The 1992 western Unforgiven, produced and directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, was a film that had an incredibly long gestation. It was written by David Webb Peoples, who had written the Oscar-nominated The Day After Trinity (1981) and co-wrote Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), and it had been bought by Clintwood’s production company, Malpaso. The concept of the film had dated back to 1976 under the titles The Cut-Whore Killings and The William Munny Killings. It tells the story of William Munny, an ageing outlaw and killer who takes up one more job after years of retirement in which he had turned to a legitimate way of life in subsistence farming. But after his wife dies and he has no way of looking after his children he is forced to return to his old evil ways.
Eastwood delayed the project, partly because he wanted to wait until he was old enough to play the part of Munny and add to his great western roles in the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone and later ones such as High Plains Drifter (1971) and Pale Rider (1985). Eastwood comments on the film:
I bought it in 1983 and I kind of nurtured it like a little jewel you put on the shelf and polish now and then. I figured I’d age into it a little bit. It’s a fictional story about a renegade, very stylised, a little different. What appealed to me was the idea that the good guys weren’t all that good and the bad guys weren’t all that bad.
Be that as it may, it could also have been influenced by the 1990 success of Dances With Wolves, starring Kevin Costner.
It was hardly the right time for westerns, which had been dying a death for many years (with the exceptions noted). Also, the main parts were old men and women, not usually welcome in the traditional ageist arena of Hollywood. Unforgiven was a vehicle distinctly for character actors, an advantage in this case as Eastwood cast some bankable talent.
These included Gene Hackman, born the same year as Eastwood in 1930, and Morgan Freeman, born in 1937. Another would be added in an important cameo role, Richard Harris, who was in the over-60s category. In addition, the concept was a dark and intense examination of the worst aspects of violence and the myth of the Old West. There was therefore little to intimate that it would make any impact on the box office.
But Eastwood was no fool, nor was the studio that would back the film, Warners, employing an old adage that if the film was made for $14 million or under then no matter what happens in the box office, there was a very good chance that the film would at the very least break even. It would, however, confound all expectations.
The story was paramount, followed by the film’s treatment, the direction and performances. In the first instance, it was a powerful story. A group of prostitutes in Big Whiskey, Wyoming, offer a $1,000 reward to whoever can kill two cowboys who have disfigured one of their own. This upsets the local keeper of law, a corrupt former gunfighter who does not allow guns or criminals in his town.
Meanwhile, a young gun has approached Munny to seek his help in doing the job. Reluctantly, Munny takes the invitation and recruits another old friend. There are other suitors for the job, notably English Bob, a vicious assassin who arrives on the scene with his biographer W.W. Beauchamp, hired to chronicle his dastardly deeds.
English Bob has made his living shooting Chinamen for the railroad company. Beauchamp has written a book about Bob’s exploits as a gunfighter entitled The Duke of Death. To win a bet, Bob demonstrates his accuracy with the pistol by shooting pheasants from the train on the way to Big Whiskey. When he arrives, the sheriff Little Bill, who knows him and his associates from a previous life, beats English Bob to pulp.
There follows a chronicle of extreme betrayal and violence during which the original perpetrators are dispatched, Munny’s friend is brutally killed and he comes back to the town to seek revenge and kills the corrupt sheriff and his hirelings. Munny rides off into the distance, threatening that if his friend is not buried properly, or if the prostitutes are harmed, he will come back. Munny then goes on to a better life in San Francisco, where he prospers.
Much of the cinematography was shot in Alberta in August 1991 by director of photography Jack Green. Principal photography took place over fifty-two days in September and October 1991. Production designer Henry Bumstead, who had worked with the director on High Plains Drifter, was hired to create the dark wintry look of the film.
Harris delivered a stunningly good performance as English Bob, the imperialist blow-hard who gives himself civilised airs quite at odds with his profession, and achieves added credibility via the presence of his biographer Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek).
In a nice and less-than-subtle dig at the newspaper writer turned biographer, the story of the gunslinger Bob is now transferred to Little Bill by the yellow-livered Beauchamp, a media rat with the lashless eye always focused on the main chance. He would be given his comeuppance while watching the latest subject of his literary attention being despatched to eternity by Munny’s shot to the head.
Harris not only played the part to a T but also looked great on screen, as fit, slim and powerful as he had been for years and looking about twenty years younger than his long-bearded, grizzled image in The Field. Even though he didn’t know it at the time, this film would put him on the map in an even more effective fashion than The Field.
The reviews were close to ecstatic. ‘The movie’s grizzled male ensemble, its gradual build and its juxtaposition of brutality and sardonic humour testify to its disdain for box office conventions’, wrote Michael Sragow in the New Yorker. Iain Johnstone in the Sunday Times wrote: ‘Eastwood climbs back into the saddle to make a classic western.’ Variety summed up with: ‘A tense, hard edged, superbly dramatic yarn that is also an exceedingly intelligent meditation on the West, its myths and heroes.’
The film was not only greeted with almost universal critical acclaim, it won four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Hackman) and Best Editing, one of only three westerns to win an Oscar for Best Picture. It was a huge commercial success, clocking up $160 million in worldwide ticket sales, $101 million of which was in the domestic US market.
There had been the usual media gossip anticipating the end of Eastwood’s directorial career and concerning Harris’s acting future. However, Harris’s performance in and association with Unforgiven resulted in nothing but positive publicity. It was a very important platform. He had been up there with the contemporary elder heavyweights of Hollywood – Eastwood, Hackman and Freeman – and more than held his own. He was back in the spotlight and some other celluloid heavies would notice.
Harris then moved from the wilds of Calgary to South Africa for his next film, a remake of the 1951 movie Cry, the Beloved Country, based on Alan Paton’s classic novel about the paths of two men, a black minister and a white landowner, brought together by the tragic fate of their sons in apartheid South Africa. It was a historic production, the first post-apartheid film, and Harris was proud to be involved. ‘One has visited and seen the injustice, and coming from a country where this is integral, where we have fought our own wars and now see justice in sight, it’s a great privilege to be part of its awakening.’
On set, Harris told a local Natal reporter:
It’s a wonderful part. In the world of movie-making today, scripts like this do not come along very often. And it’s a change for me. I’m always being offered these histrionic parts and then the critics accuse me of over-balancing films. But the great chance with this is that it’s the very opposite - Jarvis is this very quiet internal guy.
Produced by American company Miramax, the film premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York on 23 October 1995. Among the distinguished audience were South African president Nelson Mandela and Hilary Clinton. Mandela had already seen the film and gave a speech before the showing in which he said:
Today’s premiere of Cry, The Beloved Country confirms once more our confidence in the future. It is causes such as this which bring to the fore men and women of goodwill and talent - Anant Singh, Darrell Roodt, Visi Kunene, Leleti Khumalo. The talent and creativity that was virtually unrecognised under apartheid is able today to shine, combined with the skill of compassionate friends of Africa, such as James Earl Jones and Richard Harris.
It was a touching and unique moment for Harris to receive acknowledgement from a great South African hero and a world figure. The whole experience was made all the more fruitful when the critics heaped praise on the production and the performances.