80/80 - Clint's allegorical western

High Plains Drifter is a benchmark western in the Eastwood oeuvre - it was the first oater he had directed and owes more than a little to the work he did with Sergio Leone.

In the film Clint plays a cigar chewing mysterious stranger as he did in the Leone films and although the film is very violent there is black humour running through each and every frame.

The eerie set used in the film was constructed on the shores of Lake Mono near the High Sierras. And with Bruce Surtees behind the camera filming commenced in the summer of 1972. For the musical score which was intended to mirror Clint's Italian oaters without ripping off Morricone, Clint hired Dee Barton who had contributed a jazz score to Play Misty for Me.

The resulting film is a powerhouse western with the air of mystery kept till the very end - in fact it goes beyond since we don't really learn who Eastwood's character is - is he an avenging ghost? Or is he the brother of the brutally murdered sheriff? There is a nice touch in one scene where the names Sergio Leone, Don Siegel and Brian Hutton are written on gravestones. All of these are directors that Clint had worked with.

"Clint has absorbed the approaches of two of his previous directors - Leone and Siegal and fused them with his own paranoid vision of society." Arthur Knight, Saturday Evening Review.

1972 was not only a good year professionally for Clint but personally too - his daughter Alison was born on the 22nd May. However the cracks in his private life were being hinted at in fan magazines and Modern Screen magazine famously called him: The Worst Husband in Hollywood. Still Clint managed to keep his off screen affairs private and when he attended the Oscars the following year it was his wife, Maggie who stood by his side.