The Beguiled
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Movie Reviews of The Beguiled
Movie Review: A creepy, gothic tale of lust and deception
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Beguiled" is one of my favorite Clint Eastwood films, and a departure from his typical early roles. Directed by Don Siegel, with whom Eastwood collaborated on several films, it was made a year before Eastwood's directorial debut with "Play Misty For Me". An alternate title considered for the film was "Pussy-Footing Down At The Old Plantation", which thankfully was not used, otherwise I am sure raunchy jokes about the fact that it takes place at a girls' school would be difficult to avoid. I first saw this movie in one of my college film classes in the mid-1970's, and was immediately taken with it. I only had an old battered VHS tape of it until I recently purchased the widescreen DVD, which also includes the hilarious, awful trailer (which made me laugh out loud, the trailer makes it sound like a "Peyton Place" soap opera, and conveys none of the creepiness of the film).
Eastwood and Siegel had to battle with Universal Pictures to keep the original ending, and they won out. However, the film was billed as a western, which it certainly is not. It is a gothic tale of deception and horror that is set in the time of the Civil War, and an underlying tone of eroticism and sexual tension runs throughout the film.
I'm not putting any spoilers in this review, and if you want to see the film as it should be seen, then be careful of looking this film up on the internet, as spoiler reviews of it do abound.
Clint Eastwood portrays John McBurney, a Union soldier who is shot on Confederate ground and discovered by a young girl from a nearby girls' school. She rescues him and takes him back to the school, but instead of notifying the local patrol of his presence so that he will be taken to prison, the headmistress, Miss Martha (Geraldine Page), her assistant Edwina (Elizabeth Hartman), their black female servant Hallie (Mae Mercer), and the mostly teenage girls take him in, heal him, and fall under his spell. The film sets its tone of creepiness and Gothic horror right from the titles, as it shows real battleground shots from the war, while Eastwood's voice is heard quietly singing a funereal song of the time. The opening scene of his encounter with the little girl who saves him sets the tone of his character, and the tone of the entire movie. To say any more than that would spoil the surprise of their first encounter. To say much more about the film itself might ruin it for anyone who hasn't seen it...if you are into creepy, Gothic horror, find it and rent it. Eastwood is excellent in the film, and it is interesting to see him in an early, or any role, where he portrays a character that is for the most part very unsympathetic.
Geraldine Page had a plum role in the film as the headmistress, I cannot imagine another actress of the time being as good in the role; a long shot could have been Piper Laurie, but I don't think Laurie could have embodied the role in the same manner. Her performance was worthy of an Oscar nomination, IMO.
Elizabeth Hartman (who also did a wonderful performance in the film "A Patch of Blue" as a blind girl who falls in love with Sidney Poiter's character) is at her prime here, delicate and masterful at the same time. Unfortunately, her delicacy on film was also a part of her real life; she committed suicide at a young age, having battled depression on and off throughout her brief, and extremely talented, life.
I end this review with this observation: one manipulative, lying Yankee man is no match for a houseful of deceptive and libidinous Southern belles.
Movie Review: A Journey Into The Darkness of The Human Soul
Summary: 5 Stars
The Beguiled is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen,contributing to my early love of cinema,and sadly remaining underrated to this day.While it is hard to pigeonhole the film into one specific genre, be it a thriller or a psychological drama,it is one of the very few films that without the use of blood and gore,manages to be very disturbing and violent.A raw and primitive violence that is directed more at the viewer's mind and psyche.
Don Siegel is one of the best American directors,who like Sam Peckinpah,understood the meaning of this violence and did not shy away from showing it without tantalizing the 'voyeur' in his audience.
His collaboration with Clint Eastwood is one of the most successful in cinema..(Dirty Harry, Coogan's Bluff, Escape from Alcatraz, Two Mules for Sister Sarah)..And with the Beguiled he managed to direct an original film that had the best performances his star had to date,(a transitional role in Eastwood's career, in between the westerns of Leone, and the toughness of Harry Calahan.)
The whole mood of the film has this creepy and sinsiter atmosphere that appears quite subtle on the surface,yet as your delve deeper,it slowly unleashes much darker and well hidden forces.
It is the story of a wounded Yanky soldier(Clint Eastwood)evading capture in the south during the civil war,finds refuge in an all girl boarding school.The headmistress (the geart Geraldine Page)takes him in and provides him with a sanctuary and care that befits her Christian duties and sensibilities.Yet this stranger awakens many feelings in the house: curiosity,jealousy,sexual fantasies, up to the will and determination to murder.
The increased confidence of the recuperating soldier in manipulating the sexual vulnerablity of these girls and their headmistress,goes hand in hand with the change that occur within them,from gentle and virtuous to cold and calculating.
I liked the fact that the contrast between the raging war outside and the serene and peaceful sanctuary inside turns to be only an illusion.
I liked too the fact that despite the rift that the soldier caused directly and indirectly among the girls,they at the end link their fates and bond together,like they carefully did in the face of war, even if this means getting rid of the 'disturbance' that turned their world upside down.
I also loved the fact that ultimately the message of the film is about what a person is capable of doing in certain circumstances, and how a ideal world can hide many deep hidden frustrations that,pushing the right buttons, can be as menacing and deadly as any war.
What is quite interesting too, is how a deeply religious environment and person, can also hide strong sexual desires and energy that are truly haunting.One particularily powerful scene, among many, is the sexual threesome dream that Page has,an unrestrained and perverse passion mixed with religious guilt: an explosive mixture.
The Beguiled reflects a time when directors had the artistic freedom and clout to make the film they wanted.The original script had a happy ending, but Siegel opted to change it to its darker conclusion, something very few studios would allow these days.
The Beguiled is a powerful movie that on no accounts should be missed.A journey into the darkest recesses of the human soul that you will not easily forget.
Movie Review: Southern Gothic and Eastwood - what a combo!
Summary: 5 Stars
To be honest, I never heard of this movie nor knew about Clint Eastwood's role in it until I came across the DVD in my local library. Well, I took it home, and couldn't play it! So then, I search through Netflix, and of all the good luck, it was available for instant play - and boy, am I glad I watched it! This is definitely uncharted territory for Eastwood, and in a role I'd never envision him in. He does a great job in it and so do all the other cast members, making this one of the most under-rated movies considering the well-written script, the great casting and creepy score.
The story centers around Ms Farnsworth's Seminary for Girls somewhere in the South during the Civil War. Young Amy [Pamelyn Ferdin], one of the girls, is out picking mushrooms when she comes across badly hurt Yank Cpl John McBurney [Clint Eastwood]. She helps him back to the school where the Headmistress Martha Farnsworth [Geraldine Page] is at first determined to hand him over to the Confederates but then decides against it. Prissy schoolmarm Edwina Dabney [Elizabeth Hartman] is also drawn to the charming Yank and so are young Amy and Carol [Joann Harris playing a tarty role here].
Soon, the dashing John is getting the young and not-so-young ladies all hot under the collar and with the Southern heat, things really get toasty! But, this is not your average romance story - it is more of a psychological thriller set against a Southern Gothic backdrop - there is the feisty and hardened Headmistress who is also harboring a secret of her own, the schoolteacher with hidden yearnings, the hussy with an insatiable appetite, and an impressionable young girl experiencing her first crush. Ol' Clint doesn't exactly come across all nice either, so there's plenty of tension here between the main characters. The acting is great on all fronts from Eastwood's charming yet manipulative Yankee to the vulnerable schoolteacher [Elizabeth Hartman], Geraldine Page's aging yet lusty school head and even 'sweet' young Amy [Pamelyn Ferdin]
The great story and casting aside, the creepy score builds up the suspense in a chilling manner and the ending is one of the more memorable ones I've seen in movies. I was quite puzzled as to why this movie is not as well-known as some of Eastwood's other movies, and found that most of his movies that were against type typically didn't do too well at the box-office[Play Misty for Me, White Hunter Black Heart]. Well, personally I liked this movie as well as Play Misty and I would heartily recommend The Beguiled to those who like psychological thrillers, Gothic inspired dramas, and of course, Clint Eastwood!
Movie Review: Perhaps Eastwood's Best Work
Summary: 5 Stars
The Beguiled can be catalogued with other quirky tales wrought by the likes of Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner. Behind the South's veil of honor lurks secrecy and seething sexuality. While Williams and Faulkner might be considered more interested in the personal, The Beguiled weds that emphasis with a social context and its impingement upon the inhabitants of a southern boarding school for girls. Set in the rapidly declining Antebellum South, the film makes good use of history and its parallels with the motivations of its characters. Union soldiers press forward into undiscovered territory, intruding and ultimately violating an insular world of social convention and interior reality. Indeed, Eastwood eventually ingratiates himself upon the inhabitants of the girls school, whose residents are entertained and eventually repulsed by his sexual advances.
The Southern sense of honor is violated as Eastwood beds down with one of the girls and penetrates the cloistered world of manners, meaning and sexual tension. Capturing the spoils of war is, however, complicated by the personal life of the headmistress. As the Blue and Grey might have once been considered brothers in arms but are now enemies, the sacred trust between kin was also apparerently violated by the headmistress and her brother, a role Eastwood unwittingly comes to play.
Unlike the outcome seen in the Civil War, Eastwood's advances are cut off as he pays the price in a scene with strong Freudian undertones. Wounded but not forgotten, Eastwood is the lingering reminder of lost honor and innocence. The school's inhabitants try to rewrite the past, and so return to childhood's lost idyll, but in blending play with brutality they become murderers, proving one can never truly return home.
An inverse of the characterization seen in Eastwood's "man with no name" series, The Beguiled captures a scenic and personal depth until then not seen in films of The South. Here the plot is less obtuse and Eastwood's motivations more explicit than in his work with Sergio Leone -- where silence speaks volumes -- or in his own film, High Plains Drifter, which nonetheless opened Eastwood's character up through flashbacks.
Movie Review: Geraldine Page runs a School for Girls
Summary: 5 Stars
If you've gotten a chance to see Don Siegel's films then you know enough to expect some violent rock'em sock'em action. The new DVD of THE KILLERS illustrates that, with even Ronald Reagan grim and nasty as all get out. In THE BEGUILED, Siegel takes on a kind of George Cukor subject, a girls academy during the period of the American expansion of the Civil War, run by Geraldine Page, the Broadway actress who had a brief run of major Hollywood parts perhaps ten years prior to this film. The BEGUILED was a kind of comeback for her, although of course her fans don't ordinarily see it that way, preferring to think that she remained big while the pictures grew small, which in a way of course is very true. She's dynamite in her scenes with Clint Eastwood, with whom she shares a rebellious spark of iconoclasm. If you've seen her tearing up the screen in SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH with Paul Newman, you'll recognize the way she can command the screen and make tough men cry.
In later years this film was unofficially re-made, with James Caan and Kathy Bates in MISERY. MISERY, directed by Rob Reiner, was a kind of homage to the central storyline of THE BEGUILED, with Clint as a kind of prisoner to a crazy woman, and oh, what happens to their legs in both films is shocking even by today's standards.
Some people actually prefer MISERY but for me, I would like to see THE BEGUILED rather than MISERY because the older film also has Elizabeth Hartman in a smallish part, and she's always worth a trip to Netflix or whatever. And Pamelyn Ferdin, the little girl from WHAT's THE MATTER WITH HELEN and THE MEPHISTO WALTZ, is adorable and spooky as the girl who saves Clint Eastwood at first, only to lead him to Page's door.