The Beguiled **** (1971, Clint Eastwood, Geraldine Page, Elizabeth Hartman, Jo Ann Harris) – Classic Movie Review 2577

Producer-director Don Siegel’s 1971 cult Civil War Western chiller is a rich and strange, and often quite beautiful movie. It was Siegel’s favourite of his films. It reunites him with Clint Eastwood, who stars as John McBurney, an injured Yankee soldier who is rescued from the verge of death by a teenage girl from an isolated Southern seminary for young women.

She manages to get the soldier back to the seminary, where he starts to recover. He then charms his way into each of the lonely women’s hearts and provides the sexual spark for the women’s fantasies. But the atmosphere becomes filled with jealousy and deceit, and his lack of response and manipulation of the situation lead to a terrible revenge.

Spilling over with the repressed, explosively contained sexual savagery of Black Narcissus, this is one of Siegel’s and Eastwood’s most beguiling but least known films.

Geraldine Page, Elizabeth Hartman, Jo Ann Harris, Darleen Carr, Mae Mercer, Melody Thomas, Pattye Mattick, Pamelyn Ferdin and Peggy Drier head the otherwise mostly female cast.

Based on the novel by Thomas Cullinan, it is written by John B Sherry and Grimes Grice, photographed by Bruce Surtees, scored by Lalo Schifrin and designed by Ted Haworth, so there is a lot of talent at work at a high level here.

Eastwood’s first film as director is a behind-the-scenes look at Siegel at work on the film, called The Beguiled: The Storyteller (1971).

Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning lead the cast of writer-director Sofia Coppola’s remake of The Beguiled, which screens in competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival and is released in UK cinemas on 14 July 2017.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2577

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