By 1973, Clint Eastwood had already established himself as both an actor through the Sergio Leone ‘Spaghetti Western’ Trilogy as ‘The Man With No Name’ in A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE and the epic THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, as well as DIRTY HARRY and MAGNUM FORCE as San Francisco Inspector ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan (‘Every dirty job that comes along’) .
In addition, he had begun his official directorial career with the 1971 noir PLAY MISTY FOR ME, a forerunner of FATAL ATTRACTION.
Along with THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES (1976), HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973) demonstrated Eastwood’s affinity for well staged narrative story-telling in the context of the wide open spaces, culminating in his well deserved and long overdue Oscar as Best Director for the 1992 classic UNFORGIVEN.
In HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, Eastwood plays an unnamed stranger who rides into the town of Lago, where he promptly makes an impression of the townsfolk by killing three brutal men, which leads Lago to give him the freedom of the town and unlimited credit. However, the establishment is determined to have their say, but unbeknownst to them, the stranger may just have more of a connection to the past of the town than first thought…..
Scripted by Ernest Tidyman, who also wrote the screenplays for THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971) and both big-screen versions of SHAFT (1971 and 2000), HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER is a stylish and brutal addition to the Western genre.