Review of The Beguiled (1971) by Daniel E. M — 29 Nov 2010

A film that features no heros, just flat out villians. I am not a huge Eastwood fan, so I am never very flipped out when a time comes along for me to see one of his movies. This one, I will admit, is well made, and has the strangness that you never see in westerns.

It's nothing like one would expect from an Eastwood film. In a way, it's more of a risque drama than it is a western. He's a Union soldier who finds refuge in a Confederate all-girl Christian school house.

Not long after he becomes the envy of everyone residing there. Girls, and women with huge age gaps, begin flocking to him, and wanting him like he's Edward Cullen. He puts the idea in all their heads that he is a gentlemen, but he purposly takes advantage of everyone there.

He is clearly close in his mid-thirties, and he pushes sex on a twenty-two year old, beds a seventeen year old, and even lip locks with a young child. This is just as about appalling to me as that scene in "High Plains Drifter" where Eastwood gallops into town, rapes a women in a barn, and the act is quickly excused because he just maybe the new sheriff in town that everyone has been waiting for.

I didn't like that movie for many reasons, and that one was the main reason, and it was the same with this film as well. Just like I figured; despite all he's done throughout the movie, the film tries to get us to sympathize with his character when awful things befall upon him for his actions.

They also try to make us hate the Page character because she has some serious issues that are revealed to us in the third act, in hopes to maybe overlook what Eastwood has done. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but that is just how it seemed, here.

The movie gets weirder, and a little more uncomfortable when they begin presenting Page's fantasies of Eastwood and students, to the viewer. That's when I began to wonder how many seats were filled by pervs, and pedophiles when this film was first released into theaters.

I did like the fact that the film becomes more macabre, somewhat unexpectedly, later in the second half, but I am still not a fan of the film itself. Very different turn for Eastwood, and the "Dirty Harry" director Don Siegel.