Clint Eastwood and the Machinery of Violence

Abstract

Thunder prowls outside grimy barroom of Big Whiskey, Wyoming. Through swinging doors enters a haggard stranger tattered clothes. He levels a shotgun at town sheriff. You be William Munny out of Missouri, says Sheriff Daggett, addressing gunman. That's right, lanky intruder answers. I've killed women and children. Killed about just everything that walks or crawls at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you. Little Bill. After a few moments, Munny sights along barrel, his opponent standing motionless at pointblank range. He pauses a long moment-then fires. Turning about, almost as an afterthought, he guns down at close range an innocent bystander before disappearing out door. The conclusion to Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, his tenth western, comes as a shock. When Eastwood, as bounty hunter Will Munny, blows away Gene Hackman, as Sheriff Daggett, we don't experience nervous thrill we have felt over years at gun-toting exploits of Eastwood's spaghetti westerns or his Dirty Harry pictures. Gone, too, is relief, catharsis of a conflict between good and evil resolved by a violent action. Although Eastwood is on a mission of vengeance, his killing is cold, calculating, and ruthless. The scene violates cardinal rule of all westerns-the good guy (no matter how provoked) can't just shoot a man cold blood. A queasy disquiet, an unease gathers a lump our stomach. You know, says East wood, commenting on scene an interview with this writer. Violence has been glamorized since literature began. People have always tried to make West heroic. But it wasn't very heroic at Little Bill was a sheriff, but he was really just a killer who happened to have law on his side. Will Munny was also a killer, and showdown he wasn't going to do any of this 'you draw first' stuff. He'd reverted to his violent ways. He'd thrown a switch or something and now a kind of machinery was back action, a 'machinery of violence,' I guess you could say. No, it wasn't glamorous at all. Although Clint Bastwood is best known-in many cases critically reviled-for graphic of his pictures, he seems lately to be reconsidering excesses of his youth. U nfor given, particular, belongs to a handful of westerns that question cherished formulas and conditions of genre. In his classic 1954 essay on western genre, Movie Chronicle: The Westerner, Robert Warshow had defined form of western-as it had evolved from dime novelists of 19th century, paintings of Frederic Remington, and genteel novels of Owen Wister-as the free movement of men on horses, a kind of story-telling formula that depicts western hero as the last gentleman who, paradoxically, must resort to of gun to resolve moral ambiguities; last art form, moreover, in which concept of honor retains its strength. However, Warshow had also predicted that westerns were beginning to show signs of degeneration; that the celebration of acts of violence were left more and more to irresponsible. Arguably, Raoul Walsh's Pursued (1947), Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1953), Arthur Penn's The Lefl-Handed Gun (1958), Robert Benton's Bad Company (1971), Robert Altaian's McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) and Buffalo Bill and Indians (1976), and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy Kid (1973)-to name just a few that have preceeded Unforgiven-prove point. Consider following examples: 1) Violence. The acts of that were necessary to settle disputes and impose frontier justice Gary Cooper's The Virginian (1929) and William Wellman's The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) have either become gratuitous and/or sadistic Bad Company or poeticized into choreographed slow motion aesthetic of The Wild Bunch. 2) The gun duel. That most hallowed convention of classic western, showdown and fast draw, as exemplified Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952)where hero draws his gun only after being threatened by villain-is replaced by heroes who shoot first and ask questions later (if they ask them at all). …

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