• Many similarities in the artistic form with both Siegel’s dirty harry (also from 1971) and eastwood’s outlaw josey wales in 1976. All three are shot by Bruce Surtees (lenny 1974) – like Dirty Harry and many other great films this was scored by Lalo Schifrin.
  • Beautiful war photo montage over title sequence to start the film—song is sung hauntingly by eastwood himself and it’s from “The Dove She Is a Pretty Bird.”—lines include “…don’t join no army”—quite a statement again in 1971
  • Faded color directly after black and white photo title sequence to blend in that slowly changes to color
  • Elizabeth Hartman (patch of blue) is perfect as the wispy and fragile Edwina
  • It’s strong stuff from Clint as well- he’s best when he’s going toe to toe with Page who was an 8 time nominee- no idea, and it’s a shame, how the beguiled wasn’t nom #9 for her
  • Multiple voice-overs—which is really just siegel going with the inner thoughts of the various characters to reveal key thoughts at key times—I don’t like this at all—and it wasn’t needed. These actors were good enough without that ploy
  • Jo Ann Harris is also perfectly cast as the sexy harlet
  • Gorgeous Spanish moss here but not lingered on like coppola’s film or Django for example
  • Nihilism—not unlike the work for kurosawa in a dog eat dog world or like Polanski’s cul-de-sac were there are no redeeming characters—flashback at a key time shows even Eastwood to be a liar
  • Gorgeous surrealism montage sequence of client with page and Hartman in bed to organ music
  • Well-directed and acted gothic southern horror, A dark film
  • Fringe top 10 of 1971
  • Highly Recommend