(This is not a political post but if it was, it would solely reflect my opinion and not necessarily the opinion of anyone else who writes for this site.)
The big news tonight seems to be that former President Bill Clinton is giving a speech at the Democratic National Convention. After being told by several people on twitter that Clinton is “one of the greatest speakers of all time,” I listened to a few minutes of “America’s greatest politician” and you know what?
I still prefer Clint Eastwood.
That’s not meant to be an endorsement of any political position that has or has not been advocated by Clint Eastwood over the past few weeks. This is not a political statement as much as it’s just an acknowledgement of the fact that Presidents give speeches but Clint Eastwood gets results.
And that leads me to tonight’s scene that I love. From the classic 1971 crime film Dirty Harry, here’s the famous scene that explains why so many people love Clint Eastwood in the first place.
Through the Shattered Lens 
And he was a San Francisco cop. 😀
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Bill Clinton, one of the greatest speakers of all-time?
Those people must live on another planet.
You know, I could name a couple of notorious dictators with oratorial skills superior to those of Bill Clinton, but due to the ethically dubious content of their dissertations, their names are not often mentioned on the list of all-time greats. Not that I could tell you exactly what they were saying without subtitles, but they spoke like they meant what they were saying.
I’d also hazard a guess that many more superior talkers have existed in history, but were alas unable to be recorded due to technological limitations of the time.
I’m quite fond of the above scene, not just for the speech, but the Christ-like symbolism of Harry Callahan walking across water (from the busted fire hydrant) as he moves in to make the arrest. The film is littered with religious metaphors.
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I haven’t seen this for a very long time. I’m not as perceptive as Mark – I did not discern any of the religious or other metaphor in the film when I saw it (of course, I was a kid), or in this scene when re-watching it just now. But I did find the scene more humorous this time. I like how Harry continues to calmly chew his lunch, including the mouth-filled command to “Halt”, as he dispatches and/or arrests the perps.
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My reaction was the same. Harry actually looked quite inconvenienced that he had to stop these robbers AND still have his lunch.
I still get a laugh at this scene which portrays a character that’s not even in the realm of being politically progressive in a city seen by the rest of the country as the capital of progressive politics.
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For overt religious symbolism in an Eastwood flick, you still can’t top “Grand Torino” with its crucifixion-pose-laying-down-in-the-yard at the end. Clint’s a legend of the silver screen, no doubt, but he’s certainly never shied away from portraying himself in as Christ-like a fashion as possible. After, you know, killing people for a couple of hours. Still, I’m not going to follow down the path so many have of suddenly losing all respect for the guy over a political speech that I thought was more just-plain awkward than it was disastrous. If people want to lose respect for Clint Eastwood as a person, then do it for reasons that make sense — say, his vicious physical and psychological abuse on Sondra Locke or his denial of paternity for several years of some of his kids — not because of political disagreements. Whatever happened to separating art from the artist, anyway? Picasso was a complete son-of-a-bitch by all accounts — doesn’t mean he wasn’t a great painter. I wish we lived in a world where people were still able to check their politics at the front door and admit good work when they see it, regardless of the views of the person who made it. I will say this, though — I think Clinton’s speech was in an absolutely different league than Eastwood’s bizarre “empty-chair” harangue, and that an old, rich, confused white guy having an argument with an imaginary version of Barack Obama that doesn’t have anything to do with reality is a pretty apt metaphor for a sizable proportion of the so-called “Republican base” at the moment, the fact is, Clinton’s speech frankly should be better than Eastwood’s given that he’s been doing this sort of thing his entire adult life. And while I’d rather watch a Clinton political speech than an Eastwood one any day of the week, I’d rather watch a good “Dirty Harry” flick than either of them.
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Thank you
🙂
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The religious symbolism in “Dirty Harry” tends to be relatively subtle, or at least moreso than the final showdown in “Gran Torino”. Look at “Dirty Harry” through adult eyes and you’ll be amazed at what is there.
(If you’ve never seen “Dirty Harry” or at least not in a long time, you might want to watch the movie before reading on).
Lunchtime arrest scene: Harry walks across a road covered in water sprayed from the busted fire hydrant.
Telephone sequence: Harry is bounced all over town by a series of calls to public telephone boxes. Scorpio finally confronts Harry and belts the tar out of him at the base of a gigantic concrete crucifix.
Kezar Stadium scene: field markings that look like little crosses as Harry tortues Scorpio.
School bus scene: Scorpio says “Jesus” as he spots Harry standing on the overpass.
Last scene: possibly stretching with this one, but there might be a baptism in there somewhere. Things like this rarely happen in a film “by accident”. Locations aren’t picked in a clumsy random, not when the film is “Dirty Harry”. The pier must have been chosen for a reason.
I know that Bubba has been making speeches his entire adult life, but please remember, Clint Eastwood was Mister Mayor at one time, and he’s been making speeches all HIS adult life. Also, Bill Clinton is an actor, he acts, just like all Presidents. What Bubba did in the White House wasn’t much different to what Clint did in Hollywood–he memorised a bunch of fiction and tried to make an audience believe it. That’s why Ronald Reagan was known as “The Great Communicator”–decades of work in Hollywood prepared him for the biggest role of his career. He had a great headstart as a politician.
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You should be happy to know that, at the end of this month, I will be publishing reviews of all five of the Dirty Harry films. 🙂
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