Clint Eastwood

John Ford and Clint Eastwood both made westerns, but had very different points of view.

But with how different his view of the western is from Ford or Wayne's, it makes sense why he doesn't see them as working in the same tradition. In "Unforgiven," violence solves nothing but Munny's own satisfaction and he rides away like the Angel of Death, atop a pale horse. In "Unforgiven," Munny avenges the death of his friend Ned Logan ( Morgan Freeman) by killing Daggett and his deputies and then rides off back home. I just think in terms of the story. It's clear Ford views the "taming" of the west as a good thing. Two moments from Ford and Eastwood deserve special comparison: the endings of "The Searchers" and "Unforgiven." In the former, Ethan succeeds in rescuing Debbie. But he can't join her and Martin back in civilized life, so he leaves. All he has to his name now is a dead wife, a poorly-faring farm, and a heavy conscience. Eastwood's westerns are about darkness and pain, and even when the evil has been avenged, the wounds rarely heal." Ford's 1946 "My Darling Clementine" is one of the best (but loosest) retellings of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Henry Fonda as the upright lawman Wyatt Earp brings justice with him, and Tombstone, Arizona becomes a proxy for America itself. Whereas I see the history of the West as really the reign of violence by violence." However, Eastwood disagrees with idea that he was the "heir" of previous Western directors and stars. Ford's most famous in-color Western is "The Searchers." John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, who joins his adopted nephew Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter) on a quest to find their niece/sister Debbie (Natalie Wood), who was kidnapped by a Comanche tribe.