"Hollywood was in a wild churn in the late 1960s. In 'Easy Rider' and 'Bonnie and Clyde,' the antiheroes were young, reckless and ready to break the laws of a hypocritical nation. The success of those films opened the door to a scruffy independent spirit that, politically, veered left. To many observers, 'Dirty Harry' felt like a rebuttal. (It could have been worse--'Dead Right' was an early title by screenwriters Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink and Dean Riesner.)
"Siegel had been working in Hollywood since the 1930s (he put together the montage that opened 'Casablanca') and by the 1960s had found a flair for tough-guy cinema with Lee Marvin in 'The Killers,' Steve McQueen in 'Hell Is for Heroes' and Eastwood in 'Coogan's Bluff.' Siegel chose to open 'Dirty Harry' with a reverential shot of a marble memorial listing all the San Francisco police officers who had been killed in the line of duty. No charming outlaws were being celebrated in this film."
In the Los Angeles Times, Geoff Boucher interviews Clint Eastwood as a new DVD box collects the cinematic exploits of Det. Harry Callahan.
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1 comment:
Did you see Zodiac? It makes Dirty Harry look that much more ridiculous.
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