![]() ![]() In one scene, for example, the marshal's gunmen enter a restaurant and empty their guns into the chair where Eastwood had been sitting moments before. There are some moments when the movie's mythmaking becomes self-conscious. The Eastwood character himself is almost always backlit, so we have to strain to see him and this strategy makes him more mysterious and fascinating than any dialogue could have. Interiors are dark and gloomy, and the sun is blinding in its intensity. The sources of light are almost all from the outside. Instead of making the miners' shacks into early American antique exhibits, he shows them as small and sparse. That sets the stage for a series of violent confrontation.Īs the film's director, Eastwood has done some interesting things with his vision of the West. He urges the miners to take a stand and defend their land, and agrees to help them. Eastwood moves in with the small miners, and becomes close with one group a miner ( Michael Moriarty) who lives with a woman ( Carrie Snodgress) and her daughter (Sydney Penny). The marshal, for example, seems to be trying to remember where he has previously encountered this man. Into this hotbed rides the lone figure of Eastwood, wearing a clerical collar and preferring to be called "Preacher." There are people here he seems to know from before. ![]() The banker would like to buy out the little miners, but, lacking that, he will use force to drive them off their land and claim it for his company. The town is ruled by a cabal of evil men, revolving around the local banker and the marshal, who is his hired gun. In a small California mining town, some independent miners have staked a claim to a promising lode. In its broad outlines, "Pale Rider" is a traditional Western, with a story that has been told, in one form or another, a thousand times before. Other things in the movie are not so subtle.
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