“My favourite film”: Clint Eastwood names the greatest movie he’s ever seen
Over the course of a seven-decade career, Clint Eastwood has undergone several reinventions that have made him one of Hollywood’s most indelible icons, but throughout that entire time, his favourite movie has remained exactly the same.
While plenty of people settle on the greatest film they’ve ever seen and refuse to budge from that stance for the rest of their lives, one of the many magical things about cinema is that it’s never a sure thing. Greatness is always lurking around the corner, with opinions hardly set in stone should another title come along that blows the previous number one out of the water.
Always a man of principle, though, Eastwood has remained steadfast. From his days as a struggling unknown to his breakthrough role on Rawhide and then onto silver screen stardom through Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy and the legendary status that followed soon after, one picture has remained so deeply embedded at the top of his personal pile that it’s never coming down.
Eastwood was only 20 years old when it was released, and he was still half a decade removed from his uncredited screen debut in 1955’s monster mash Revenge of the Creature, which just goes to show how much of an impact it made on him. He’s directed 40 films of his own, won four Academy Awards, and headlined everything from Unforgiven and The Outlaw Josey Wales to Dirty Harry and In the Line of Fire, but from his position, Sunset Boulevard has never been bettered.
When it was suggested in jest by Esquire that he and his son Scott team up for a remake of the Billy Wilder classic where he could play the chauffeur, Eastwood seemed mildly offended by the mere suggestion of treading on such sacred ground. “Yeah, right,” he huffed. “Eric von Stroheim. My favourite film.”
What Eastwood loves the most about Sunset Boulevard is that it’s a movie of “two different styles,” brought together by an auteur working at the top of their game. “They style of the silent movie actress, and then with William Holden’s character, someone more contemporary,” he said. “The two styles working so well together. And I always liked Billy Wilder.”
Eastwood has a soft spot for the ‘Golden Age’ having previously named John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley, William Wellman’s The Ox-Bow Incident, and John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre as being among those he cherishes most, as well as Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday. Ironically, they were all released in the 1940s, but it was the first year of the next decade that gave rise to his all-time favourite.
None of them can hold a candle to Sunset Boulevard in his mind, which is closing in on 75 years as Eastwood’s undisputed all-time favourite.
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