THE EIGER SANCTION
Clint Eastwood, Vonetta McGee, George Kennedy, Jack Cassidy. Dir. Clint Eastwood, Universal, 1975By '75, Clint Eastwood was fed up with the studio that made him a TV star. Universal execs refused to see him as more than a widescreen Rowdy Yates, whereas Clint liked the darker, less heroic roles he found in Harry Calahan at Warner Brothers, working with mentor Don Siegel. After Universal failed to market PLAY MISTY FOR ME & especially BREEZY, he signed on to make the movies he wanted, as long as they stayed low budget & quick, in exchange for an occasional studio project like a Dirty Harry sequel. Since THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES, Eastwood's Malpaso Productions has made a few dozen movies, most of them those Clint finds interesting. In a time of MCU extravagaganzas, a nonagenarian Clint made a modern western about poor people on the SW US border - because his deal at WB required them to. It cost $33M & lost money. ENDGAME cost - what, $300M, including marketing?
Regardless, Clint owed Universal one last picture and, rather than reel off some obvious genre fluff with Stetsons, Clint decided to try his hand at the Eurothriller, playing the sort of urbane/deadly agent more often the province of a Michael Caine or Sean Connery in the sort of plot-intensive, location-hopping action more in line with a John Frankenheimer-type director. To keep it weird, Clint picked a Eurothriller novel by Trevaynian to adapt. In the hierarchy of '70s espionage-spy writing, LeCarre & Uris rule. Lower tiers offer Robert Ludlum & Clive Cussler, maybe Alistair MacLane. Below even these, you'll find Trevaynian. His plots tend to reverse & contradict themselves for no real purpose. His characters, with ludicrous names like Dr. Jonathan Hemlock and the wildly problematic Jemima Brown ("my mama liked ethnic names"), occasionally struggle all the way to stock reactions & semi-human dialogue, not that it saves or even improves the stories. If you're a huge Trevaynian fan, I'm sorry. But not that sorry.
Clint piled on the strange. Not only did he want to play a vaguely Bondian character on a location shoot in Europe, featuring extensive climbing scenes he, Clint, planned to film on the mountain, despite his lack of climbing experience, he wanted to base it all on Warren B. Murphy's best attempt at fashioning Trevaynian's novel into a coherent feature.
At the time, Hollywood wits believed Eastwood got Universal to pay for his European vacation, never intending to give them a good film. My first time seeing EIGER SANCTION, three years ago, I agreed with them. Two years ago, it struck me that the cinematography's better than usual for a Clint movie. I still thought the spies/assassins&mountain climbing plot topheavy, too busy, & stupid, but it didn't look like Clint was simply fucking off.
Welcome to 2022. THE BEGUILED, HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, & EIGER SANCTION remain of my Clint at Universal box. Dreading the last, I watched it first. I watched a convoluted, confused, overplotted movie about silly people doing stupid things for no reason. I also watched a gorgeous, fast-moving, character-rich action movie featuring a hard-as-nails Eastwood having more fun than he deserves, especially considering his inexperience on the mountain cost a British climber his life.
Eastwood plays one Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, an esteemed art historian who secretly collects stolen paintings by Masters such as Pissaro, enjoys a rep as a great mountaineer, & once specialized in "sanctioning" political enemies of a supersecret US Intel agency, headed by a mutant albino. That's plausible, right? And art history teachers inspire applause after telling a classroom art belongs "only to those who deserve it," right? None of this sounds illogical, unreal, or absurd, right?
Good, because the mutant albino blackmails Clint to do the always-popular "last job ever," taking out the bad men who killed Clint's war buddy to steal a vital, earth-saving formula. Of some kind - it's sorta vague, but we need it back, BAD. And Jonathan Hemlock, who sounds like a bad supervillian cooked up on a bad day for Stan Lee, why - you guessed it - Hemlock's the best, the only one who can do it.
Doing it requires returning to the US for Hemlock to train for the ascent of Switzerland's The Eiger, its North Face a legendary slab of mankilling stone, with an international team, one of whom happens to be one of the buddy's killers, though which remains obscure. The albino mutant wagers Hemlock the agency will discover the climber's identity before Clint has to attempt the North Face, which twice resisted him.
The film's American training sequences serve as admirable excuses for sexy banter and a bit more, for George Kennedy to turn up as Jonathan's "trainer" & "impresario," Ben Bowman, & Jack Cassidy to appear as Clint & his dead friend's other comrade-in-arms, Miles Mellough, a pansexual sociopath offering to shorten the film by selling Clint the assassin's identity. Cassidy oozes perverse charisma in his too-few scenes, almost stealing his portion of things.
American training & Clint's murder of Cassidy & his security lead back to Switzerland for the climb, which Clint, of course, has to join, after all. By now, I didn't give a shit who killed who, or about the sexual politics between the climbers & their women, or that the designated leader was an obvious risk to living things. I had heard about the Eiger. I'd seen glimpses of it. Now, like a certain shark movie, I wanted to see Clint get on the Eiger & for inconceivable badassery to occur. The film's been on for a few reels - gimme some mountain.
During the mountain filming, 26 year-old British climber David Knowles died helping obtain extra footage. Whether due to the tragedy or always the plan, Clint gives us about 22 minutes on the mountain, a big part of it involving getting off the mountain. Since the other team members die, the albino mutant wipes Hemlock & his illegal paintings from all knowledge, at least until the sequel.
Doesn't sound like a great night at the cinema, right? Sounds trainwreck-y, weird - Clint Eastwood in a spy thriller like Odessa File or even a James Bond-type picture? I mean, we've bought him as murderous cowboys & vigilante cops & stalked celebs, but an art history scholar/mountaineer/assassin? Richard Dreyfuss as a sharkfighter sounds more reasonable.
Returning to Trevaynian, his yarns tended to run as serials, especially in the big budget men's magazines. It's dark, paranoid, slick, chauvinist, and ideal page-filler between Pet of the Month & O Wicked Wanda!
EIGER SANCTION offers the same energy. It's gratuitously & multiracially sexual, violent, peopled by strong and unreal characters, driven by a plot that stops making sense everytime the audience looks at Vonette McGee's chest & doesn't always start again, but is it also compulsively watchable, punctuated by performances from McGee, Kennedy, Cassidy, & Gregory Walcot? Is it filled with some amazing rock climbing scenes, well before they try the Eiger? Is it a basically enjoyable-in-spite-of-its-flaws Clint Eastwood movie ideal for an afternoon or evening's entertainment?
It is. It's not the films Clint was about to unleash, OUTLAW JOSEY WALES, THE GAUNTLET, & EVERY WHICHWAY BUT LOOSE among them. It's not his highwater mark at Universal. It IS Entertaining & mostly fun, though. It's not "the meh."
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