The exotic location in the desert, near Lake Mono in the California Sierras, certainly gives the film a fresh and refined look among Westerns...The sparkling colors of the backgrounds and the changing cloud formations gave effective shots...The film has certainly the most dramatic opening sequence of any Western...
Through the burning desert, Bruce Surtees' lens discovers a lone horseman.... The camera pans with the horseman to reveal a small town by a lake-lagoon... The horseman rides in, the camera tracking behind him, interrupted with faces of suspicious locals - even a coffin maker with his merchandises - and instantly one is reminded of Sergio Leone and his faithful reproduction of Kurosawa... A coach driver cracks the whip... The horseman turns, and moves back... He enters a bar and asks for 'a beer and a bottle.' A town heavy intervenes: 'Flea-bitten range-bums don't usually stop in Lago. Life here is a little too quick for them. Maybe you think you're fast enough to keep up with us!' The drifter replies: 'I'm faster than you'll ever live to be!'
True to his promise, the Stranger kills the 'trouble shooter' and his two friends, and also rapes the town belle who responds as any Eastwood feminine victim is obliged to, with resistance turning strangely to joy... The town midget, Mordecai (Billy Curtis) offers him a cigar inquiring: 'What did you say your name was again?' The hardened Stranger replies: 'I didn't!'
The Man With No Name has returned, this time, quite literally, with a vengeance... His dictatorship is flavored with cool humor... The name Billy Borders is mentioned to him...'Don't know the man,' he confesses.'You didn't have much time to,' comes the reply, 'because you shot him yesterday.'
When his rape victim, Callie Travers (Mariana Hill) inaccurately empties a pistol at him during his bath, he casually resurfaces, cigar still in his mouth, and in an aside to his sidekick, Mordecai, reflects: 'I wonder what took her so long to get mad?' His fellow chauvinist suggests, 'Maybe because you didn't come back for more.'
The townsfolk accedes to the Stranger's requests, who pushes them to the limit, even forcing them to paint the entire town blood red... 'When we get down,' says one of them, 'this place is going to look like hell.'
This is the Stranger's intention; he takes a brush and strokes out the name 'Logo' on the town sign and writes 'Hell' instead.
In a series of flashbacks, primarily from the Stranger's point of view and later from Mordecai's, it is revealed that the townsfolk stood by and let three men whip their Marshal to death... The Marshal had discovered that the basis of the town's prosperity, a mine, was actually on government land and not on the townspeople's own. He was going to report this, so no-one felt obliged to intervene when he met his vicious end... His body now was lying outside the town in an unmarked grave: 'They say the dead don't rest without a marker of some kind... he's the reason this town's afraid of strangers.'
Now they have reason to be afraid of the three men who paid the price for the crime in which they all agreed... The Stranger analyzes this fear: 'It's what people know about themselves inside that makes them afraid.' The town reaction to his is reserved... A group of vigilantes try to kill him... The Stranger repays them with a stick of dynamite... Despite their training, the remaining locals are horrified when they realize that he does not intend to remain for the final showdown...
"High Plains Drifter" is one of the most important Westerns ever made, and when Eastwood takes his rightful place in film history alongside Cooper and Stewart and Wayne, this is the film that will be seen as the quintessential example of his art...
Through the burning desert, Bruce Surtees' lens discovers a lone horseman.... The camera pans with the horseman to reveal a small town by a lake-lagoon... The horseman rides in, the camera tracking behind him, interrupted with faces of suspicious locals - even a coffin maker with his merchandises - and instantly one is reminded of Sergio Leone and his faithful reproduction of Kurosawa... A coach driver cracks the whip... The horseman turns, and moves back... He enters a bar and asks for 'a beer and a bottle.' A town heavy intervenes: 'Flea-bitten range-bums don't usually stop in Lago. Life here is a little too quick for them. Maybe you think you're fast enough to keep up with us!' The drifter replies: 'I'm faster than you'll ever live to be!'
True to his promise, the Stranger kills the 'trouble shooter' and his two friends, and also rapes the town belle who responds as any Eastwood feminine victim is obliged to, with resistance turning strangely to joy... The town midget, Mordecai (Billy Curtis) offers him a cigar inquiring: 'What did you say your name was again?' The hardened Stranger replies: 'I didn't!'
The Man With No Name has returned, this time, quite literally, with a vengeance... His dictatorship is flavored with cool humor... The name Billy Borders is mentioned to him...'Don't know the man,' he confesses.'You didn't have much time to,' comes the reply, 'because you shot him yesterday.'
When his rape victim, Callie Travers (Mariana Hill) inaccurately empties a pistol at him during his bath, he casually resurfaces, cigar still in his mouth, and in an aside to his sidekick, Mordecai, reflects: 'I wonder what took her so long to get mad?' His fellow chauvinist suggests, 'Maybe because you didn't come back for more.'
The townsfolk accedes to the Stranger's requests, who pushes them to the limit, even forcing them to paint the entire town blood red... 'When we get down,' says one of them, 'this place is going to look like hell.'
This is the Stranger's intention; he takes a brush and strokes out the name 'Logo' on the town sign and writes 'Hell' instead.
In a series of flashbacks, primarily from the Stranger's point of view and later from Mordecai's, it is revealed that the townsfolk stood by and let three men whip their Marshal to death... The Marshal had discovered that the basis of the town's prosperity, a mine, was actually on government land and not on the townspeople's own. He was going to report this, so no-one felt obliged to intervene when he met his vicious end... His body now was lying outside the town in an unmarked grave: 'They say the dead don't rest without a marker of some kind... he's the reason this town's afraid of strangers.'
Now they have reason to be afraid of the three men who paid the price for the crime in which they all agreed... The Stranger analyzes this fear: 'It's what people know about themselves inside that makes them afraid.' The town reaction to his is reserved... A group of vigilantes try to kill him... The Stranger repays them with a stick of dynamite... Despite their training, the remaining locals are horrified when they realize that he does not intend to remain for the final showdown...
"High Plains Drifter" is one of the most important Westerns ever made, and when Eastwood takes his rightful place in film history alongside Cooper and Stewart and Wayne, this is the film that will be seen as the quintessential example of his art...