Because of the stranger's expertise with a gun, the town votes to hire him at any cost to protect Lago from three outlawsStacey Bridges (Geoffrey Lewis), Bill Borders (Scott Walker), and Cole Carlin (Anthony James)who have just been released from jail after they brutally whipped to death Lago's previous Marshal Jim Duncan (Buddy Van Horn) and who are believed to be on their way back to Lago. A film version broadcast on the Sundance Channel in 2020 has a few words noticeably cut out. More straightforward when Morgan punches out Mordecai. Theyre already in hell for their sins (at least everyone other than Verna Bloom, who was the only person who tried to help Duncan). Bach, Cantata 6, at the Second Day of Easter Light and Darkness of Existence, The Ferryman's Obolus Mahler and Freud Meet in Leiden II:III, J.S. 2023 METACRITIC, A FANDOM COMPANY. Here its different though, and we see the cruel behaviour for what it is, even if some of the victims deserve retribution. In this, then, is also created the possibility of free will. Do we, then,find ourselvesunable to know how to act ethically in oursociety a society that glorifies, Den Vergulden Turk, where Mahler and Freud met, Breestraat, Leiden, Netherlands The subject of Mahler and Freud Meet in, Constellations of Desire Constellations of Desire forms the third part of Solitary Ethics, a sequence on ethical and moral, The Meadow Trail, as it leaves the forest for the light, Stanley Park, Vancouver. Drifter is lauded as being one of the very first revisionist westerns as opposed to the classic traditional westerns. The next morning, Sarah tells the Stranger that Duncan cannot rest in peace because the town buried him in an unmarked grave. Is 'High Plains Drifter' based on a book. New #Steelers TE Darnell Washington would have gone much higher than late-third round but "medical zonked him," as one scout said. Yeah, I'm thinking that this guy doesn't so much drift the high plains, as much as he drifts the regular plains, while high, which would be appropriate, considering he is the prince of sin. University Press of Mississippi . That night, in his hotel room, the Stranger dreams of Jim Duncan, a U.S. From a moviemaker's point of view, they're not necessary to drive the plot. High Plains Drifter (1973) on IMDb: Movies, TV, Celebs, and more. [] Eastwood, Clint: High Plains Drifter (1973.) []. Cookie policy. It is one of those examples, I Lombardi, Verdis fourth opera, is set during the First Crusade. the marshal was killed because he was going to close down the mine, the Stranger is the ghost of the dead marshal, given that he relives the marshal's death, which he wasn't there for otherwise. [7] Over 50 technicians and construction workers built an entire town14 houses, a church, and a two-story hotelin 18 days, using 150,000 feet of lumber. Cookie Notice After gunning down three desperado's who tried to kill him, the town hires the gunfighter to help defend the town from three murderous outlaws. 0-00-638354-8. Revelation 21:8 reads: But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.. Clint Eastwood brought the movie in on time and under budget, so he must have concentrated on the town's businessmen and a few choice townspeople to tell the story efficiently.If it helps from the viewpoint of telling the story, keep in mind that most of the scenes were shot in daylight. Dee Barton wrote the film score. "Film Reviews: High Plains Drifter". Think of the miners as working in the mines and therefore unseen during the day. | High Plains Drifter is Western star Clint Eastwoods first attempt at directing one of his own westerns. A gunfighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago and is hired to bring the townsfolk together in an attempt to hold off three outlaws who are on their way. "@shane130 @JFowlerESPN I disagree he would be good in 1975. I'm 98% sure the idea for this is drawn from that movie. For the first and last time in his career, High Plains Drifter would prove that he might just want to be both. Terms and Policies Hes a mysterious fellow, cool and gruff looking and noticeably viler than the usual Eastwood western character. After the Stranger kills a group of men hired by the cowardly townspeople to protect Lago, the town's elders decide to hire the Stranger as their protector. Read our extensive list of rules for more information on other types of posts like fan-art and self-promotion, or message the moderators if you have any questions. . Over the course of the movie, Eastwoods Stranger acts as if hes Lagos savior, but hes not interested in protecting them, he wants them to pay for Duncans murder. In an interview, Eastwood said that earlier versions of the script made the Stranger the dead marshal's brother. Returning to Lago, the Stranger inspects the preparationsthe entire town painted red, armed men on rooftops, picnic tables laden with food and drink, and a big "WELCOME HOME BOYS" bannerthen he silently departs again. Clint Eastwood's America . Book: Cornell, Drucilla . The townspeople are scared of him, and three gunmen try, unsuccessfully, to kill him. Your AMC Ticket Confirmation# can be found in your order confirmation email. After scouting locations alone in a pickup truck in Oregon, Nevada and California,[7] he settled on the "highly photogenic" Mono Lake area. , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes. Ghost Images: Cinema of the Afterlife . Anyway Clint Eastwood stars in and directs HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER which is a mystery western and quite dark, bloody and cool. Director Clint Eastwood: Attention to Detail and Involvement for the Audience. The scene disturbs more than the death by gun fire, only momentarily earlier, of three men by the same stranger who rapes the woman. Zito, Tom (May 29, 1973). If the film is memorable, it's for the themes and relatively gripping latter acts, and while I wish there was more inspiration throughout the film in order to make the final product rewarding on the whole, when the drama bites, it grips as an at least almost rewarding thriller. A mysterious, unnamed stranger rides out of the desert, wearing a duster & black hat, into the isolated, lake mining town of Lago in the American Old West. A mysterious drifter referred to only as "The Stranger" rides into the dismal mining town of Lago, which has a crisis on its hands: three ruthless gunmen are making their way to the town so they can settle scores over an old wrong done to them by the townspeople. Duncan made a Faustian bargain with the devil. Get the freshest reviews, news, and more delivered right to your inbox! That isn't the American people who settled this country. I was mostly satisfied by the story as the more it went on the more I got interested. After the film came out and wound up being a big box-office hit, Eastwood wrote a fannish letter to John Wayne, suggesting that they make a movie together. All we know is it is very difficult to side with him as a protagonist and as such we are left with an uneasy feel throughout the film from which we can only be unburdened after knowing just what he wants and why hes doing it but we never do, which is probably why I was left with such an uncomfortable feeling after the film was finished. A gunslinger emerges from a desert's shimmering horizon like an apparition. Brings back the memory of my Dad bringing home a . Movies. There's always retribution for your deeds. Privacy Policy Slaughter may be by burning, beheading, or throttling. Actor Geoffrey Lewis, who appeared in many Clint Eastwood films and made several appearances in TV shows throughout the '60s and '70s, has died of natural causes, a family friend told Variety. Book: Green, Philip . As he leaves, he paints over the town sign with a single word: "Hell". The locals are impressed, enough to vote in town council to let Sheriff Sam Shaw (Walter Barnes) explain those were hired guns overstepping their task. [5], The 'ghost story' interpretation of the film favoured by Eastwood is hinted at strongly throughout the movie, suggesting that the Stranger may be the ghost of slain Federal Marshall Jim Duncan, returning for vengeance and justice; the beginning and end of the film sees the Stranger mysteriously emerge, apparition-like, as he rides into and out of Lago through a shimmering heat-haze. | He seems to enjoy giving them misery. Edit, After having the townfolk paint the entire town red, rename it "Hell", and set up a picnic and welcoming banner for the outlaws' return, the Stranger rides out of town, leaving them to fight their own battle against the three outlaws that brutally whipped Duncan to death while the townies stood and watched. .css-gk9meg{display:block;font-family:Lausanne,Arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;padding-top:0.25rem;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-gk9meg:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.15;margin-bottom:0.25rem;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0.625rem;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 73.75rem){.css-gk9meg{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.2;}}The Best, Craziest, Weirdest Moments From Cannes, Celebrities Who've Shaved Their Heads for Roles, 'Avatar: The Way of Water' Is Finally Streaming, 'Guardians of the Galaxy 3' Sticks the Landing, Damon Lindelof Was 'Asked to Leave' Star Wars, Christopher Nolan Is Hyping Up 'Oppenheimer', Pedro Pascal, Ethan Hawke Are a Great Cowboy Match, Seeing Hugh Grant's Oompa Loompa Will Break Me, 'The Flash' Just Debuted Another Massive Trailer, 13 Great Movies That Were Booed at Cannes. The scene where Clint Eastwood is about to get his clean shave is honestly cinema at it's best. I don't suppose the film, running only a little over 100 minutes, is too draggy, but there are a few overdrawn set pieces, some of which are a little forceful in a manner which makes the implied twists sort of obvious sooner that they ostensibly should be, or at least leaves the plot to outstay its welcome enough to hit formulaic moments. "[20], The film was recognized by American Film Institute in 2008 on AFI's 10 Top 10 in the category "Nominated Western Film". High Plains Drifter. Get a list of the best movie and TV titles recently added (and coming What to Watch Right Now on Amazon's Prime Video. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. And in 1971, he finally got his shot with the paranoia-drenched Fatal Attraction prototype Play Misty for Me. As the outlaws make their way back into Lago, they discover that the town is not exactly as they had left it, and waiting in the shadows is the Stranger, ready to expose the town's secret and serve up his own brand of justice. "[15], Arthur D. Murphy of Variety called it "a nervously humorous, self-conscious near satire on the prototype Clint Eastwood formula of the avenging mysterious stranger. You see, Lago is a town with a past. Well, the big difference with this particular "man with no name" character is that no one dubs Eastwood in Italian, and there is way more weird stuff surrounding him then there ever was in a Sergio Leone western. You know, the rhythm of this title really makes me think of "Catch Scratch Fever", and you know, I'll run with it, because it's better than getting the Beastie Boys song stuck in my head. The character of Marshal Duncan was played by Buddy Van Horn, Eastwood's long-time stunt double, to suggest that he and the Stranger could be the same person. There is the unusual, The characterization, on the stage, eminently well contrasts the well intentioned and truehearted peasant Luisa with the, From time to time, I revisit the 1932-37 recordings of the Beethoven piano sonatas by Artur Schnabel. [5] An uncredited rewrite of the script was provided by Dean Riesner, screenwriter of other Eastwood projects. In addition to the cruel nature of the film there is a surprising supernatural element at play. Eastwood reportedly liked the offbeat quality of the film's original nine-page proposal and approached Universal with the idea of directing it. The film stars Eastwood as a mysterious stranger who metes out justice in a corrupt frontier mining town. "[15], Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "a stylized, allegorical western of much chillingly paranoid atmosphere and considerable sardonic humor that confirms Eastwood's directorial flair. Anti-heroes are still common, but with stronger roles for women and more-sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans and Mexicans. The, Cantata 182, composed in 1713, is for Palm Sunday, which is the first day of Holy Week and the Sunday before Easter, and. Its also a film that deserves to be seen by anyone who has a sweet tooth for the genre or thinks they have a bead on Eastwood as a filmmaker. This particular revisionist western is characterized by trippy, almost abstractionist artistic touches that are admirable as unique, and not even all that overwrought, yet the occasions in which the offbeat meditations are overplayed stand, distancing subjective value with artistic non-conventions to storytelling. When the movies exploded like TNT overseas, no one was more surprised than Eastwood to learn that he had transformed into a global superstar overnight. Book: Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra . Given that he was mentored by the likes of Don Siegel and my personal favourite director Sergio Leone it's no wonder that Eastwood went on to make hits like The Outlaw Josey Wales and Unforgiven. That isn't the American people who settled this country. The Stranger only agrees to take up the role after the town meets his bizarre demands including painting the town's buildings red and rechristening the town itself as "Hell". There's also, of course, the last line of dialogue in the movie. But like a Broadway-trained thespian who periodically returns to the stage to keep his or her instincts honed, Eastwood would keep circling back to the genre that had first forged his mythology in a crucible of six-shooters and squinting glances, the Western. Now, with those murderers just released from prison, they want Eastwoods Stranger to defend them. Please enter your birth date to watch this video: You are not allowed to view this material at this time. Speaking about the composition, Hammett said he didn't set out to write a song based on the movie, but upon finishing it, he realized it "conveyed the same sentiment as the film, so the piece was christened accordingly. [4] The film was influenced by the work of Eastwood's two major collaborators, film directors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel. Here is a list of locations where High Plains Drifter is shot at, read on . By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. This script is a transcript that was painstakingly transcribed using the screenplay and/or viewings of High Plains Drifter. After being shot at by the town's three hired gunmen, the stranger shoots all three and then asks for a room for the night. 0786484217 . Although hed already appeared in more than a dozen often-uncredited, blink-and-youll-miss-them parts by 1959, Eastwoods career was salvaged when he was cast that year as Rowdy Yates on the hit TV oater, Rawhide. Edit, American screenwriter Ernest Tidyman wrote the screenplay for High Plains Drifter and followed it up with a 1973 novelization of the film. "[20] John Wayne criticized the film's iconoclastic approach; in a letter to Eastwood, he wrote, "That isn't what the West was all about. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. the dolly shot and zoom in the final scene showing Marshal Jim Duncan's name on the gravestone Mordecai just finished engraving after The Stranger tells him that he does in fact know The Stranger's name establishes at the very least that he came to town to avenge Duncan's death. Verified reviews are considered more trustworthy by fellow moviegoers. The jail-freed trio realizes too late that he's after vengeance for the whip-torment they inflicted on weakling Marshal Jim Duncan (Buddy Van Horn) years ago, still the stranger's daily nightmare. Cracks in the Pedestal Ideology and Gender in Hollywood . attempting to shoot the Stranger in the back after he's killed all the gunmen is remarkably similar to the remaining Rojo brother trying to shoot The Man With No Name in the back after he's killed everybody else in. And maybe it stung the young director at the time. Under a joint production between Malpaso and Universal, the original screenplay was written by Ernest Tidyman, who had won a Best Screenplay Oscar for The French Connection.[6]. 20th highest-grossing film released in 1973, American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood, http://powergrid.thewrap.com/project/high-plains-drifter, https://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=highplainsdrifter.htm, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/oct/07/guardianinterviewsatbfisouthbank, Kino: Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter Detailed for Blu-ray, Metallicas Kirk Hammett Soundtracks a Six-String Shootout on New Song High Plains Drifter. Dialogue earlier in the film, and the final scene with Mordecai strongly imply, however, that he's. Universal wanted Eastwood to shoot the feature on its back lot, but Eastwood opted instead to film on location. Meanwhile, a group of outlaws are about to return to the town and take their revenge. Mordecai says, "I never did know your name," to which the Stranger replies, "Yes, you do." Under a joint production between Malpaso and Universal, the original screenplay was written by Ernest Tidyman, who had won a Best Screenplay Oscar for The French Connection.[5]. A Stranger (Clint Eastwood) rides into in the dusty mining town of Lago, where the townspeople are living in the shadow of a dark secret. Find a list of the best recent and upcoming film and TV titles added to Music title data, credits, and images provided by, Movie title data, credits, and poster art provided by. Clint Eastwood: Interviews . Which brings us to 1973s High Plains Drifter, a movie thats so frequently overlooked and uncharacteristically strange and surreal that it sticks out like a sore, red-painted thumb in the long sweep of Eastwoods filmography. High Plains Drifter. Written by Ernest Tidyman, who was a bit of an uncategorizable genre schizophrenic himself having already written both the Blaxploitation classic Shaft and earned a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The French Connection, High Plains Drifter is a haunting and haunted supernatural revenge story about a mysterious, cigarillo-chewing man with no name (guess who?) But looking back now, Id say that Eastwood comes out of that exchange looking like the victor. He looks like the tight-lipped, cigar-chewing sharpshooter of Hang 'Em High or Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy, and on paper High Plains Drifter certainly reads like your typical Clint Eastwood western. The CulturalRites article on his most interesting film is available here. In Biblical accounts, Mordecai sat in the kings gate to signify his intimacy to the ruler, or, in the film, the stranger. [19], Nigel Andrews of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that "after Play Misty For Me, High Plains Drifter emerges as a disappointingly sterile exercise in style, suggesting that the first thing Eastwood should do as a director is forget the lessons he has learned from other film-makers and start to forge a convincing style of his own. Scan this QR code to download the app now. Even when the film is traditional in structure, it's often distancing, for Eastwood's quiet directorial intensity is often more quiet than intense, and therefore more dry than Eastwood can handle as a sophomore directorial storytelling, resulting in dullness that is the biggest issue of the final product. Tidyman's screenplay was inspired by the real-life murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens in 1964, which eyewitnesses reportedly stood by and watched. Just below that it reads "Ticket Confirmation#:" followed by a 10-digit number. User Ratings Jefferson, N.C . High Plains Drifter is a morality tale carved out of the harsh Western desert and directed with a panache that synthesized the styles of Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, two directors who had worked with Eastwood frequently. The next day, Lago's town council, needing to replace the three gunmen, offer the Stranger anything he wants to protect the town from Bridges and the Carlins, who will soon be released from prison. Coming Soon. That, however, is small comfort as this cold, gory and overthought movie unfolds. Some critics thought Eastwood's directing derivative; Arthur Knight in Saturday Review remarked that Eastwood had "absorbed the approaches of Siegel and Leone and fused them with his own paranoid vision of society". With the possible exception of John Wayne, no actor was more synonymous with the movie Western during the second half of the 20th Century than Clint Eastwood. Not for nothing did it earn a controversial X rating in the U.K. when it opened there. This kind of uncertain pussyfooting around from us as the viewer is much like the townspeoples choice of not choosing a side when the poor man was being whipped. "[14] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 3 stars out of 4 and wrote, "What does work very well indeed is Eastwood's presence, personal style, and direction. Robert E. . In some details they will seem inappropriate at the moment but it is not wasted. It is the first Western film that he both directed and starred in. "[10] The graveyard set featured in the film's final scene included tombstones inscribed "Sergio Leone" and "Don Siegel" as a humorous tribute to the two influential directors. original, Release Date (Streaming): Some critics thought Eastwood's directing derivative; Arthur Knight in Saturday Review remarked that Eastwood had "absorbed the approaches of Siegel and Leone and fused them with his own paranoid vision of society". In High Plains Drifter, the Stranger is all but a Devil in a film brimming with nihilism; in Pale Rider, very much the positive to that film's negative, morals aren't quite so out of reach, and the Preacher is gradually revealed to be something of a Christ figure. As they unknowingly beat a dummy in the bed, the Stranger tosses a stick of dynamite into the room, destroying most of the hotel, then shoots two of his attackers dead, as Morgan flees, wounded. By creating an account, you agree to the University of Massachusetts Press . [22], High Plains Drifter was first released on DVD by Universal Studios Home Video on February 24, 1998.
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