The Beguiled

1971's THE BEGUILED is somewhat difficult to categorize.  It was a significant change of pace for Clint Eastwood, who again worked with director Don Siegel.  You might call it a dark Southern Gothic.  That would be accurate.   The story takes place during the American Civil War in rural Mississippi, largely in a girls' boarding school.  A perfect setting for what is also a drama about repressed sexuality, jealousy, vengeance, and wartime loyalty. 

Eastwood plays John McBurney, an injured Union soldier who is discovered by a 13 year old girl named Amy (Pamelyn Ferdin) out in the woods.   After he asks her age, he replies "Old enough for kisses" and plants one on her mouth.  She is maybe stunned but nonetheless brings him to the Miss Martha Fransworth Seminary for Young Ladies.  Miss Farnsworth (Geraldine Page) and her students are frightened and intend to turn over this Yankee to the Confederates at the first opportunity.  But only after they've treated his significant wounds.  The soldier, kept under close watch in a boarded up room, is reserved and grateful at first. 

But the women of the house, who include a virginal schoolteacher named Edwina (Elizabeth Hartman) and an aggressive student named Carol (Jo Ann Harris), become entranced with their "uninvited guest" and stake emotional and physical claims.  Soon, so does Miss Farnsworth.  McBurney recovers well enough to use crutches.  Nighttime visits to bedrooms don't end well.

THE BEGUILED, which is an adaptation of Thomas P. Cullinan's novel A Painted Devil by Albert Maltz and Irene Kamp, was frustrating for me as I wasn't quite sure what Siegel was trying to accomplish.  From scene to scene, the film transforms from handsome costume drama to tawdry potboiler.  And back again.  There is a subplot about incest that I felt was unnecessary and just plain trashy.  The occasional voiceovers of the women's thoughts were often cheesy and giggle inducing. Maybe it was intended to be funny?

The film also suffers dramatic obviousness and clunky symbolism (like the wounded crow who is cared for by Amy).  But, there is enough intrigue and atmosphere to sustain interest.  A mysterious air lending to events that are not necessarily predictable.  I did like the dream sequence, though some viewers may use my adjectives from the previous paragraph for that.  It contains some potentially progressive ideas about mating and courtship, although so does the entire film.  Eastwood apparently wanted a break from playing the action hero and his work here is mostly believable as the manipulative but vulnerable houseguest.

The film's study of sexuality, sometimes blatant, other times almost in whispers, hidden in the shadows of the antebellum estate, is what makes THE BEGUILED worth the time.