The subversive sexual politics of Clint… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

The sub­ver­sive sex­u­al pol­i­tics of Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me

12 Aug 2021

Words by Adam Scovell

A man paints a portrait of a serious-looking man on a canvas.
A man paints a portrait of a serious-looking man on a canvas.
Com­pared to oth­er films of the counter-cul­ture era, Eastwood’s direc­to­r­i­al debut looks at the dark­er side of Free Love.

It’s strange to con­sid­er now, but in the ear­ly 1970s Amer­i­can film stu­dios were uncer­tain about the direct­ing abil­i­ties of Clint East­wood. Despite being such a promi­nent screen fig­ure, Eastwood’s urge to get behind the cam­era was ini­tial­ly met with scep­ti­cism. Hav­ing cut his teeth learn­ing from the direc­tors he worked with, in par­tic­u­lar Ser­gio Leone and Don Siegel, East­wood was soon in a posi­tion to make that switch. On the evi­dence of his direc­to­r­i­al debut, Play Misty for Me, crit­ics and stu­dio boss­es needn’t have feared.

The film fol­lows Eastwood’s free­wheel­ing, wom­an­is­ing Cal­i­forn­ian DJ, Dave, who lives in the idyl­lic coastal town of Carmel-by-the-Sea and hosts the late-night blues and jazz shows for the local radio sta­tion. He takes callers’ requests and doesn’t notice that a reg­u­lar lis­ten­er always requests Errol Garner’s Misty’. After his lat­est ses­sion, he pops into a bar where he believes he picks up Eve­lyn (Jes­si­ca Wal­ter). In real­i­ty, Eve­lyn is the fan that rings every night to request the song; her obses­sion with Dave is already out of control.

Dave’s rekin­dling of his pre­vi­ous rela­tion­ship with Tobie (Don­na Mills) caus­es Eve­lyn to become increas­ing­ly man­ic in her attempts to pos­sess the DJ. She stalks him, crash­es inter­views and work meet­ings, and even attempts sui­cide when it’s clear that she is unwel­come in Dave’s house. Just how far is Eve­lyn pre­pared to go in order to have Dave to herself?

Eastwood’s debut is a dark film. He har­ness­es some of the same para­noia seen in Siegel’s films (the direc­tor him­self mak­ing a cameo as a bar­tender). Yet, for its peri­od, Play Misty for Me is also refresh­ing in its approach to obses­sive ten­den­cies, celebri­ty infat­u­a­tion, and even its con­cern over the removal of bar­ri­ers in the name of Free Love. With all of these aspects, the film hides many writhing counter-cul­ture hor­rors under­neath its hazy Cal­i­forn­ian paradise.

Aside from its obvi­ous visu­al qual­i­ties, there is also an unnerv­ing authen­tic­i­ty to the film’s dra­ma. This is espe­cial­ly true of Evelyn’s tox­ic tac­tics in get­ting Dave to seem­ing­ly com­mit to things he repeat­ed­ly sug­gests he doesn’t want. This authen­tic­i­ty stemmed from sev­er­al real-life inci­dents. The char­ac­ter of Eve­lyn was inspired first by an anony­mous DJ based in Men­do­ci­no Coun­ty, who was stalked intense­ly by a fan, and an inci­dent from Eastwood’s life when he was still find­ing his feet as an actor in the 1950s.

When East­wood was 19, he met a 23-year-old woman who became infat­u­at­ed with him. As he told one biog­ra­ph­er, There was a lit­tle mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion about how seri­ous the whole thing was.” This plays out note-for-note in Play Misty for Me’s ear­ly scenes, a mis­un­der­stand­ing quick­ly descend­ing into some­thing more uncom­fort­able. Much of the pow­er of these – at times unbear­ably awk­ward – scenes comes from the superb Jes­si­ca Wal­ter, who pos­sess­es a wild-eyed mania that puts her on a par with sev­er­al of the era’s most unnerv­ing screen villains.

Two people, a man and a woman, sitting at a bar or counter with patterned decor in the background.

East­wood had fur­ther issues with the stu­dio, who were unsure why the vil­lain of the film should be a woman. The stu­dio peo­ple said, Why do you want to do a movie where the woman has the best part?’” East­wood recalled to anoth­er biog­ra­ph­er. My reac­tion was: Why not?’ I fig­ured, Why should men have all the fun play­ing dis­turbed characters?’”

Wal­ter rel­ish­es every moment on screen, her sick­ly pos­i­tiv­i­ty utter­ly chill­ing. A one-night stand quick­ly leads to Eve­lyn effec­tive­ly mov­ing in, sneak­i­ly hav­ing a key cut for the front door and gen­er­al­ly veil­ing her manip­u­la­tive nature behind pleas­antries. It’s a believ­able sce­nario in which sim­ple acts of kind­ness are weaponised, esca­lat­ing until Eve­lyn resorts to the most extreme act of self-harm; a flash of vio­lence hint­ing at even greater hor­rors to come.

The era of Play Misty for Me was a come­down. The accel­er­at­ed years of the 1960s had restruc­tured, ques­tioned and desta­bilised just about every aspect of West­ern soci­ety, from its rela­tion­ship to drugs to its received polit­i­cal norms. The clichéd vision is a mix of social and polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tions, psy­che­delia and the pop­u­larised counter-cul­ture. We had all the momen­tum; we were rid­ing the crest of a high and beau­ti­ful wave…” as Hunter S Thomp­son wrote in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, look­ing back after the wave had crashed.

As when Thomp­son was writ­ing, the wave was vio­lent­ly reced­ing by the time of Play Misty for Me’s pro­duc­tion. Its residue remained, char­ac­terised by a dif­fer­ent col­lec­tion of clichés: Alta­mont, Charles Man­sion, ser­i­al killers and drug causal­i­ties. The changes also brought about by the era’s sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion and Free Love final­ly realised in full a proud­ly per­mis­sive soci­ety in the midst of these nihilis­tic elements.

The film’s refresh­ing tone comes as much from ques­tion­ing the care­free, fun-lov­ing image of the 60s, rein­stat­ing a sense of con­se­quence. The world that emerged from this peri­od of appar­ent rev­o­lu­tion was one of greater sex­u­al edu­ca­tion and access to con­tra­cep­tion, but it was still ulti­mate­ly drenched in misog­y­ny. Free Love was a dou­ble-edged sword when unleashed with­in such an inten­sive peri­od of patri­archy. New free­doms became abused, the sys­tem still rigged.

Evelyn could easily have been another Manson Family member, had she dropped more acid.

Eastwood’s gift in the film is to invert an already unac­knowl­edged set of issues sur­round­ing these col­laps­ing social bar­ri­ers and use celebri­ty cul­ture to enable a switch in gen­der. While many films posi­tion the stalk­er-stalked rela­tion­ship as being insti­gat­ed by the man, the post-Beat­le­ma­nia, new-celebri­ty world of the 70s allows char­ac­ters like Eve­lyn to feel more believ­able. It’s the same world that formed Man­son Fam­i­ly mem­bers like Lin­da Kasabi­an, Susan Atkins and Patri­cia Kren­winkel; Eve­lyn could eas­i­ly have been anoth­er Fam­i­ly mem­ber had she dropped more acid.

Though based on events that hap­pened well before such social shifts occurred, it’s dif­fi­cult to see them hap­pen­ing in the same way as in the ear­ly 70s. As such, it’s use­ful to com­pare Play Misty for Me to Vin­cente Minnelli’s The Sand­piper – not only do both films use the same loca­tions (their open­ing title sequences are remark­ably sim­i­lar) but they also chart an amorous falling out. Only a few years sep­a­rate the films and yet the soci­eties they por­tray could be decades apart. The world of The Sand­piper is equal­ly com­pli­cat­ed but not nec­es­sar­i­ly one that would lead to the sort of dement­ed, shock­ing finale of Play Misty.

When look­ing at Las Vegas in the ear­ly 70s, Hunter S Thomp­son wrote “…with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark – that place where the wave final­ly broke and rolled back.” He was refer­ring to the rev­o­lu­tion­ary flare of the late 60s and its inevitable burnout. Per­haps that same high-water mark hit the misty coasts of Big Sur, right along the cliffs of Carmel-by-the-Sea where the naivety and opti­mism of the age hit the same rocks as Evelyn’s body in her last fate­ful effort to vio­lent­ly grasp the new free­doms of the age with both hands.

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