Clint Eastwood: A Cultural Production

While treating Eastwood's films seriously, Smith offers a respectful and intelligent disclaimer to the canonization that culminated in his recent double-Oscar triumph with Unforgiven . This volume traces Eastwood's career from his first major success in Sergio Leone's iconoclastic Italian westerns. Smith ( Discerning the Subject ) uses Eastwood's work, its themes and structures, to tease out some interesting notions about gender and sexuality. The result is film criticism that, while conventional, is of a very high level, with Eastwood's career serving as a catalyst for some provocative musings on film theory. These turn particularly fruitful in a lengthy digression that focuses on Eastwood's oft-maligned performances to explore the nature of film acting, which Smith breaks down into three areas--the facial, the corporeal and the vocal. In addition, Smith incisively examines the visual styles of Leone and Don Siegel and their influence on Eastwood's work. On the down side, Smith often falls into the jargon of Lacanian psychoanalysis and overuses technical words like ``diegesis'' and ``narrativity.'' The book may be too difficult for the casual reader, but the serious film buff will glean some new ideas about Eastwood. (June)