Eastwood, fresh from his Leone collaborations, was already a force to be reckoned with, but with this his second directorial effort, it was a clear assertion of his artistic independence. He wasn’t content to merely inhabit the stoic, laconic cowboy; he wanted to shape the entire landscape. He wanted to mold the narrative to his own unsettling vision.
The script was written by Ernest Tidyman, the man behind The French Connection, was already a dark brooding affair. Eastwood, ever the revisionist, injected it with his own brand of moral ambiguity.
The stark, wind-scoured terrain of High Plains Drifter offered Eastwood a canvas as unforgiving as the film’s moral landscape. Universal, with their factory-line approach to filmmaking, envisioned a tidy production on their back lot. Eastwood, however, possessed a different vision, a desire to root his narrative in the raw, unvarnished reality of the American West. He sought not the picturesque, but the authentic, the desolate beauty of a landscape that mirrored the film’s unsettling themes. The choice of Mono Lake, a place where the natural world asserts its dominance, speaks to a director intent on imbuing his film with a sense of unease.
The construction of an entire town complete with habitable structures, within an astonishing eighteen days shows Eastwood’s meticulous approach. The use of real buildings, rather than facades, allowed for a fluidity of movement, a sense of lived-in reality that enhances the film’s unsettling feel of a town on the edges of hell.
The efficiency of the production which was completed ahead of schedule and under budget, underscores Eastwood’s pragmatic approach to filmmaking that he would become famous for. He was not a director prone to indulgence, but a craftsman who understood the delicate balance between artistic vision and practical execution.
The 1973 film High Plains Drifter, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, unfolds against the stark and isolated backdrop of the American Old West. Eastwood portrays a mysterious, nameless stranger who rides into the small, morally compromised mining town of Lago, situated near the desolate Mono Lake in California.
The town of Lago is haunted by a dark secret: its leading citizens orchestrated the brutal whipping death of the town's Marshall, Jim Duncan, after he discovered their gold mine was illegally located on government land. Now, three outlaws, Stacey Bridges, Bill Borders, and Cole Carlin, whom the town hired to murder Duncan, are being released from prison and are heading back to Lago to seek revenge.
In a desperate attempt to protect themselves, the town leaders hire the enigmatic stranger, who has demonstrated lethal gunfighting skills. He agrees, but on his own terms, demanding absolute authority and the freedom to do as he pleases. Under his bizarre and often humiliating tutelage, the stranger forces the townsfolk to confront their cowardice and complicity in Duncan's death as he prepares them for the outlaws' return. As the stranger's methods become increasingly unsettling and as fragmented flashbacks hint at a connection between him and the murdered Marshall, the true nature of his presence and his intentions remain shrouded in a haunting ambiguity, building towards a fiery and unforgettable confrontation.
High Plains Drifter is a work that is hard to categorise, is it a horror? a revenge tale? It mirrors the very nature of the American West itself—a place where the myth of clear-cut good and evil dissolves into the dust devils of ambiguity. This isn’t a film that provides the viewer with the comfortable moral scaffolding of the traditional Western. Instead it confronts us with a narrative where the lines between justice and vengeance, retribution and savagery are deliberately blurred.
The arrival of the drifter, portrayed by Eastwood with chilling detachment is a catalyst that exposes the rot festering within the town of Lago. This is not a community of virtuous settlers, but a collection of individuals burdened by a shared guilt. Their complicity in a brutal murder casting a long shadow over their collective conscience.
The drifter’s actions and his relentless pursuit of a justice that often descends into sheer cruelty, force the townspeople to confront the darkness within themselves. He is a mirror, reflecting their hidden sins, their cowardice and their willingness to sacrifice others for their own survival.
The vast, empty landscapes, captured with a stark beauty by cinematographer Bruce Surtees, emphasise the isolation of the characters and their vulnerability in the face of the harsh environment. The town of Lago, with its ramshackle buildings and air of decay feels like a stage for a morality play. The deliberate pacing, the long, lingering shots, create a sense of unease, a feeling that something ominous is lurking just beneath the surface.
The drifter’s treatment of the women in Lago is a particularly unsettling aspect of the film. These are not moments of romantic conquest, but brutal assertions of power. They expose the casual misogyny that permeated the West. The film's view of women, while undeniably a reflection of the harsh realities of the West, flirts with exploitation. The scene of sexual assault in particular feels gratuitous, a moment of shocking violence that serves more to shock than to illuminate. It leaves a sour taste, a sense that Eastwood is indulging in a kind of macho posturing. It uses the female characters as pawns in his larger game of moral reckoning.
The townspeople’s complicity in these acts and their willingness to turn a blind eye to the drifter’s transgressions, further underscores their moral bankruptcy.
The visual shock of Lago transformed towards the end of the movie with the entire town a garish, pulsating red, is a testament of Surtees’ cinematography. It’s not merely a theatrical flourish, but a visceral assault on the senses. Almost acting as an externalisation of the town’s collective guilt and the drifter’s vengeful fury. The red paint, thick and dripping, coats the buildings like a bloody shroud. It turns the familiar landscape into anarchy with the harsh light reflecting off the crimson surfaces, casting long distorted shadows, creating a sense of unease and disorientation. This relentless application of red, isn’t just about making a striking image, it’s about facing the consequences of the townspeople’s actions in a bold, almost operatic gesture.
The film’s ending, with the drifter’s enigmatic departure leaves us with a lingering sense of unease. Is he a ghost? a manifestation of the town’s collective guilt? or simply a man driven by a relentless thirst for revenge?
This refusal to provide easy resolutions is what makes High Plains Drifter such a compelling and enduring work. It is a film that forces us to confront the dark side of the American West. What lingers isn't the triumphant clang of justice served, but a more disquieting echo.
High Plains Drifter leaves you squirming in your seat, contemplating the bitterness and violence. It throws down a gauntlet to those pretty picture postcard visions of the Old West, revealing a landscape where survival meant scraping away at your conscience and morality felt about as substantial as a tumbleweed in the wind. There's no-one to root for, it just rubs your nose in the grit and the grime, forcing you to consider the cost of sin in a land where God, if he ever wandered through, must have kept his eyes tightly shut.
Welcome to Lago Hell.
(Bristol Board. Indian Ink. Posca. By Basesketch)