The Beguiled is a 1971 American Southern Gothic psychological thriller film directed and produced by Don Siegel, and starring Clint Eastwood, Geraldine Page and Elizabeth Hartman. Based on Thomas P. Cullinan's 1966 novel, the film is set during the Civil War and follows a wounded Union soldier (Eastwood) who is reluctantly taken into care at a girls' school in Confederate territory.

The film marks the third of five collaborations between Siegel and Eastwood, following Coogan's Bluff (1968) and Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), and continuing with Dirty Harry (1971) and Escape from Alcatraz (1979).

The Beguiled was released by Universal Pictures on May 28, 1971. Initial critical reception was polarized and the film was a commercial disappointment, but retrospective reviews have been much more positive. Quentin Tarantino called it "the closest Siegel ever came to making an art film." This was the first of several films where Eastwood agreed to storylines where nubile females look at him adoringly (including minors in this film and Pale Rider). Albert Maltz was brought in to draft the script, but disagreements in the end led to a revision of the script by Claude Traverse, who although uncredited, led to Maltz being credited under a pseudonym. Maltz had originally written a script with a happy ending, in which Eastwood's character and the girl live happily ever after. Both Eastwood and director Don Siegel felt that an ending faithful to that of the book would be a stronger anti-war statement, and Eastwood's character would be killed. The film, according to Siegel, deals with the themes of sex, violence and vengeance, and was based around "the basic desire of women to castrate men" though the central theme was the impact of a man having sex with multiple women.

Jeanne Moreau was considered for the role of the domineering Martha Farnsworth, but the role went to Geraldine Page, and actresses Elizabeth Hartman, Jo Ann Harris, Darlene Carr, Mae Mercer, and Pamelyn Ferdin were cast in supporting roles.

Universal initially wanted Siegel to film at a studio at Disney Studios Ranch, but Siegel preferred to have it filmed at an antebellum estate near Baton Rouge, Louisiana in Ascension Parish: the Ashland-Belle Helene Plantation, a historic house built in 1841, that was a plantation estate and home of Duncan Farrar Kenner. Portions of the interiors were filmed at Universal Studios. Filming started in April 1970 and lasted 10 weeks.

Eastwood had signed a long-term contract with Universal but became angry with the studio because he felt that they botched its release. This eventually led to his leaving the studio in 1975 after the release of The Eiger Sanction, which he directed as well as starred in. He would not work with Universal again until 2008's Changeling.

Eastwood said of his role in The Beguiled,

Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that the film "is not, indeed, successful as baroque melodrama, and, towards the end, there are so many twists and turns of plot and character that everything that's gone before is neutralized. People who consider themselves discriminating moviegoers, but who are uncommitted to Mr. Siegel will be hard put to accept it, other than as a sensational, misogynistic nightmare." A negative review in Variety said that the film "doesn't come off, and the apparent attempt to mesh Charles Addams style with Tennessee Williams-type material cues audience laughter in all the wrong places." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two stars out of four and wrote that Siegel "unfortunately elects to tell his story with a broad and leering humor that at times is barely distinguishable from a sexploitation shocker." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times praised The Beguiled as "a film of psychological suspense laced with dark humor that is a triumph of style, totally engrossing and utterly convincing." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post slammed the film as "anything but beguiling. Weird, yes; trashy, yes; pathetic, yes; beguiling, no." Nigel Andrews of The Monthly Film Bulletin called it "a film that works best when it is most outrageous. Geraldine Page's piously neurotic Miss Martha and Elizabeth Hartman's sickly Edwina hover on the brink of self-parody for most of the film, and are pushed well over in Siegel's climactic dream sequence, which begins with multiple-exposure effects and triangular embraces and ends with a shot of the two women supporting a limply naked Eastwood in the pose of Van Der Weyden's 'Pieta' (which hangs ambiguously on Page's bedroom wall)."

The film received major recognition in France, and was proposed by Pierre Rissient to the Cannes Film Festival, and while agreed to by Eastwood and Siegel, the producers declined. It would be widely screened in France later and is considered one of Eastwood's finest works by the French. The film was poorly marketed and in the end grossed little over $1 million, earning less than a fourth of what Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song did at the same time and falling to below 50 in the charts within two weeks of release.

The Beguiled holds a 90% approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 21 reviews, with a weighted average of 7.3/10. Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 66 out of 100, based on 6 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews".

Theme

Even when faced with Siegel's contentious statement about women, film critic Judith M. Kass probes deeper to uncover elements of feminism within 'The Beguiled', presenting an alternate perspective:

Kass continues: “The women in The Beguiled are not all bad; they are hard-pressed, unused to the lives they are leading, victimized by events they had not had in shaping, sexually thwarted at the stages in their development when they should be freest. They can trust no friend, let alone foe: the Confederates who offer to guard them obviously have rape in mind and the Yankee in their midst acts like the master of a private seraglio. Why shouldn’t they become desperate, say and do things that wouldn't under ordinary circumstances?”

Other film adaptations

Sofia Coppola wrote and directed a film based on the same source material with Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning. It had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2017. The film was released by Focus Features on June 23, 2017.

See also

  • List of American films of 1971

Footnotes

Sources

  • Hirsch, Foster (1971–72). "The Beguilded: Southern Gothic revived." Film Heritage, 7, 15–20.
  • Kay, Karyn. (1976) "The Beguiled: Gothic Misogyny." Velvet Light Trap, 16, 32–33.
  • The Beguiled at Rotten Tomatoes