two don siegel movies:
the beguiled with geraldine page
if it wasnt for the bad child actresses, i couldve really liked this film. great cinematography. clint eastwood as the yankee soldier looks like an injured koala having to wear bandages on his two hands for the longest part of the movie which takes place during tje american civil war at a southern school for "young ladies" run by a miss martha. eastwood, representing the male sexual principle, ends up there injured.
but the women of the southern states, even though sensual, are also too tough for the northern soldier to handle. he is doomed.
highlight of the film, and probably the inspiration for steven kings "she", is the amputation scene and eastwood realizing it's all gone, the broken leg that is.
probably the film is also about war being a chance for women to gain independence from men, as also fassbinder has shown in "maria braun".
i liked siegel's walter matthau film "charlie varrick" more. suspenseful from the beginning to the end, even though the plot is quite simple being about a successful bank robbery that turns out a curse as the money stolen belongs to the mafia.
stereotypical in its depiction of the asian mafia and gender. the feminist and sexual revolution mustve been a great challenge for this director. he was looking for a masculine figure that could master it all employing different strategies of survival. eventually, he was able to transform these influences into something beautiful.