Ah, Clint Eastwood. You really are one of the greatest actors, or directors, or really just icons of all motion picture history – or pop culture in general. I can think of no one else who so fully encapsulates an ideal (masculinity, machismo), and has used a still-ongoing career to fully explore and develop those notions, from youthful brashness on up to mature introspection. And as an icon, Clint, you are a living shorthand for those ideas – hence why your performance in Unforgiven works, while a more “actorly” performance would seem lesser. I mean, any one part of your career would be enough for most superstars; for you, it’s practice.Naturally, Clint’s initial reputation had to come from someplace. The overall story of his delayed and unexpected show business rise is an interesting one – any story that eventually involves the Italians has to be interesting. Still, I have to somewhat limit the focus of this write-up to Dirty Harry, so let’s just say that for many people (myself included), Clint’s iconographic cred had already been sufficiently inked in Sergio Leone’s masterful trio of “Man With No Name” Spaghetti Westerns – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in particular is in my top five movies of all time. (I hope to find some way of twisting my own franchise definitions enough to eventually consider those movies here.) So, while the Italians (and many American genre fans) were well aware of Clint’s awesome prowess towards the end of the ‘60s, Clint had yet to really make a name for himself in mainstream Hollywood.
That name would come about under the tutelage of eminently capable director Don Siegel (the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers), a sort of proto John McTiernan. Their first film together, a modern western called Cogan’s Bluff, didn’t quite set the world on fire, but it did bridge the gap between Eastwood’s western antihero and the modern vigilante we would later fall head over heels in love with – I am talking, of course, of “Dirty” Harry Callahan.
Dirty Harry is one of the stone cold classics of film, though it has been somewhat late to join that party – it is easier respected for its historical place than any particular artistry. But that hardly matters, not when it’s simply as good an action-thriller as it is. And historically, Dirty Harry is of utmost importance for how it determined so much of the nascent action genre’s path. Basically, we all know those stories of the renegade cop who plays by his own rules? Well, Dirty Harry’s not quite the ür-example, but it is the codifier, the film that wholly cemented that logline in its purest form. And with it, action could truly enter the modern age, leaving behind period swashbucklers, spy fantasies, and moody thrillers. (Of course there’s not much in Dirty Harry to the modern eye that says “action” so much as “thriller,” but come on, this stuff had to come from someplace.)
Oddly, Clint wasn’t even the tenth choice for what became his iconic role, nor was Siegel considered for director. The film’s development is a classic tale of ideas evolving, chefs switching, until the original notion in no way resembles the film we have today. Initially it was a script by Harry Julian and Rita Fink called Dead Right, set in New York City…another draft apparently moved it to Seattle. Avowed screenwriter John Milius did an uncredited rewrite, though by all accounts he is the man most responsible for much of the film’s form. It is he who first formed Harry’s persona, a lone gun detective in the mold of Akira Kurosawa’s lesser-seen noir pictures (interesting, since Clint’s Man With No Name derives from Kurosawa’s samurai flicks). Milius is perhaps the all-time master of the movie quote, for not only is he responsible for Harry’s most famous lines here, but he also did the best-known lines from Apocalypse Now, and the USS Indianapolis speech from Jaws. (Terrence Malick, director of Badlands and Days of Heaven, also did a draft. And it’s a pretty big deal movie when Malick only warrants a parenthetical.)
They say this script, for all its pedigree, was originally just supposed to be an ABC Movie of the Week. (Toy Story 2 was also first meant as DTV, and we’ve seen how that series has developed.) God bless the excessive violence in Dirty Harry, for it saved it from such an ignominious fate (as perhaps only Duel has risen phoenix-like from the TV movie muck).
As stated, Clint was on no one’s mind during casting. Hell, he wasn’t even in the right age bracket! – too young. Others considered included the older Burt Lancaster (Sweet Smell of Success), Robert Mitchum (The Night of the Hunter), and John Wayne (the anti-Clint). Ultimately the role was to go to Frank Sinatra, except he broke his wrist eight years back during The Manchurian Candidate, and thus couldn’t carry Harry’s signature Magnum .44. If you know Harry’s character, that’s a pretty big detriment.
Then they started going younger for the role, and still Clint wasn’t considered. Rather it was Marlon Brando (The Island of Dr. Moreau), Steve McQueen (The Towering Inferno), and Paul Newman (The Towering Inferno). Newman personally scorned the role of Harry as “right-wing,” which meant naturally it would be a fit for Clint; it was he who first proposed Eastwood. And isn’t it astounding, how an intended blockbuster action flick could engender such opinions based on its politics?! The ‘70s truly were a different age, where the most disposable big studio output still needed thoughtful and divisive themes, rather than the sanitized pleasantries of entertainment in the decades to follow.
Those themes largely involve vigilantism and victims’ rights, but the proper place to explore those is in the body of the film. Rather, with Clint now finally in place, it behooves us to see how he influenced the long-gestating Dirty Harry. See, it was Clint who moved the film to its iconic San Francisco setting, which is fully appropriate, seeing as…it’s based on the Zodiac Killer! I’ve tried putting off this fact, but there it is! Reportedly, Harry is even based on Dave Toschi, the SFPD officer heading the never-solved Zodiac case…How they wouldn’t set it in San Francisco earlier is beyond me. Especially considering there was already another cop actioner in existence, based on Toschi’s entirely pre-Zodiac exploits – McQueen’s Bullitt, something else I’ve struggled to put off referencing for this long. Hell, there’s every possibility that, had McQueen taken the role, it would’ve just been a Bullitt sequel.
Many directors were considered, most of them most known now for their great films to follow: Sydney Pollack (Three Days of the Condor) and Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back – surely no slouch). Again, it was Clint who proposed the final helmer, Don Siegel. As we know from the final credits in Unforgiven, Clint considers both Siegel and Leone his primary mentors, and here we have Clint in the midst of his schooling under Siegel’s hand.
So now, at long, long last, we have Dirty Harry worked out in its final form, starring Clint, directed by Siegel, concerning the Zodiac Killer and set in San Francisco. And in tribute to the police officers of San Francisco who gave their lives in the line of duty.
A reign of terror has begun, inaugurated by the sniping murder of a girl on a rooftop pool. I feel bad for this girl.
Cue Lalo Schifrin’s astoundingly ‘70s soundtrack, with its distinct, recognizable and dated combo of classical, jazz, and acid rock. It, along with the blurry, shaky, semi-verité cinematography (Bruce Surtees, somewhat channeling Leone), never lets us forget this was 1971. And like that year’s blacksploitation Shaft, the funkity tunage introduces us to Harry, simultaneous with Clint’s actor credit. It’s somewhat lesser an intro than Shaft, for Harry gets no lyrics; he doesn’t need lyrics. Clint’s taciturn, wordless, squinting, raspy…yeah, that’s Clint, and that sums up his general demeanor here. And in investigating the pool shooting, Harry discovers the shooter’s perch on an opposite rooftop, along with a note…
Here in the Mayor’s office is “the Mayor” (John Vernon, an actor whose roles are always something like the Mayor, the Dean, the Principal, the Warden). Here is also “the Police Chief” (John Larch)…way to name your characters, Dirty Harry. The letter, signed by one “Scorpio,” promises more bloodshed unless the city pays him $100,000. This is not at all an unusual starting point for an urban action movie, though in 1971 it was clearly more related to the real Zodiac Killer than to the multitudinous genre clichés to come. Odd how many real world serial killers have yielded cinematic genres: Zodiac gave us action, Ed Gein horror, Jack the Ripper mystery. And in this case, we have Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (from like a week back on this blog) to indirectly thank for influencing Zodiac and bringing us to this point.
Harry is on the case, naturally, but before we can get too far into this, we must establish Harry’s badass credentials. While eating in a greasy diner (beside a marquee for Play Misty for Me, an in-joke that shatters the celebrity paradox), Harry observes a bank robbery in progress across the street. He heads out, produces his iconic Magnum .44 handgun, and blows away several shotgun-toting jigs. (Race is never a central issue in this film, but it remains an uncomfortable undercurrent…it was 1971, after all.) One punk isn’t fully dead yet, affording Harry the chance to loom over him in full iconographic mode and deliver, James Bond aside, the first truly hard boiled one-liner in film history:
“I know what you’re thinking: ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?’ To tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I sort of lost track myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?” Well do ya, punk?”
What a great, great moment, capable alone of jumpstarting an entire franchise! And by modern standards, it’s a rather wordy one-liner (‘cause it has actual content to it), so it’s often misquoted as “Do you feel lucky, punk?” No matter, the punk in question “gots to know,” so Harry pulls the trigger– Click! Ah hah!, Harry was just punking with you! And of he roams, into the midday San Francisco equivalent of a sunset.
Okay, now that Harry’s entered the upper echelons of action hero badassery, it’s back to business. Helicopters patrol all over town, giving us plenty of nice, on-location city footage. (In fact, the only scene that’s obviously not shot in San Francisco is the previous “punk” scene, simply because that’s more mayhem than a real city could handle.) Upon one rooftop, overlooking a church, Scorpio (the cherub-faced Andrew Robinson, who actually received death threats for his role here) prepares for a second sniping. Before he can act, one copter catches sight of him, and Scorpio races away. This is where Dirty Harry really breaks free of its inspiration, for the real Zodiac Killer was never this close to capture. But quite resolutely unlike David Fincher’s non-fictional Zodiac, Dirty Harry is interested in providing cathartic closure to a source of real world anxiety. This isn’t atypical; consider it, Hollywood won World War II roughly 138 times before it was actually won, then they won it again another 1,827 times after the fact. Meaning the Zodiac Killer is roughly 1/1866th as important as World War II, apparently.
Back to the Harry front. His superior, Lt. Al Bressler (Harry Guardino) congratulates Harry for his “pinch” the previous day (the awesome killing of punks). Then Harry is presented with his new partner, in the form of Chico Gonzales (Reni Santoni, best known for Dirty Harry, as is every actor here other than Clint). Now, the new partner, that’s the premise behind an incredibly specific subgenre of cop action flicks, and again we find its seeds being sewn here. Every cop action film finds its DNA whole in this lone 1971 gem. For what it’s worth, Harry’s relationship with Chico never, ever plays the silly “mismatched duo” thing – Chico is simply a sounding board for the reticent, introverted Harry. And here the question is raised: What makes Harry “Dirty?”
Lengthy sequences see Harry and Chico patrolling at night, while the movie does its darnedest to portray all that scrumptious urban decay the ‘70s were famous for. It’s like a dry run for a trend that would culminate in Taxi Driver. Eventually a cop-like incident has to take place, for no cop movie is content with its central plot drive alone. There’s always little minor incidents thrown in throughout – again, Harry is the progenitor of this. And like roughly 80% of all cop flicks, the incident in question is a suicide jumper. (Hell, the current Other Guys features this trope, 21 years after Lethal Weapon said the last word on it.) Harry rescues the jumper using his particular unorthodox methods, which earns his colleagues’ applause rather than condemnation like so many cop movies to follow. But don’t worry, Harry will be criticized for his methods eventually, and when he is, it is far more crucial than in most of the copycats. (Legend has it Clint directed this jumper scene.)
And now we know why he’s “Dirty.” Because all the dirty jobs go to him.
The following day, Harry and Chico respond to Scorpio’s latest misdeed – a 10-year-old boy, black, shot dead. You know, it’s not your normal blockbuster action film. Its villain is an absolute monster.
It’s a long shot, but Harry attempts a stakeout that night at the roof opposite where Scorpio was spotted. Perched beneath a spinning, neon “Jesus Saves” monolith, Harry employs binoculars for a rare backwards reference, to Hitchcock’s Rear Window. But intermingled with the casual 1970s San Francisco nudity is Scorpio himself, right on that roof as before. Soon enough Scorpio and Harry engage each other in a futile cross-rooftop shootout…By current action standards, this is decidedly low-key, but it plays things so realistically that, against all modern tastes, there is a notable amount of excitement. But it’s early yet in the tale, so this cat and mouse game (and I’ve never been quite sure who the mouse is supposed to be in these things) must delay. Scorpio gives Harry the slip, in the process killing a uniformed officer. (Except for the opening, Scorpio’s killings now remain forever off screen, leaving us in Harry’s point of view.)
And his next villainy has already happened, also off screen. Scorpio’s latest letter informs that he has kidnapped a 14-year-old girl, Ann Mary Deacon, who is buried alive with enough air to last until 3 am. Sure, kill the black kids off screen, it’s not a real victim until it’s a white girl! And the next sequence is yet another prediction of movies to come – Scorpio shall lead Harry on a wild chase across town from phone to phone, in hopes of saving poor Ann, Die Hard With a Vengeance style. But Harry takes a page from the original Die Hard and tapes a switchblade to his calve, despite Scorpio’s warning that there shall be no weapons or backup.
Harry’s cross-city trek that night is a chance for a tour of San Francisco’s seediest non-Tenderloin neighborhoods, with many an unpleasant run-in with bums, lowlifes and homosexuals. It’s a lengthy, dark sequence, pulling every thriller variation on answering pay phones they can come up with. Ultimately Harry carries the latest $200,000 ransom to Davidson Park, to the base of a gigantic statue of a cross. (There’s enough religious imagery here to ensure it’s not a fluke, but not enough to force any heavy-handed extra readings. I’d suspect it’s simply symbolism for the victims Harry hopes to save.)
Harry has been run ragged getting to the park, so he is no match for Scorpio. On an even playing field, really, Scorpio isn’t much of a match (surely not for the almighty Clint), but it is his very dishonesty that gives him an edge – he really seems to predict The Dark Knight’s Joker rather nicely, choice victimization and all.) As it is, though, Scorpio is prepared to kill Harry, and thoroughly unprepared to reveal the whereabouts of Ann – there’s every real chance she’s already dead, ‘cause the cynical ‘70s don’t particularly want to get you all hopeful. Harry is only saved by a planned intervention from partner Chico, and by his trusty old switchblade. Soon, everyone is badly injured (Harry beaten, Chico shot non-fatally, and Scorpio stabbed in the thigh). Thus, it’s easy enough for Scorpio to limp his gaywad ass to safety, at one of those Dr. Nick Midnight Clinics for Criminals.
Really, it ought to have been easy enough for Harry to directly pursue Scorpio from the park, but the movie cannot allow that, for it has an ideological point to make. See, Harry is only able to track Scorpio down to his lair (Kezar Stadium) through the doc’s own confession later that night. Thus damn near all of the Fourth Amendment and the attendant Miranda Rights are shattered as Harry storms into the abandoned football field in search of Scorpio, desperate beyond all hope to rescue Ann. So Harry gets the physical better over on Scorpio merely at the end of Act Two, and at the end of the 20 yard line.
Then Harry anticipates “24,” and all the arguments it engendered, by gruesomely torturing Scorpio right then and there, deaf to the pathetic serial killer’s pleas for a lawyer. A remarkably impressive dolly back ends the sequence. The shot below is merely one third of the way through this moment!
At dawn, the police discover Ann’s tomb. She was dead long before being placed there.
Here is where Dirty Harry’s theme and message really come into play, and what a divisive message it is! See, Scorpio will walk, the DA informs Harry, because of all the simple torturing and violence and violation of the U.S. Constitution and what-have-you. The movie falls squarely on Harry’s side: “What about her [Ann’s] rights?” Dirty Harry is concerned with victims’ rights first and foremost – though it does little to help its argument by caging it in such a clearly weighted, emotional story. In context, we’re all against Scorpio, no matter where we’d fall on this debate outside of Dirty Harry. The thing is, the movie is oft called fascist (by Roger Ebert for one), people fearing it glorifies the vigilantism that was rightly a problem in that era of social malaise. Curiously, the movie’s position is Dirty Harry’s and Dirty Harry’s alone; it’s not Clint’s, Siegel’s, Milius’, or whomever’s, purely the film’s. For all of Dirty Harry’s influence on the American cop genre (and also on the Italians, ‘cause rip-offs are what they did), its greatest soul brother just might be the vigilante-themed Death Wish – another semi-actioner that resulted in an icon (Charles Bronson). We’ll see to those flicks some day…
Scorpio, now a free psycho (and eternally unnamed but for that zodiological handle), employs the services of a great big black man to beat the living hell out of him. Then he goes to the press, a bandaged, victimized wreck, claiming Harry is responsible. Harry denies culpability, on grounds that “he [Scorpio] looks too damn good.” Ha!
Harry is, by some arguments, an underdeveloped character. That’s the thing with icons, with archetypes. Chico, recouping from his wounds, decides to quit the force, himself no longer an idealist, prompting a debate between Harry and Chico’s wife. Here we learn just about everything we’ll ever know about Harry’s past – his wife was killed by a drunk driver. That’s it, and Harry himself walks off instants after revealing this. I say we don’t need any more, for it hints at depth, and this thing ain’t a drama anyway. Come on, the Man With No Name didn’t even have a name – if you go by his nickname, at least.
It’s interesting, the way they’re portraying Scorpio here at the end, long after most traditional villains would be long defeated. He’s really a victim, in a sense, a fundamentally weak character, who uses that very weakness to exert control over others. Even consider his choice of victims – there’s no honor in this guy, yet he plays a very hypocritical game of self-pity. You don’t see too many villains like this in the cinema, but when your good guy is Clint Eastwood, there’s only so many actors who could stand up to him on his own level.
Scorpio’s final, climactic act of vileness is to kidnap a busload full of schoolchildren, sending the city further demands for big money and a jet. Geez, if this sounds like Dog Day Afternoon, minus the bank, it’s not because the movie was inspired by Dirty Harry, but because the criminals that movie was based on were inspired by it. So was a trio of Australian bunglers, whose school bus hijacking thankfully went nowhere. Jeepers, this movie has a crazy legacy!
Here is where the authorities really oppose Harry’s ways. He’s already gotten plenty of guff over that whole Fourth Amendment thing, and will play no part in their attempts to slake Scorpio. Unforgiven or not, he’ll have to face the city head in the line of fire, any which way he can, and bring absolute power to Scorpio’s true crime…paint your wagon!
Scorpio’s bus drives past some buffalo (?!), and then crosses the Golden Gate Bridge (much more recognizable). Scorpio is in a joyous, child-punching mood, leading the best singing of “Row Your Boat” outside of Troll 2. “I’m gonna kill all your mothers if you don’t sing!” They turn off in the North Bay towards San Quentin – and if case you’re one of those who’s heard of that lovely prison, and never knew where it was, well, now you know. And the more you know…
Here’s Harry, motionlessly awaiting Scoripio on a rail crossing!
Now, as one of the founders of action cinema, Dirty Harry is surely lacking in things like action sequences – evolution is like that. There’s really only one noteworthy stunt in the whole thing, and here it is: Harry leaps down onto the moving bus. Yeah, yeah, in absolute terms it’s a rather basic stunt. Ah!, but Clint Eastwood clearly does it himself, as you can see below, and that makes an enormous difference!
Separated from his beloved hostages, Scorpio flees off into a quarry – a nice, nearly western setting. Again, when it’s a pure one-on-one, Scorpio can do nothing but gun and run. Somewhere in this sequence are the seeds for the ending of The French Connection (see, Dirty Harry inspired everything), which is more notable ‘cause there is an action film a mere two years later that’d win the Best Picture Oscar for doing largely the same thing! It’s not atypical for the Oscars to reward one movie for an earlier film’s triumphs – consider the Chicago musical winning in consolation to the former Moulin Rouge!, or the Dude getting his Best Actor award for Bad Blake, or the entirety of Martin Scorcese’s career.
Ultimately, Scorpio can only offer Harry a challenge once he has another hostage – a young lad by a fishin’ hole (shades of nearly every action climax to follow, but strongest in my mind now is Hot Fuzz). No matter, it’s too early for variations on the old hostage showdown scenario, so Harry simply shoots Scorpio away. He’s not dead yet, for that would deprive Harry a chance to reprise his frightful “punk” speech. Okay, then Harry can kill Scorpio dead
I love movies where things end right there, no more dialogue or anything! Indeed, Harry says nothing, merely tosses his badge into the pond. Clint didn’t want to do this; Siegel wanted him to do it; he did it, symbolizing not so much his departure from the force (if so, bye-bye sequels!), but his metaphorical, High Noon rejection of all those pissy laws his badge stands for.
What? It was 1971! Did you expect a happy ending? Nixon was president!
Naturally, it’s unmistakably clear how Dirty Harry influenced the development of cinematic action as a whole. This is all well and good, but what of Dirty Harry as a franchise? Did you even know it’s a franchise? (Of course it is, ‘cause otherwise what’d it be doing here?) See, we all know the cop genre for its multitudes of sequels, and the plots are always rather interchangeable. It’s all about the characters, and is there any greater cop movie character than Harry Callahan? Not in my mind – John McClane exempted. And so Dirty Harry’s instant success would lead to the quick creation of a sequel, and so forth from there. So whatever cop movie notions didn’t somehow appear in Dirty Harry, I’m sure we’ll find ‘em in one of the four movies to come!
Related posts:
• No. 2 Magnum Force (1973)
• No. 3 The Enforcer (1976)
• No. 4 Sudden Impact (1983)
• No. 5 The Dead Pool (1988)
No comments:
Post a Comment