HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER @ 50

 

The drifter of the title rides slowly into the town of Lago and then through it, attracting the attention of everybody he passes. He tethers his horse and goes for a drink at the saloon where he is approached by the local gang. He shrugs them off and then, when they interrupt his shave, shoots all three. Oh, on the way to the barber he responds to the coy attention seeking ploy of the local blonde bombshell by hauling her into a barn and raping her. Is that a sign of consent at the end of the act? This movie is not about to make it easy for you. If that sounds like the shock of a Jodorowsky you're in the right era but you've got he wrong guy. This is Clint Eastwood's second feature and first western, in the guise of the man with no name which had strung him through some fine work by Sergio Leone.

Eastwood had already added to that enviable apprenticeship with Don Seigel's Dirty Harry and The Beguiled where his characters' ethics were of the antihero and not always in the cool sense of the notion. In Drifter he stands way outside all he had previously done. Then again, who does in this story? All the officials and business owners of this town (including the phantom-like mining company who only appears through its connections to the influential townsfolk) are venal and violently interested. This town, that sometimes seems to be populated by about ten people and sometimes about a hundred, has only the appearances of an outpost of the "honest world". There is a spoilable reason for this but until you understand it you might think you've entered a forebear to an AI approximation. The apparent order and holders of order have no integrity that survives a shallow peep.

So, when he is asked to assist with his gunfighter chops to help the town against the approach of a vengeful trio, he accepts on the proviso that he gets what he wants and does as he pleases with impunity and no charge. Those bad guys? Well, they were part of the town's protection racket against the government who sent in a marshal who the threesome whipped to death in the street. If you're thinking of mining companies and their political reach these days, keep thinking it. So, No-Name ploughs through the town's wares and patience, sowing resentment in the men and attraction from the women, and he trains the able bodied to shoot straight from hiding places. And the localised apocalypse keeps advancing. 

Really, you need that level of plot detail to get through this one. No-Name's picaresque trickery and japes break into criminality without an ethical speedbump and if you know your early literature you might see him as much a medieval morality test as a wild west figure. To this end Eastwood depicts his character has having even less muscular substance as any of his Leone roles. Lanky and soft of foot and often shot from below, he moves and poses like an animated scarecrow. There's a spoilable reason for that, too, but it has its roots in an odd dream sequence in which he visualises the bad fate of a character he shouldn't know.

If the comedic or salacious moments feel less funny or sexy than they might it's only partially due to the vintage of the piece as a film but more so to that Decameron-like amorality I alluded to before. High Plains Drifter is almost as strange a western as El Topo. It has better manners than Jodorowsky's movie but El Topo can claim a lot firmer an ethical ground. That is, until you get to the end where if it doesn't quite forgive his worst acts at least explains them. Is that enough? Up to you.