Clint Eastwood once named his most misunderstood movie: “It alienated the people”
Cinematic personas play a major part in defining an actor’s public perception, and that was certainly the case for Clint Eastwood, who, for many fans around the world, will always be the ‘Man with No Name’. His stoic portrayal of an exceptionally skilled gunslinger in Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy is a huge part of his acting legacy and will most likely be a significant point of reference for any conversations revolving around his work.
That symbolic association with the gun-toting archetype was only deepened by the Dirty Harry movies, even though Eastwood went on to diversify his body of work with his widely acclaimed directorial projects, such as The Bridges of Madison County. Although it can be argued that it was the audience’s adoration of that image that contributed to Eastwood’s success and gave him the opportunity to do other things in the future, it also had its drawbacks.
One negative aspect of it directly impacted the reception of his 1971 collaboration with filmmaker Don Siegel, The Beguiled. A gothic psychological thriller that is set during the American Civil War, Eastwood stars as a wounded soldier who finds himself recovering from his injuries in a girls’ school, caught in a strange psychosexual dynamic. In Paul Nelson’s book Conversations with Clint, the star of the movie explained how disappointed he was with the project’s failure.
Eastwood said: “I’ve been accused of falling back to action-oriented films because of the failure commercially of that picture, but that isn’t the truth at all. That just happened to be a unique story. It touched me at the time, and it was a time in life to try that. I’d do it again. Maybe if we did that story today, the audience might go for it, I think, if presented well. Don feels that the studio deserted us on it. We had offers to take it to the Cannes Film Festival, for instance. I think it would’ve won it.”
According to Eastwood, studio executive Lew Wasserman put his foot down and said that they wouldn’t spend any money on its Cannes promotion or the film festival circuit. In addition to all of this, the poster for The Beguiled featured Eastwood holding a gun, which led many fans to believe that it was another Eastwood action flick that they could enjoy.
The actor added: “Clint Eastwood with a gun in his hand wasn’t the way to advertise the picture. He does hold a gun in his hand in a couple of quick shots in the film. But what it did was it alienated the people who might have been attracted to that film. It also alienated the people who wanted the other kind. The people who wanted A Fistful of Dollars, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly went thinking it was maybe another film like that, and they saw it and they said, ‘Oh no, we don’t like this. He gets his leg cut off and he’s killed and we don’t want that.'”
All of these factors combined to contribute to its eventual failure, but The Beguiled is an interesting addition to Eastwood’s oeuvre that showed he was ready to play against type even during his prime years. It’s mostly viewed as a curiosity in that context by fans today, because Siegel’s attempt at arthouse stylisations and Eastwood’s efforts to avoid being pigeonholed combine to produce something truly odd, and not necessarily in a good way.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Clint Eastwood Newsletter
All the latest stories about Clint Eastwood from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.