Article #1227

Before Coppola’s 2017 film, there was Eastwood’s portrayal of the Union soldier taken in by an all-girls school. It’s an all-timer scumbag performance

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On paper, Don Siegel’s 1971 southern Gothic melodrama The Beguiled appears the perfect candidate for a remake: a critical and commercial failure in its own time, its infamous reputation helped it linger in the margins of popular consciousness. Sofia Coppola would have thought as much when she directed her own take on Thomas P. Cullinan’s source novel in 2017. While Coppola’s version is full of distinct beauty, Siegel’s original stands alone in its unyielding thorniness – that may have seemed like a career misstep for star Clint Eastwood upon its initial release, but now stands clearly as one of the most potent subversions of the masculine archetype he helped popularise.

Eastwood plays John McBurney, an unscrupulous corporal fighting for the Union during the waning days of the American civil war. Wounded in rural Mississippi, McBurney is found drenched in his own blood by 12-year-old Amy, out picking mushrooms despite the many potential dangers. Amy takes the wounded McBurney to the seminary where she boards. Soon, his presence both as an enemy soldier and a man throws the ecosystem of the Confederate-sympathising, all-women school into disarray.