The only director who beat Clint Eastwood at his own game: “Too lean and economical for me”
If there’s one thing that defines Clint Eastwood as a director, it’s economy. The actor and filmmaker has become famous for his unfussy, no-frills, and no-bullshit shooting style, where anything more than two takes of any given shot is tantamount to sacrilege.
It’s been over half a century since he made his feature-length debut on the other side of the camera, and that’s the way it’s always been. In fact, Eastwood set out his stall with the very first scene of his directorial career, which was achieved in a third of the time he’d allocated in the schedule.
Since then, it’s become a trademark. While there are plenty of auteurs who’d happily rack up thousands of feet of film capturing dozens upon dozens of takes, even mentioning a potential third bite at the apple is enough to place any performer on the receiving end of the Hollywood icon’s signature squint.
It hasn’t stopped him from winning four Academy Awards and helming a raft of classic films, with Eastwood the living embodiment of cinematic efficiency. He shoots exactly what he needs to, moves onto the next setup, and always brings his pictures in on time and on budget at the very least.
Remarkably, though, he once encountered a director who was too economical for his liking. Admittedly, this happened several years before Eastwood took the reins on his first movie, 1971’s Play Misty for Me, but it’s nonetheless curious that someone of his reputation was left staggered by how little footage the Italian neorealist favourite, Vittorio De Sica, worked with on The Witches.
The Dirty Harry and Unforgiven legend was fresh from the success of Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy when he appeared in a segment of the 1967 anthology movie, and Eastwood was astounded by the way De Sica barrelled through as many scenes as possible as quickly as he could.
“His way of directing was to get to a certain point, cut, move the thing around to this point, then move around to this point, and do it all in sections. It was really lean,” he explained to Paul Nelson. “It was the leanest, most economical shooting I’ve ever seen. It was too lean and economical for me. I wouldn’t cover quite that lean. I’d give myself a few other outs so I could have a little bit of playroom.”
The man who blasted Matt Damon for daring to ask for a third take and left Judi Dench aghast when he refused to allow her another shot at a scene he was convinced she’d already nailed branded De Sica as “too lean and economical,” which illustrates just how rapidly the influential auteur moved through ‘An Evening Like the Others’, where Eastwood starred opposite Silvana Mangano.
For five decades and change, the grizzled multi-hyphenate has been regarded as Hollywood’s ultimate directorial economist, planning and organising his productions so that there isn’t an ounce of fat on their filmic bones. And yet, De Sica didn’t only play Eastwood at his own game before he’d even played it for the first time; he beat him.
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