As part of the Arts Fuse 1971 Film reconsideration project, I re-watched Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry, which (unlike Eastwood himself) does not age particularly well.
Even more striking to re-watch 50 years on is the crucial scene where we see Harry really go over to the dark side. His change does not come after viewing the remains of a victim or facing a grieving widow or mother. No, he melts down after confronting the impotency of a cop in the face of the modern legal system. In one of the tensest moments, Harry is chewed out by the D.A. and a consulting law professor (introduced as being a visitor from the faculty at Berkeley, of course), who explain to Harry that Scorpio will be set free: the evidence — obtained from an illegal search and some, er, light-torture interrogation techniques — would be thrown out of any court in the nation. “Without the evidence … I couldn’t convict him of spitting on the sidewalk,” the DA patiently explains. “The suspect’s rights were violated, under the Fourth and Fifth and probably the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments.” (Callahan, as incredulous as a caveman asked to fill out a tax return, seems completely unable to process the legal concepts at work here: “And Anne Marie Deacon, what about her rights? I mean, she’s raped and left in a hole to die…”)
For the full review, see The Arts Fuse (June 4, 2021).
