COOGAN'S BLUFF

US, 1968, 90 minutes, Colour.
Clint Eastwood, Susan Clarke, Lee J. Cobb, Don Stroud, Tisha Sterling, Betty Field.
Directed by Donald Siegel.

Coogan's Bluff is another of Don Siegel’s tough thrillers exploring the attitudes of criminals and police and how they stand for so many of the attitudes of contemporary American society (The Killers, Madigan). It is also the first of his films with Clint Eastwood - fresh from his Dollars and Good, Bad and Ugly successes. Eastwood has since appeared in Siegel's comic western. Two Mules for Sister Sara and the horror thriller. The Beguiled.

Eastwood here gives a similar character portrayal as his individualistic man-with-no-name westerns. In the west, he could succeed. Here he comes from the west where he can succeed, but is sent to New York with its sophistications, complexity and exploitation and the individualist man-with-just-a-surname is lost and is defeated. As an image of clashes in U.S. society, the film is very interesting. Eastwood is good at this kind of role, a kind of repellent attractive brutality, laconic, tough. But, at the end, his bluff has not worked and he is part of the system.

Supporting players do regular jobs well. The film is concisely made; there is a concession to love, but Coogan, the individual clashing with sophisticated city is the main interest.

1. Did you like Coogan? Did you admire him? Why?

2. Was Coogan in any way a 'typical American'?

3. What did you learn about Coogan in the early Arizona sequences - as a policeman, a hunter, a man, in relation to his prisoner, Millie, McCrea?

4. How did Arizona Coogan compare with the New York world?

5. Coogan was self assured, always right, a cowboy, as people kept saying to him. How much of a 'Western' was this film, even though set in New York? (The final chase is ridden on motorcycles.)

6. One could say that a theme of the film was the contrast and conflict between the two Americas, Arizona and New York. Which wins out in the end? What did Coogan learn? What did the audience learn about the two kinds of worlds? Which is better, or are both bad?

7. What did Coogan learn about New York and people from his cab-driver, the hotel clerk, porter and prostitute, the black detective, from Lt. McElroy?, Julia, Linnie Raven, Mrs. Ringermann?

8. Coogan would have been smart and 'big-time' in the west in his bluff at Bellevue, at Mrs. Ringermann's and with Linnie Raven. Why did he come off second best here?

9. How did Julie react to Coogan? Did she understand why he had no pity? Did he understand her at all? Was he right asking why she came to abuse him?

10. What kind of a picture of American society did the film give you? Was it pessimistic? How did it show the perennial clash of the individualist and the system? What is the meaning of the title?