Eastwood versus Allen: a contrast in style, content, quality

If you had told me in, 1976 say, that in 2010 Clint Eastwood was going to be a more important filmmaker than Woody Allen , I would have laughed in your face. Or, if I were in one of my more polite moods, behind your back.

But one way or the other I would have laughed. In the 1970s, Eastwood was still making action flicks. He starred in both “The Enforcer” (as Harry Callahan) and “The Outlaw Josey Wales” that year. Allen, by contrast, had just finished two of his first comic successes — “Sleeper” in 1973, “Love and Death” in 1975 — and was working on the film that would show just how serious a filmmaker he could be, “Annie Hall,” which would come out in 1977.

In the 1980s, when Eastwood was still making his monkey movies and more Harry Callahan flicks, Allen was making some of the best films of the second half of the 20th century: “The Purple Rose of Cairo” in 1985, ” “Hannah and Her Sisters” in 1986, “Crimes and Misdemeanors” in 1989.

It wasn’t until 1990, when Eastwood directed himself in the adult drama “White Hunter Black Heart” that he began to show us another face. And then, soon enough, he offered up what is generally considered to be one of the greatest Westerns ever: “Unforgiven,” in 1992.

Since then, Eastwood has given us one thoughtful, adult film after the next: “A Perfect World” in 1993, “The Bridges of Madison County” in 1995, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” in 1997, “Mystic River” in 2003, “Million Dollar Baby” in 2004, his two World War II films — “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima” — in 2006, “Gran Torino” in 2008 and “Invictus” in 2009.

Meanwhile, Allen — aside from his personal problems, which involve accusations of pedophilia — has given us some pretty good movies, along with a number of clunkers. The better ones include “Mighty Aphrodite” in 1995, “Sweet and Lowdown” in 1999, “Match Point” in 2005 and “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” in 2008. The clunkers include a good portion of everything else.

It’s not that Allen has been putting out crap and Eastwood has been giving us only high art (I have grave problems with “Gran Torino,” for example). It’s just that Allen, despite a temporary surge of reinvigoration when he moved out of New York, has continued making basically the same kinds of films he has for the past 30 years: either a comedy of his trademark neurotic manners or a styled kind of look at failed love/living. Some of it, of course, works as well as anything he’s ever done. Other parts, though … let’s just say you can repeat yourself only so many times before your style begins to feel tired.

Eastwood, though, keeps changing, keeps reinventing himself. The star of Spaghetti Westerns makes a harsh, at times comic classic Western? The icon of all things male makes a moving film about a woman boxer? The presumed political conservative makes a war film that portrays Japanese soldiers as … um, human? And sympathetic? And another film about an aging crank who ends up sacrificing himself for his Southeast Asian neighbors?

All of which brings us to the pair’s latest efforts: Eastwood’s “Hereafter” and Allen’s “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.”

Both of which I will write about in a future post.

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