Everyone who loves Clint Eastwood’s award-winning western opus, “Unforgiven,” needs to watch his 1976 depiction of The Outlaw Jose Wales. A man who, by losing everything that is dear to him, becomes an unemotional vehicle of revenge before finally finding salvation through love. In my opinion, Jose Wales and William Munny from the later film are one and the same person, and watching this earlier film through the lens of “Unforgiven” makes for a fascinating experience.
At the start of “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” we see Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood) as a family man and farmer in Missouri tending his land with his son. After his son is called home for dinner by his mother, Wales hears the sound of charging horses and gunfire. Running to his home, he sees his wife being carried out to be gang raped and his son screaming for help in the burning house that was set afire by the intruders. Wales is hit viciously on the head, passes out, and is left for dead. When he awakens, he finds both his wife and son dead, buries them, digs out his old pistol, and starts to practice shooting until he becomes a sharpshooter. The people who destroyed his family were a band of Union Army Jayhawker militants who wore red boots, as the union hired vicious criminals into these units with orders to reign terror on the civilian population who lived in the south. After a while, a band of pro-confederate bushwhackers arrive at the burned farm and enlist Wales in their group in order to attack all those who support the Union. Throughout the civil war, Wales becomes one of the most precise killers of this group, and their reign of terror is shown brilliantly by Eastwood in a quick montage scene that follows them until the end of the war. At the war’s end, all of Wales former allies accept an offer of amnesty from the Union. All except Wales. When he realizes that his friends were then tricked and murdered, Wales goes on the attack, picking up a surviving boy from his former band and quickly becoming the number one outlaw in the post-war south with a heavy price on his head. The Union Army creates a unit to find and kill him, led by his former friend and colleague (John Vernon) and the man who led the destruction of his family (Bill McKinney). Wales is now being hunted by not only the army but by countless bounty hunters and renegades hoping to get the reward money.
While on the run, Wales picks up some unusual and quirky companions who, in need of security, recognize his violent ability to survive. These companions include a lone Cherokee Indian named Lone Watie (Chief Dan George in one of cinema’s greatest Native American performances), a Navajo woman he saves from being raped (Geraldine Keams), and a newly arrived settler family he saves from the murder and rape of their daughter (Sondra Locke). Wales rescue of helpless women being raped serves as a form of catharsis for his inability to save his own wife. In addition, the people that he picks up become his new family, which was something he had not had since the attack on his farm years ago. It is this familial relationship with these people that differentiates Wales and this film from all the previous loner anti-Western- heroes Eastwood portrayed up until that point. What first appears like a violent action-packed revenge western slowly becomes a character study, and what makes this film truly special is the depth in which Wales is portrayed in the film, with the skills of Eastwood, the actor, within his limited range to infuse true character into the role.
Eastwood, the director, really comes into his own with this movie. Incorporating a great deal of influence from not only Leone with many sneering close-up shots, but also from the movies of John Ford, as there are many wide landscape shots of the desert that are stunning shots, which reminded me of many of Ford’s classic westerns. In addition, the dark doorway entrance shots from the bright outer open space are filmed with a shadowing menace that reminded me of Ford’s “The Searchers.” Eastwood also, for most of the movie, films himself as Wales within a shadow across half his face, which gives the impression of danger and mystery. 15 years later, he would film himself as the transformed outlaw Munny at the end of “Unforgiven,” in the same way as the final hint that connects the two characters and two movies.
“The Outlaw Josey Wales” is filled with many iconic scenes that drew me in with clever, sardonic dialogue. The character of Wales has a habit of spitting during times of tension that, to me, served to replace the cigar smoking of Eastwood’s previous heroes. The spitting is used as a precursor to violence and terrific dialogue, as well as occasional humor. These include iconic moments of dialogue such as “Dying ain’t much of a living boy” when Wales sneers at a young bounty hunter looking to claim Wale’s bounty. In another scene, when Wales faces a group of Union soldiers staring him down and looking at their pistols, he growls, “Are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle, Dixie?” Hearing Eastwood say those lines in his menacing western drawl is worth the price of admission by itself. In another terrific scene, Wales approaches an antagonistic Indian warrior chief with a promise that he has both a culture of death and life and that it would be up to the chief to decide which one will be used. His promise of life or his promise of death. This proud declaration bestows on Wales how he has finally made peace with his promise of death since the destruction of his family and is very prophetic in today’s world, which has one such culture celebrating death over another that adores life. If only Wales were with us today to change the death culture of those people into that of life.
Clint Eastwood in the 1970s was a Hollywood superstar as an actor, but he always wanted to direct and used his clout to be allowed to direct his own films. He has since become one of the great modern American directors, and it was in 1976, with the powerful “The Outlaw Jose Wales,” that he really started to develop the striking directorial style that became his own. This movie also happens to be one of the greatest revisionist westerns made in the 1970s.
1001 Movies before you die 