High Plains Drifter
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| High Plains Drifter | |
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 High Plains Drifter movie poster |
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| Directed by | Clint Eastwood |
| Produced by | Robert Daley |
| Written by | Ernest Tidyman Dean Riesner (uncredited) |
| Starring | Clint Eastwood Verna Bloom Marianna Hill Billy Curtis |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | April 19 (1973) |
| Running time | 105 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
High Plains Drifter is a 1973 Western film starring and directed by Clint Eastwood, wherein he plays a character clearly influenced by the Man with No Name from Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and its sequels. Eastwood's direction, too, was inspired by Leone, as the film utilizes often beautiful widescreen compositions (by cinematographer Bruce Surtees) very similar to those seen in the "Dollars" films. High Plains Drifter has a much quicker pace, however, which also indicates the stylistic influence of Eastwood's other mentor, Don Siegel (in fact, Eastwood has noted that the graveyard set featured in the film's finale had tombstones reading "Sergio Leone" and "Don Siegel," intended as a comical "dedication" to both then-living directors).
Filmed on location on the shores of Mono Lake, California, High Plains Drifter is morally complex in the manner of the spaghetti westerns, and introduces the environmental themes that were to appear in a number of Eastwood's later movies. The screenplay was written by Ernest Tidyman and an uncredited Dean Riesner, and Dee Barton provided the film's eerie musical score.
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[edit] Plot
As the film opens, a lone stranger gradually emerges from a shimmering desert horizon and rides into the town of Lago, Arizona. The townspeople eye him warily, and the crack of a teamster's whip emphasizes the tenseness of the air.
The Stranger (Eastwood) enters a bar for a beer and a bottle of whiskey. He is challenged by three gunslingers, only to turn his back and walk away from them. They follow him to the barbershop across the street, where he surprises them and shoots all three dead in an explosion of bullets. Then, insulted by a local woman, he drags her into the livery stable and rapes her. The next day, she tries to kill him while he takes a bath but, although she fires repeatedly at close range, he escapes unscathed by ducking under the water. Afterward, the Stranger asks cynically "Wonder what took her so long to get mad?" "Because maybe you didn't go back for more" replies Mordecai (Mordecai, a dwarf, is the town outcast; he quickly befriends the Stranger, however).
The Stranger moves into the town hotel. When he sleeps, he is troubled by visions of three men with bullwhips flogging a fourth man to death in a street while faceless people watch from the shadows, doing nothing. As the movie progresses, the vision recurs, growing ever more detailed, until the shadowy faces are revealed as those of the townspeople. Only two people object, and only one of these - Mordecai - tries to go to the victim's assistance.
Meanwhile, three felons, due to be released from the jail in Yuma in a few days, are expected to return to the town of Lago and wreak havoc. The men the Stranger gunned down were hired to kill the felons; now, in desperation, the town hires the Stranger to protect them, offering him "anything he might want" in return. The townspeople and the three felons are linked by an illegal mine; they had hired the felons to assassinate the previous town marshal when he discovered the mine was on United States government land. The felons publicly whipped Duncan to death; afterwards, the townspeople framed the murderers for theft from the mine to keep them quiet.
The Stranger takes full advantage of his carte blanche in the town, and his demands are both heavy and bizarre. Eastwood's character exacts a steep price for his help with the three returning felons: though he trains the townspeople and tries to give them a strategy, he also has them literally paint the entire town red; he also makes them set up a picnic table for the returning felons. By the film's end, the Stranger's vengeance is complete: the town is in ruins and many of the prominent citizens are dead or missing; but the men the town has feared are dead, too.
The question that has tormented the townspeople through the movie – who is the Stranger? – is addressed cryptically at the end. Leaving town, the Stranger encounters Mordecai finishing a grave marker apparently at the Stranger's request. Mordecai says to him, "I never did know your name." The Stranger replies, "Yes, you do." Mordecai blanches at the answer, and as the Stranger returns to the shimmering haze of the horizon, the camera pans over the grave marker to reveal the murdered Marshal Jim Duncan's name.
[edit] Interpretation
The only townsperson to entirely escape the Stranger's vengeance is Mordecai, the man who tried to help Duncan. It thus becomes apparent that the Stranger is a ghost, an avenging angel, or both, riding forth from the spirit world to settle a few scores. The supernatural interpretation is supported by the Stranger's recurring visions of the crime, which seem, in fact, to be memories; the setting is Lago, the observers are the townspeople, the man being flogged to death resembles Eastwood, and the Stranger winces as the whips cut into the victim.
Other scenes offer further evidence: the raped woman shoots the Stranger at close range with no effect; the Stranger renames the red-painted town "Hell"; and, in the film's opening and closing shots, the stranger materialises like an apparition from the heat wave, then vanishes back into it. Finally, the Stranger rides a gray horse, an obvious reference to the Fourth Horseman in the Book of Revelation 6:8 "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him" (see also Pale Rider and Unforgiven).
During an interview on Inside the Actors Studio, Eastwood commented that earlier versions of the script made the Stranger the dead marshal's brother. He favored a less explicit and more supernatural resolution, however, and excised the reference, although the French and German dubbings retain it.
[edit] Trivia
- Eastwood had an entire town built on the shores of Mono Lake for the project.
- Filming was completed in only six weeks.
- In an obvious tribute, the barbershop confrontation is virtually identical to one in the 1941 motion picture Western Union.
- John Wayne was reportedly so upset by what he saw as an inaccurate depiction of the West that he wrote Eastwood. Eastwood's reply, if any, is not known.
- The character of Marshall Duncan was played by stuntman Buddy Van Horn in order to create some ambiguity as to whether he and the Stranger are one and the same.
[edit] References
- Guérif, François (1986). Clint Eastwood, p. 94. St Martins Pr. ISB
