Format: DVD from Moline Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.
When the topics comes around to great directorial debuts, there are a lot of obvious places to go: Orson Welles and Citizen Kane, the Coens and Blood Simple, even Sam Raimi and Evil Dead. For whatever reason, Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut, Play Misty for Me, seems to be regularly forgotten. This is a film that for whatever reason doesn’t get a great deal of love when it comes to discussions of genre films, films from the 1970s, or any other specifics. It’s a damn shame, though, because it’s got a great deal going for it. Any director would be proud to claim this as his or her own.
The truth may well be that in 1971, Clint Eastwood was, well, Clint Eastwood. No one could have predicted that a couple of years later he’d be winning Oscars as a director and that people would be legitimately talking about him as one of the great working directors not merely in the States, but in the world. It’s possible that the world can be forgiven for that lack of foresight. Up to this point, Eastwood had starred in a variety of tough guy roles and would continue to do so. But the evidence is here that Eastwood took a lot of lessons while he was in front of the camera.
