New Essays on Clint Eastwood

Leonard Engel is a professor of English at Quinnipiac University, USA. He has published a number of cinematic critiques, and he is editor of The Big Empty: Essays on the Land as Narrative; Sam Peckinpah’s West: New Perspectives (The University of Utah Press, 2003); Clint Eastwood, Actor and Director: New Perspectives (The University of Utah Press, 2007); and A Violent Conscience: Essays on the Fiction of James Lee Burke.

“In this rich collection, we find almost all of Eastwood’s major movies reviewed, with excellent critical analysis and care for Eastwood’s cinematic rejection of simplistic closure. The director does not attempt to give us an ultimate vision that leaves no place for the imagination of the audience: the very opposite is the case. The texts in this volume address the richness of Eastwood in his extraordinary work, not only as a director, but also as an actor, and give rightful acknowledgment to his place of honor in the cinema of the United States.”—from the foreword by Drucilla Cornell

• Foreword by Drucilla CornellAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. “Landscape as Moral Destiny”: Mythic Reinvention from Rowdy Yates to the Stranger - Robert Smart2. Thoroughly Modern Eastwood: Male/Female Power Relations in The Beguiled and Play Misty for Me - Brett Westbrook3. Clintus and Siegelini: “We've Got a System. Not Much, but We're Fond of It." - Mike Smrtic and Matt Wanat4. Rawhide to Pale Rider: The Maturation of Clint Eastwood - Edward Rielly5. Eastwood's Treatment of the Life of Creativity and Performance in Bronco Billy, Honkytonk Man, White Hunter Black Heart, and Bird - Dennis Rothermel6. “You Can’t Hunt Alone”: White Hunter Black Heart - Richard Hutson7. The End of History and America First: How the 1990s Revitalized Clint Eastwood - Craig Rinne8. A Man of Notoriously Vicious and Intemperate Disposition: Western Noir and the Tenderfoot’s Revenge in Unforgiven - Stanley Orr9. A Good Vintage or Damaged Goods?: Clint Eastwood and Aging in Hollywood Film - Philippa Gates10. Space, Pace, and Southern Gentility in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - Brad Klypchak11. Mystic River as a Tragic Action - Robert Merrill and John L. Simons12. Lies of Our Fathers: Mythology and Artifice in Eastwood’s Cinema - William Beard13. Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima: The Silence of Heroes and the Voice of History - John M. Gourlie14. Gran Torino: Showdown in Detroit, Shrimp Cowboys, and A New Mythology - John M. Gourlie and Leonard Engel15. Invictus: The Master Craftsman as Hagiographer - Raymond Foery16. Hereafter: Dreaming beyond Our Philosophies - John M. Gourlie17. Postscript, “Citizen Hoover: Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar” - Richard Hutson and Kathleen MoranFilmographyContributorsIndex