The Bridges of Madison County
It's not true that Clint Eastwood film's stray far from melodrama. Films by the maker of Breeze are filled with melodramatic themes and the director even directed a "paternal melodrama" in The Road to Nashville (1982). But it is The Bridges of Madison County that can be rightfully recognized as his first wholesale melodrama that movingly describes a love between two people. Eastwood breaks with convention and follows greats such as Frankie and Johnny by Garry Marshall or Falling in Love by Ulu Grosbard, films love sneaks into the hearts of mature people whose lives are seemingly set. Here, the love story involves a lonely vagabond photographer and a staid mother and wife who takes him in as he photographs the turnpikes of Madison County for "National Geographic." Eastwood is especially delicate and creates something akin to his own version of Tristan and Isolde. Love is an irrefutable force, it changes people wholesale and, despite being subject to death by routine, it imbues that routine with meaning. The film opens with the information that two people once met and fell in love, but decided not to spend the rest of their lives together. The implication is: If they had acted on their desire, they would not have deserved such a love, writes Roger Ebert in his review.
Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood (b. 1930, San Francisco) is a living Hollywood legend. Steven Spielberg called him maybe the last real man in American film. He abandoned sports and military careers in favor of television, making his debut in the Rawhide TV series. From there, he ventured to Italy where, inspired by Sergio Leone, he created the man with no name for the Spaghetti Western Dollars Trilogy. After getting back stateside, he portrayed another now iconic character, inspector Harry Callahan, aka Dirty Harry. On the set of that film, he replaced the director, Don Siegel, in several scenes. The same year, he debuted as a director in his own right with the thriller Play Misty for Me, produced by his own Malpaso studio established in 1967. Up until Bird, Eastwood's directorial efforts (mainly Westerns and action movies) were primarily a successful reworking of genre schematics. Starting with the Charlie Parker biopic, Eastwood's seasoned work takes on qualities of realistic psychological cinema with a moralist streak. Winner of two Oscars for directing, the Irvin Thalberg prize and an honorary Golden Palm (2002).
Selected filmography
1971 Zagraj dla mnie, Misty / Play Misty for Me
1980 Bronco Billy
1992 Bez przebaczenia / Unforgiven
2000 Kosmiczni kowboje / Space Cowboys
2003 Rzeka tajemnic / Mystic River
2006 Sztandar chwały / Flags of Our Fathers
2006 Listy z Iwo Jimy / Letters from Iwo Jima
2014 Jersey Boys
