Two mules for Sister Sara (Don Siegel, 1969)

The second of five collaborations with star Clint Eastwood, and the weakest by some distance, 1969's rambling western Two Mules for Sister Sara found Eastwood and Siegel on slightly shakier ground than in their previous Coogan's Bluff.  Originally dreamed up as a package for Eastwood and Elizabeth Taylor on the set of the previous year's Where Eagles Dare, the part eventually went to Shirley MacLaine after Taylor had second thoughts about spending several arduous weeks filming in Mexico.

Perhaps the oddest aspect of Two Mules from today's point of view is the idea of Eastwood sharing the screen with a high profile and established leading lady (in fact, Eastwood is second-billed to MacLaine in the credits), a situation that would not occur again until 1995's Bridges of Madison County with Meryl Streep.   There were of course Jessica Walter and Genevieve Bujold in later years, but these were talented though lesser known actresses hired by Eastwood himself.   The plot of a tough, grizzled mercenary hooking up with a suspiciously bawdy nun in 19th century Mexico to sock it to the French occupying forces plays like a kind of western African Queen, with the two leads running the usual gamut of initial wary antagonism-burgeoning mutual attraction-romantic closure to be found in countless romantic comedy-dramas over the years.   Though oddly cast, MacLaine is nonetheless great as Sara, giving a ballsy, spirited performance that contrasts nicely with Eastwood's more typically subdued and bemused performance, though watching the film confirms that Eastwood was always more effective when he alone was the centre of his films.  The romantic pairing at the centre of Two Mules for Sister Sara ensures that Eastwood's grizzled hombre Hogan becomes an unusually garrulous and verbose role for him, proving that the less he says in his movies the more effective he is, something he had demonstrated quite ably already in his collaborations with Leone.

Two Mules for Sister Sara is a patchy, though intermittently entertaining western.   Various highlights include the spectacular dynamiting of a railway trestle and an equally explosively staged final raid on the French garrison, though the film slumps for a good half an hour in between these two set pieces.   There is a nice scene of Sara tending to a wounded Hogan following an attack by vicious tribesmen which, though well acted by both Eastwood and MacLaine, runs too long and slows the film down at a crucial point.   Siegel directs in an uninterested fashion far below the quality of his best work, only becoming focused for an atmospherically shot title sequence, featuring Hogan riding amidst various Mexican wildlife (panther, snake, scorpion), and the exciting finale (though such gory details as a machete in the face and a lobbed-off arm seem gratuitous and out of place, especially in comparison to the rather more jaunty tone built up elsewhere).   Similarly Ennio Morricone's score, though reminiscent of his earlier work with Leone in its use of choral chants and animalistic  squawks, nonetheless falls far below what he had achieved in those films.  Gabriel Figueroa's arid, atmospheric cinematography captures a parched, sweltering 19th century Mexico quite effectively.

Two Mules is a pleasant enough diversion from a period in Eastwood's career when he was still negotiating his way towards the kind of artistic control over his films that he would come to enjoy from the 1970s onwards.  Fortunately, his next collaboration with Siegel, the highly atypical gothic melodrama The Beguiled, would prove to be a far greater demonstration of the talents of both men.