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The Beguiled (1971)
Before De Niro and Scorsese and Depp and Burton, there was Eastwood and Siegel. Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel spent a lot of the 1970's collaborating as actor and director and the most intriguing of their work together was The Beguiled,a bizarre and often chilling psycho-sexual melodrama blistering with suspense and sexual tension unlike anything we had seen onscreen.
Set during the Civil War, Eastwood plays John McBurney, a Union soldier who has been severely injured and is taken back to a small Confederate girls' school to be nursed back to health. Initially treated as a prisoner, it's not long before McBurney awakens sexual desire among more than one woman at this school, escalating in an internal battle of wills between the women, which finds them turning on each other, and eventually on McBurney.
The screenplay, based on a book by Thomas Cullinan is bold and adult in its depiction of this John McBurney character and how his seemingly innocent need for a place to heal melds with a sexual awakening that he causes with some of these women. And instead of trying to navigate around it, McBurney embraces it and decides to use his sexual prowess as not only a way of not returning to the war, but having his own private set of concubines at his beck and call. We are given our first major clue that we are not going to be treated to the traditional Civil War drama when the first kiss McBurney has onscreen is with a 12 year old girl...Gone with the Wind this ain't.
I especially loved the beginning section of the story as McBurney gets cleaned up and looking right and how the girl have been forbidden to go into his room, which doesn't stop any of them. As soon as one leaves his room, another is knocking and McBurney just rolls with it.
This movie was made when Clint Eastwood was still smoking hot and Siegel takes full advantage of that, pulling an electric sex on legs performance from the rising star. Geraldine Page was superb, as always, as the head of the school, as were the lovely Elizabeth Hartman as the teacher and JoAnn Harris as a horny 17 year old who throws herself at McBurney throughout. And if they look closely, Young and the Restless fans might recognize a teenage Melody Thomas Scott playing the role of Abigail. A sizzling adult drama fraught with sexual tension and directed with some genuine style.
Before De Niro and Scorsese and Depp and Burton, there was Eastwood and Siegel. Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel spent a lot of the 1970's collaborating as actor and director and the most intriguing of their work together was The Beguiled,a bizarre and often chilling psycho-sexual melodrama blistering with suspense and sexual tension unlike anything we had seen onscreen.
Set during the Civil War, Eastwood plays John McBurney, a Union soldier who has been severely injured and is taken back to a small Confederate girls' school to be nursed back to health. Initially treated as a prisoner, it's not long before McBurney awakens sexual desire among more than one woman at this school, escalating in an internal battle of wills between the women, which finds them turning on each other, and eventually on McBurney.
The screenplay, based on a book by Thomas Cullinan is bold and adult in its depiction of this John McBurney character and how his seemingly innocent need for a place to heal melds with a sexual awakening that he causes with some of these women. And instead of trying to navigate around it, McBurney embraces it and decides to use his sexual prowess as not only a way of not returning to the war, but having his own private set of concubines at his beck and call. We are given our first major clue that we are not going to be treated to the traditional Civil War drama when the first kiss McBurney has onscreen is with a 12 year old girl...Gone with the Wind this ain't.
I especially loved the beginning section of the story as McBurney gets cleaned up and looking right and how the girl have been forbidden to go into his room, which doesn't stop any of them. As soon as one leaves his room, another is knocking and McBurney just rolls with it.
This movie was made when Clint Eastwood was still smoking hot and Siegel takes full advantage of that, pulling an electric sex on legs performance from the rising star. Geraldine Page was superb, as always, as the head of the school, as were the lovely Elizabeth Hartman as the teacher and JoAnn Harris as a horny 17 year old who throws herself at McBurney throughout. And if they look closely, Young and the Restless fans might recognize a teenage Melody Thomas Scott playing the role of Abigail. A sizzling adult drama fraught with sexual tension and directed with some genuine style.