Don Siegel (1970)
A Western comedy-drama – and tiresome in both its comic and dramatic aspects, but a tribute too to Shirley MacLaine’s charm and variety. When a mercenary called Hogan (Clint Eastwood) first claps eyes on Sara she’s nearly naked and being threatened with gang rape by bandits. Considering how many good-hearted tarts MacLaine had played by 1970, you’d be forgiven for assuming Sara is another – and for being as surprised as Hogan is when, after he’s shot her attackers dead, Sara puts her clothes back on, and is wearing a nun’s habit. Yet MacLaine’s characterisation is so strong that when, late on in the film, Sister Sara is revealed to be a whore after all, you miss the woman of God – even though you don’t miss Don Siegel’s tired attempts to get laughs out of a nun’s saying arse and swigging whisky and giving Clint Eastwood a right hook when Hogan riles Sara. And within a few minutes of casting off her habit, Shirley MacLaine has made the floozie Sara differently vivid from the nun.
A quarter-century after this movie, Clint Eastwood directed The Bridges of Madison County, in which he starred with Meryl Streep. Their chemistry was surprisingly effective – enough to make you think Eastwood might naturally be a more agreeable performer opposite a woman who could do enough acting for the pair of them. Shirley MacLaine too has histrionic resource to spare but her pairing with Eastwood doesn’t work so well: whereas the Streep character in Madison County is essentially the lead, Sara and Hogan need to be more equal partners, and Eastwood’s wooden playing and thin, weedy (Sally’s adjectives) voice drain the film of energy. When Hogan takes an injun arrow in the shoulder and instructs Sara how to remove it, MacLaine’s plucky anxiety makes the operation involving but you don’t feel for Hogan: with Eastwood in the role, it’s no different from a cartoon character with an arrow through them. The post-recorded sound serves to emphasise his unvarying line readings although, judging from the audience reaction in NFT3, there are people who think Clint Eastwood is a great deadpan wit. The same people seemed to enjoy Hogan’s dismissive chauvinism too. This is an important element of the ‘relationship’ between him and Sara, in Albert Maltz’s script. According to the BFI programme note, Elizabeth Taylor wanted to play Sara. The studio (Universal) was right to go for MacLaine instead. At least we’re used to seeing her on the receiving end of male tyrants of different kinds so the balance of power here makes some sense. The idea of Elizabeth Taylor being talked down to by Clint Eastwood is insane.
Sara is working with a group of Mexican revolutionaries – the juaristas – during the Franco-Mexican war of the 1860s. The film was shot in the Morelos state of Mexico and the landscape is spectacular – so too is some of the architecture, especially a vast ruin of a church up in the mountains. The opening credits introduce us to the various dangerous wildlife of the locale – a snake, a scorpion, a mountain lion. There’s not much imagination in the way these creatures are shown but they’re strong images even so. The same goes for the faces of the Mexican peasants (and how these are presented to Gabriel Figueroa’s camera). Sara’s mule – the burro – trots along amusingly, as does Ennio Morricone’s enjoyable score. But Two Mules for Sister Sara has a pretty dull story to tell and the climactic battle – when Hogan and Sara help the juaristas to get inside a French garrison and the place is set on fire and body after body plunges from on high – goes on way too long.
24 June 2012
