High Plains Drifter, Clint Eastwood’s first western (and second film) as director, served as his own version of a Leone-style spaghetti western. The similarity is most obvious in the dark & grungy style of photography, but it can also be seen in the score and the story itself: a lone man come back to get vengeance on a town, rather than save it as he would in a traditional Hollywood western.
The film begins as Eastwood’s Stranger appears on the horizon – not just over it, but suddenly materializing out of the heat – and there aren’t any close-ups of him at first, like a normal western hero might get in his first appearance.
These early landscape shots – dust, blowing wind and, a few trees, some patches of grass – all suggest Leone, as does the first time we see the residents of Lago, who are shown as sweating faces in close-up. As they watch Eastwood riding through the town, they look at him with a combination of surprise and fear: clearly they know who he is, but we don’t yet know how they know him.
So far the film has been very quiet (apart from the score), the silence being broken when a carriage rides off; the crack of a whip and sudden cut to Eastwood as he turns his head is startling and very Leonian, as is the shot of coffins being made (recall A Fistful of Dollars). While another director might have overdone the homage and made a joke about this shot, Eastwood simply shows the coffins. It’s all he needs to do.
When the Stranger gets a shave from an annoying barber, three men from the saloon he’s just visited show up to harass him some more; he quickly shoots all three of them. In this first shootout we see a combination of the Leone style of action with the more traditional way: Leone liked to spend a lot of time building tension, then have a burst of action. Here, the shootout is edited less rapidly so we don’t get that same quick rush. One person who is impressed by this fight, however, is Mordecai the dwarf (Billy Curtis), who will become a very important figure before too long.
Right after this, a local woman (Mariana Hill) deliberately bumps into the Stranger, but instead of coming on to him, as we might expect, she berates him; he, in turn, takes her into a barn & rapes her. This scene, perhaps the most infamous in the film, doesn’t quite come off as it’s not clear why she went up to him in the first place. Later, after trying to kill Eastwood (he escapes by submerging himself in his bathtub), she complains to the town leaders but they really couldn’t care what’s happened to her; perhaps this was intended to be the payoff of the earlier scene but surely he could have come to it differently.
Finally, after these two sudden bursts of violence, the Stranger goes to his hotel & falls asleep, where he dreams of a man (Buddy Van Horn) being killed by three men with whips while the townspeople simply stand and watch.
Eastwood is eventually hired to protect the town from some thugs who have recently gotten out of jail (the men he killed earlier had previously had the job!). They promise him he won’t be charged for killing the men, and he eventually agrees after the town practically grants him free reign; the local businessmen all acceded to this demand, but none of them thought it applied to their stores. Needless to say they aren’t very happy when he nearly cleans all of them out. There’s quite a funny moment when Mordecai, whom Eastwood has made Sheriff & Mayor, goes to the gunshop for a weapon and the owner offers him a tiny pistol.
At this point in the film we start to see more influences of (and comments on) Hollywood westerns, as the Stranger makes everyone participate in the town’s defense and trains them; an altruistic, high-minded protector like High Noon’s Gary Cooper or Rio Bravo’s John Wayne he isn’t. The Stranger & Mordecai get the local hotelier (Ted Hartley) to provide supplies, and also start to tear down his barn; and there’s a funny training sequence involving three dummies being pulled around town by a carriage – going back to Leone’s style for a moment, Eastwood blows their heads off, one after another, with three perfect shots.
We also see, this time from Mordecai, a second flashback of the Marshal’s death; this time it emphasizes the compliance of the townspeople rather than the crime itself. We also learn more of the crime’s background, as the Marshal was going to have the local mine shut down as it was on government land. Ironically, it’s the mining boss (Mitchell Ryan) who insists on keeping Eastwood around after the rest of the local bigwigs start to have second thoughts about hiring him, and it’s the three returning outlaws who killed the Marshal in the first place! Ryan’s businessman & Hartley’s hotelier are just as villainous in their dishonesty as the three thugs are in their violence.
The first half of the film – the rape scene notwithstanding – is the best, as we meet all the townspeople & see Eastwood begin to raise hell; eventually things get a little monotonous, although the sight of the entire town painted red, the name on the sign changed to “Hell” and a banner reading “Welcome Home Boys” is pretty funny. The importance of the dead Marshal is developed further with a mention of his unmarked grave; people buried with an unmarked grave, someone claims, will be unsatisfied & may return.
Mordecai, who delights in his badge and calling himself the Sheriff, turns out not to be much of a leader: the Stranger does most of the organizing, and Mordecai is even wary about giving the signal for action when the bandits arrive. When they finally do show up, Eastwood leaves the townspeople to defend themselves. Some run & hide while those who do fight make a complete hash of it and the bandits have total control of the town by evening.
The Stranger makes a surprise return, however, killing one bandit (Anthony James, the bar owner from Unforgiven) with his whip – just as the dead Marshal was killed – then disappearing again before throwing dynamite from the sky. This action sequence is pretty well done, but one obvious flaw is that the thugs never look up to try to find him – he must surely be on the roof!
Soon there’s just one bandit left (Geoffrey Lewis, the runaway husband from Bronco Billy), who can’t find Eastwood – though at least he looks up! – while Eastwood taunts him by saying “Help me” in the same pleading voice as the dead Marshal before killing him too.
With the three men now dead, Eastwood leaves; his departure mirrors his arrival, but this time the looks he gets from the townspeople are, shall we say, more appreciative (though they may just be glad he’s leaving at last); he finally disappears into the heat, just as he arrived.
The Stranger’s identity, while hinted at pretty strongly throughout the film – and especially so by Eastwood’s taunt of the last thug – is confirmed beyond much doubt by his final encounter with Mordecai, who is putting a name to a grave. He says he doesn’t know Eastwood’s name, to which he replies, “Yes you do.” The camera then pans into the gravestone, which is Marshal Duncan’s. The Marshal isn’t played by Eastwood in the flashbacks, which has led some to claim that he’s actually the Marshal’s brother or friend. I don’t think this is the case, as everyone seems to recognize Eastwood when he first arrives; the use of a different actor for the flashbacks was probably just to make sure that audiences didn’t realize the connection right away.
High Plains Drifter is the first of several films he’s made that play almost like Biblical parables (Mystic River is perhaps the best example of this). However, while the theme of revenge, not just on the Marshal’s killers but also on those who didn’t come to his rescue, is an interesting one, but I never sensed much in the way of conviction in the telling of the story; it feels more like a stylistic exercise, as opposed to Eastwood’s other westerns which had plenty of real feeling in them. The good side to this approach is that it never becomes as strident as a film like High Noon, which rams home its allegorical overtones much too hard. It’s also a good demonstration of Eastwood’s versatility as a filmmaker; a decade later he took this same premise – a man come back from the dead to set things right – and made a very different film in Pale Rider. Those who call that film a rehash of this one didn’t think very hard about it.
Although it’s probably the least of Eastwood’s four westerns as director, this is still a pretty good film, and great fun if you’re in the mood for a good, sadistic kick.
