Warner - Dirty Harry Documentaries (2008)Part 5 The Evolution of Clint Eastwood

In 1971, during a time of massive transition in Hollywood and of social upheaval in America at large, director Don Siegel and actor Clint Eastwood created one of the most memorable figures in all of action cinema, a bad-tempered San Francisco policeman “Dirty” Harry Callahan, not averse to bending the rules to get his man. The maniacal 'Scorpio Killer' is on the loose and Callahan disregards procedure in his efforts to track him down, using his trusty Magnum .44 to dispense his own brand of justice. A cop whose disdain for bureaucracy led to unconventional methods — such as torturing a suspect in order to extract information — Callahan could be viewed as a maverick hero or a fascist psychopath, depending on one's political persuasion. Siegel's ambivalent presentation and Eastwood's stoic mannerisms left plenty of ambiguous shadings for the viewer to consider. While critics of the time debated the value of Siegel's violent vision, audiences recognized a new kind of action hero and made the movie a smash hit. The character would eventually go on to appear in four popular sequels, Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983) and The Dead Pool (1988).

Part 5 The Evolution of Clint Eastwood

Follow Eastwood's career from television star to matinee idol to Oscar-winning director. Eastwood's filmography is focused on action and consequences, stories of strong and silent heroes and antiheroes who do their work, mull their regrets, get the job done, and then go about their business, hoping to leave the world a little bit better in the process. Eastwood got his start working as an actor in the 1950s and '60s, most notably in a trio of epic spaghetti Westerns by Italian director Sergio Leone. In those films, Eastwood played a gunslinger who rarely speaks and is never identified, known widely as the Man With No Name. In the early 1970s, Eastwood would move behind the camera to direct his own films, and his work retained the same stoic sensibility. Now a two-time Academy Award winner for best director, twice winner of the Directors Guild of America Award for best director, and recipient of countless other critics prizes and nominations in multiple capacities, Clint Eastwood stands as one of the finest directors working in modern cinema.

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