Clint Eastwood, Director and Star - Original, Vintage Movie Poster Art

At Flicks Film Posters we have always been huge fans of Clint Eastwood and have a number of original, vintage film posters from his movies in our collection.

So we thought it was high time that we created an in-store display at our gallery/shop at 41 Church Street, Twickenham, TW1 3NS to showcase some of our favourite Clint Eastwood posters.

As a director, Eastwood has been a lot more varied and interesting than some of his detractors would have you believe. From his very first directorial outing - the excellent stalker thriller Play Misty for Me (1971), a clear template for the inferior 1987 thriller Fatal Attraction by the way- Eastwood has successfully charted a course through a number of genre pictures and biopics (e.g. Bird, 1988). Of course, it's the westerns and crime thrillers that fans revere the most and we are no different!

In our humble opinion, Eastwood's two greatest films as director are both westerns, which helped to revive and define the genre. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and the multi-Oscar winning Unforgiven (1992) are masterpieces, transcending their genre origins to leave an indelible mark on cinema history.

On the surface, these epic westerns have a similar trajectory - an ordinary man turns to revenge after his life is destroyed by horrifying violence meted out to his family and property - but in fact they are quite different. Josey Wales is a Civil War story and the narrative coalesces around a bunch of misfits and unfortunates that tag along with Josey Wales as he seeks the confederate renegades who wronged him. A kind of surrogate family group develops in a similar way as in a Howard Hawks western such as Rio Bravo (1959) or The Big Sky (1951). This gives the film a more human and empathetic dimension.

In Unforgiven, aside from the group of wronged prostitutes that provokes retired Old West gunslinger William Munny (Eastwood) out of retirement to reluctantly take on one last job to avenge an injustice, there's a lot less community and humanity in a film concerned with how violence affcets the psyche and wellbeing of an individual and the inevitable outcome of that internal conflict on the external world.

With the help of his old partner (Morgan Freeman) and a younger, brasher outlaw known simply as 'The Schofield Kid' (Jaimz Woolvett) Will Munny sets out to take on the vicious and corrupt local sheriff 'Little Bill' Daggett (a brilliant performance by Gene Hackman). The violence in Unforgiven is short, sharp and devastating, especially in the now legendary final shootout sequence in a saloon.

In Eastwood's revisionist, visionary classic his approach to violence is best summed up by his own central character, William Munny's, assertion that "It's a hell of a thing, killin' a man. Take away all he's got, and all he's ever gonna have." The film demonstrates the truth of Munny's wisdom in bone-shuddering, shattering detail.

As a star across many decades, some of Clint Eastwood's finest films as an actor, certainly in the early years of his career, were in tandem with ace director Don Siegel, another big favourite of ours! The series of seven classic films Siegel directed Easwtood in, starting in 1968 with Coogan's Bluff,, encompassing the first (and best) of the Dirty Harry Callahan series, Dirty Harry (1971); a weird and wonderful arthouse Civil War western (!) (The Beguiled, also 1971); and finishing their collaboration with one of the finest prison movies ever made (Escape from Alcatraz, 1979), are all essential and represent one of the most durable and fascinating director-star partnerships in cinema. Eastwood acknowledged his mentor's influence by giving Siegel a cameo as a bartender in his directorial debut Play Misty for Me.

We've only been able to scratch the surface of Eastwood's monumental career here, but we will undoubtedly return again and again to this theme in future blogs and displays at our gallery/shop.

What is your favourite Clint Eastwood film? To view our current range of Clint Eastwood posters click here.

What is your favourite Clint Eastwood film from this list?