Dirty Harry (1971)

Dirty Harry: Directed by Don Siegel, Clint Eastwood. With Clint Eastwood, Harry Guardino, Reni Santoni, John Vernon. When a madman calling himself “the Scorpio Killer” menaces the city, tough-as-nails San Francisco Police Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan is assigned to track down and ferret out the crazed psychopath.

“How radically different cinema history, and our collective consciousness, would have been if Frank Sinatra hadnu0026#39;t injured his hand before shooting started on u0026quot;Dirty Harryu0026quot;. Sinatra was due to play Harry, but had to withdraw, clearing the way for Clint. Given Sinatrau0026#39;s unique brand of self-loathing, Harry would have been an uglier personality than Clint made him. As it is, Lieutenant Callaghan is an ornery anti-liberal cuss of a guy, but he is straight and likeable. Arguably, it was this characterisation which made Eastwood a megastar.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSan Francisco in 1971 was ready for stardom itself. The West Coast love-in scene and the gay u0026#39;boomu0026#39;, together with McQueenu0026#39;s u0026quot;Bullittu0026quot;, raised awareness of San Francisco as an exciting liberal city with a photogenic skyline. The filmu0026#39;s funky score by Lalo Schifrin is perfectly-judged, and spawned numerous imitators.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe central narrative concerns a lone nut who is trying to hold the city to ransom. He starts by murdering citizens to extort money from the mayor, then progresses to kidnapping children. This plays cleverly on the inchoate anxieties of Middle America, where law-abiding people were puzzled and alarmed at the u0026#39;crime waveu0026#39; and the threat it posed to them and their families. Crime in the decades before the Kennedy assassination had been compartmentalised by Hollywood. Gangsters were bad, but they killed other gangsters. Now the danger was unpredictable, irrational – and solitary. The lone madman was as likely to strike against me or you as against an institution. Only a single-minded strong man, operating on the fringes of the rules, could combat this new terror.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eHarry is a paradox. In one sense, he is an u0026#39;outlawu0026#39;. He has little respect for formal authority (in the opening minutes, we see him being rude to the mayor) and he carries a strictly non-regulation monster of a gun. Harry is openly racist and mutinous. And yet he is also deeply moral. He conforms to an unarticulated ethical code that is anglosaxon American. He protects the weak and confronts the wrongdoers, no matter how the odds are stacked against him. Indeed, the cowardly bureaucrats who will never reward him or promote him are able to exploit his profound decency. They send him on all the difficult, dirty jobs because they know that his sense of right and wrong wonu0026#39;t allow him to walk away.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eEarly in the film, the famous bank robbery scene occurs. This has become so familiar that it hardly needs elaborating here, but to summarise, Harry foils an armed robbery using icy courage and grim humour – and his magnum handgun. The special brand of Eastwood humour recurs throughout the story (eg, the suicide jumper and the gay called u0026#39;Aliceu0026#39;). White anglosaxon America is encouraged to laugh at the undergroups which supposedly threaten it.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWhen the bad guy u0026#39;Scorpiou0026#39; is cornered, he immediately starts bleating about his civil rights. This is meant to arouse our fury, because we have seen him callously destroying the lives of others, and here he is exploiting the protection of the state. To make matters worse, the state agrees with him. We see the DA and a judge explaining to Harry why the cogent evidence against Scorpio is inadmissible. Just exactly why the DA would call a meeting with a lowly policeman in order to explain department policy is far from clear, but the scene is thematically necessary. Scorpio is using the System against the decent, godfearing people who own it. The liberal apparatus is skewed if it lets a killer walk away scot-free.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThere are some illogicalities about the plot. Such an important event as the cash drop is left to two cops working alone, when in reality there would be a massive covert operation. When Scorpio beats the rap, there is no public outcry or media storm, and he is allowed to get on with his anonymous existence virtually untroubled.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eHowever, this hardly matters since the main thrust of the story is the coming showdown between Harry and the bad guy. As the climax approaches, Harry drops out of the police operation. Scorpio is at his manic worst on the hi-jacked school bus, alienating us nicely and suppressing any liberal twitches we may still be feeling. Then we see Harry, standing as upright and sturdy as the Statue Of Liberty ….”