Sara was okay, too. That's about it.
He's been saying NEVER AGAIN to westerns for a long time. He doesn't like westerns. He never did. Making westerns was something everybody did when his career started but he left them behind a couple of times. He has stated that after UNFORGIVEN he'd never make another.
“He doesn’t like westerns” He was in loads. Not saying he has to act in a western but direct. Maybe a HBO series How The West Was Won, for example...only has to direct one part.
I guess you could say I'm a fan, but started losing interest when it occurred to me that many of his movies follow a similar script. A retired ____ is recruited one last time to solve ______. Some higher up is rooting against him, but he is determined to prove everybody wrong. In the midst of all this he manages to get laid. If you really want to have some fun, seek out some movies by the famous Japanese director Akira Kurasawa. His production company successfully sued Eastwood's for plagiarizing the scripts for the early Eastwood westerns. I took a film class about Kurasawa and was shocked at the similarities. Akira Kurosawa - Wikipedia
I like to think that Clint's early work exposed American audiences to Kurasawa's classic plots and themes. Kinda like the way The Rolling Stones and Yardbirds inspired me with their great cover versions to dig deeper into the Chess Records catalogue when I was a lad back in the mid-60s.
I rewatched Gran Tourino a couple weeks ago. It's amazing that Clint can act and direct so effectively to get those performances out of his other actors. They never break character or take you out of the situations in the film. In terms of budget, he always does so much with so little.
Clint was merely a hired hand on "A Fistful of Dollars". It was the director Sergio Leone who was sued and had to pay up. This from Wikipedia: The film was effectively an unofficial and unlicensed remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1961 film Yojimbo (written by Kurosawa and Ryūzō Kikushima), lifting traditional themes and character tropes usually typified within a Jidaigeki film. Kurosawa insisted that Leone had made "a fine movie, but it was my movie."[47] Leone ignored the resulting lawsuit, but eventually settled out of court, reportedly for 15% of the worldwide receipts of A Fistful of Dollars and over $100,000.
Are you? Clint appeared in the TV series Rawhide as a supporting player until the last season when they made him the star. Clint made 3 spags in Spain and Italy: A Fistful of Dollars For a Few Dollars More The Good the Bad and the Ugly which don't really count as westerns. In content they are European farce with almost no content about the American west. In the USA Clint made 8 westerns: 1968 Hang 'em High 1969 Paint Your Wagon 1970 Two Mules For Sister Sara 1972 Joe Kidd 1973 High Plains Drifter 1976 The Outlaw Josie Wales 1985 Pale Rider 1992 Unforgiven Roy Rogers made more westerns in one year than Clint Eastwood did in his entire life. Rogers made 79 westerns plus his own TV western series. And Gene Autry starred in more westerns and TV episodes than Rogers. James Stewart, Joel McCrea, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Allen Ladd, Audie Murphy, Gary Cooper and Randolph Scott each starred in ten times more westerns than Clint. Compare the number of Clint's to those starring Randolph Scott: 1962 Ride the High Country 1960 Comanche Station 1959 Westbound 1959 Ride Lonesome 1958 Buchanan Rides Alone 1957 Decision at Sundown 1957 Shoot-out at Medicine Bend 1957 The Tall T 1956 7th Cavalry 1956 Seven Men Fr0m Now 1955 A Lawless Street 1955 Rage at Dawn 1955 Tall Man Riding 1955 Ten Wanted Men 1954 The Bounty Hunter 3D 1954 Riding Shotgun 1953 The Man Behind the Gun 1953 The Stranger Wore a Gun 3D 1953 Thunder Over the Plains 1952 Carson City 1952 Hangman's Knott 1952 Man In the Saddle 1951 Fort Worth 1951 Santa Fe 1951 Sugarfoot 1950 The Cariboo Trail 1950 Colt .45 1950 The Nevadan 1949 Canadian Pacific 1949 The Doolins of Oklahoma 1949 Fighting Man of the Plains 1949 The Walking Hills 1948 Albuquerque 1948 Coroner Creek 1948 Return of the Bad Man 1947 Gunfighters 1947 Trail Street 1946 Abilene Town 1946 Badman's Territory 1944 Belle of the Yukon 1943 The Desperadoes 1942 The Spoilers 1941 Belle Starr 1941 Western Union 1940 Virginia City 1940 When the Daltons Rode 1939 Frontier Marshall 1939 Jesse James 1939 Susannah of the Mounties 1938 The Texans plus a dozen more. Clint "was in loads" of westerns. Yeah right.
Yes, it became abundantly clear that Kurosawa's far east films are more "western" than our western films. For an excellent spoof of westerns and other types of films produced in the golden age of Hollywood, Hail Caesar is an fun exploration of the lack of faith and the fight between capitalism and communism with the studios and their productions.
I’d love to see him return for one more western but it seems that his last one was his goodbye to the genre. How about Dirty Harry in retirement?
I would add The Beguiled which is something of a Gothic Western. For the record, while he wasn’t a star or even a supporting actor, he did make other westerns Star in the Dust (bit part uncredited), The First Traveling Sales Lady (kind of a western comedy at least from a s eating POV), Ambush At Cimerraon Pass (he was third billed). He also made an appearance on Death Valley Days. all before his first Leone westerns and Rawhide. Still not quite as many as the others mentioned. I think we also have to consider that there were less westerns made by the time Eastwood’s career had taken off.
The Beguiled takes place during the Civil War in Georgia. Georgia is not in the west. It's in the east, specifically the southeast. That makes The Beguiled a period drama. I agree it is a very fine film, perhaps Don Siegel's best film, and I like your description of it as Gothic. It is certainly an American Gothic. I don't think Eastwood's work as a background extra, walk-throughs and a line or two on backlot sets count. If I included any other western actor's background work the sheer number would still outdistance Eastwood's. I don't say this to be mean or critical, but simple because it's true. He has made less westerns and contributed less to the genre than any other western actor. In fact, while he may be enormously popular, his impact on the genre has been destructive, when you stop to really examine it.
I don’t think so. He was part of a genre that was on the decline and managed to help reinvent it by providing a modern context to relate to it. I would say that the genre was already changing at the time trying to stay relevant. thinking about it, I agree The Beguiled doesn’t belong in the genre but is part of the American Gothic tradition. For one of the westerns I mentioned he was third billed so more of a supporting role. As I mentioned, these really didn’t matter when it came to the westerns he starred in.
Clint Eastwood does not rule out a return to Westerns He didn’t rule it out as of 2017 he just indicated that he hadn’t seen my other scripts that have interested him. I doubt, though, at his age if he will be doing much in front of the camera and, if the time to revisit Westerns was a possibility, it would have been a decade ago. One of the reasons he did return was because he was excited by Samuel Peeples script for The Unforgiven. as to hating westerns, he’s never indicated that he does and he could have stopped making them ages before he did if he chose to. He is, however, allergic to horses. one other point which is that a western is more about the tropes and themes as there are modern day westerns but the traditional western, yeah, that’s a bit different. Curious take from academic film critics but not inaccurate “In the 1960s academic and critical attention to cinema as a legitimate art form emerged. ... One of the results of genre studies is that some have argued that "Westerns" need not take place in the American West or even in the 19th century, as the codes can be found in other types of films.” But, yeah, I think you can argue they aren’t true westerns.
I'd be interested in hearing how his impact has been destructive to the genre. I think the westerns are how people first got to know Clint as an actor, so the perception that he was a Westerns actor kind of stuck. But I agree the # of pictures is actually relatively few, and I think as soon as he had the power/clout to have more of a say in the type of movies he made, he only very selectively went back to that genre.
