Posted on 08/14/2024 12:38:54 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Anyone who’s enjoyed a career as long as Clint Eastwood and been in as many great movies as he has during those seven decades in the limelight is inevitably going to notch a handful of masterpieces. Still, on either side of the camera, he’s never been better than The Outlaw Josey Wales.
The debate over which entry in Eastwood’s filmography can be called the greatest has raged for decades, which is understandable when he’s got Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy, Dirty Harry, Million Dollar Baby, Unforgiven, Escape from Alcatraz, High Plains Drifter, In the Line of Fire, Pale Rider, and many more under consideration.
However, a combination of how Eastwood weathered the storm of production to emerge on the other side with a classic, what the film meant to both his career as a whole and the entire western genre, and the way it subverted traditionalism in favour of something darker, dangerous, and ultimately more compelling elevates The Outlaw Josey Wales to the top of the pile.
The man himself revealed that it’s the one movie people stop him in the street to talk about more than any other, an impressive accolade in itself, looking at everything he’s achieved. It’s both a successor to the Dollars trilogy and the progenitor of Unforgiven in a way, and that duality makes it intrinsic to the man, the myth, and the legend of Eastwood in more ways than one. Of course, it helps that it’s a masterclass in atmosphere, technique, confidence, performance, and execution, too.
If it’s good enough for Morgan Freeman to name it as Eastwood’s best, then who’s to argue? It even led to a shift in the complexion of mainstream filmmaking to further enhance its legacy, with the leading man not even planning to direct until he instructed producer Robert Daley to fire Philip Kaufman, instigating a ruling – colloquially known as the ‘Eastwood Rule’ – from the Directors Guild of America that prohibits an actor or producer from giving a director their marching orders and stepping in to replace them.
That’s beside the point, but it made The Outlaw Josey Wales a monumental production nonetheless. Coming more than a decade after Dollars and a decade prior to Unforgiven, the movie finds Eastwood at a pivotal moment in his career and in the midst of his Dirty Harry run. He’d starred in traditional westerns and popularised the spaghettified version, but it was here where his penchant for hard-boiled revisionism came to the fore.
A revenge story in a figurative, literal, and existential sense, the sins of the title character’s past haunt him in the present and completely alter his future when vengeful union forces murder his wife and child. In his quest for retribution, Wales signs up with the Confederate Army, already differentiating the film from the pack by having the protagonist fight on the side everybody knows ended up losing.
He refuses to surrender in the aftermath of the Civil War, only to watch the same man who killed his family massacre his fellow soldiers. With a bounty on his head, what follows is a quest for redemption plagued by the unrelenting necessities of violence, making Wales much more than the standard one-note western protagonist who shoots the bad guys and lives happily ever after.
The scene where he grieves his family was the rawest display of emotion Eastwood had ever projected in any of his films, with Wales reduced to a tear-soaked wreck. Not out of the ordinary considering the circumstances, but that heart-on-the-sleeve mentality goes on to inform the rest of not just the narrative but the main character’s journey.
After losing his real family, he even ends up finding a surrogate clan, complicating what he envisioned to be a single-minded thirst for blood that couldn’t remain unquenched. While many would point to Unforgiven as being Eastwood’s version of John Ford and John Wayne’s The Searchers given what it means to him as an actor, filmmaker, and persona, The Outlaw Josey Wales fits that billing better.
Whereas his Academy Award-winning favourite was a swansong to the genre that made him who he is, when viewing his career as a whole The Outlaw Josey Wales is the definitive connective tissue. It was one part Man with No Name, one part Harry Callahan, and one part William Munny, all soaked in the baggage of its leading man as a performer and personality, marshalled with a director who knew they had to pull out all the stops to ensure their reputation wouldn’t be ruined by the coup that put him there in the first place.
That’s an incredible amount of pressure, especially when it sought to deconstruct the essence of the classic western and Eastwood’s place in its history, all while telling a resonant and complex story that didn’t skimp on the action or shootouts, either.
It was a hell of a balancing act, and it’s because he pulled it off so effortlessly and timelessly that The Outlaw Josey Wales is the best movie he’s ever been in on either side of the camera.
Really?
Not Donald Sutherland?
Thanks.
“Right turn Clyde.”
5.56mm
There were many gunmen in the West, but few of them were skilled as killers. And those that were skilled killers were often mythologized and their flaws and quirks concealed, as by Ned Buntline in Unforgiven and in real life. Eastwood there displayed the key attribute of a skilled gunman in being utterly fearless and steely when it came to killing, taking direct and unwavering deadly aim at his adversaries. That is harder to do than it may seem.
In addition, as Unforgiven shows, the post-Civil War West was increasingly permeated by rail, telegraph, print media, and professional live entertainment. It was not a land of remote desert settlements with the towering mesas beloved by John Ford, but was a loose network of boomtowns based on mining and cattle yards with a rail head. As Unforgiven shows, those boomtowns were rife with trouble generated by lack of honest law enforcement and gambling, saloons, and prostitution.
Yes. But he was a Real good actor And a man unlike so many pussies in the business today.
The best western ever made!
There are a lot of Josey Wales fans on FR. A group of us had a discussion/debate about how many times Josey spit on the dog! :)
“How is it on stains?”
“Are you going to pull those pistols, or whistle Dixie?”
and of course “Vow to endeavor to persevere.”
Chief Dan George should have been nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor!
I also read that he said he learned how to direct or better yet, how not to direct from his Paint Your wagon experience. The production was out of control and money was wasted everywhere. That is why his movies are filmed tight and usually underbudget.
Rowdy Yates -— Head Em Up, Rawhide!
One of his best.
I remember them too. All great shows!
Wanted Dead or Alive is another good western TV series.
That was John Vernon’s best role. Excellent acting.
The Eiger Sanction was good too.
The whole “best” thing is a silly argument. It has been many years since I saw Josie Wales, but I liked it a lot. This makes me want to revisit it. But I’m a stubborn old goat, and I won’t play “best” even then!
I like them all honestly, Clint is just a great character actor. When I was younger I liked Outlaw Josey Wales, High Plains Drifter, etc... and really didn’t care much for Unforgiven when it came out. Watched it again recently, and this time it really clicked for me and I understand why this is regarded by most to be his best.
Her name was Jessica Walter.
Deceased: March 24, 2021 (80 yrs old)
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