Breezy

Eastwood has often been noted for his sudden, surprising and adventurous switches in direction, but none of them (not even Tightrope) is quite as extraordinary as this. For one thing he does not appear in it himself (well, only in a Hitchcock-style shot); for another, the subject matter is hardly what one would associate with 'Dirty Harry'. A middle-aged real-estate broker meets a hippy hitchhiker less than half his age. They fall in love. A project full of pitfalls, all of which Eastwood, remarkably, manages to avoid. The film is sentimental only in that its characters, being human and in love, are sentimental; otherwise the script (by Jo Heims, who also wrote Play Misty For Me) and direction clearly chart the many obstacles facing the pair in terms of age, background, ideals and so on. It's performed beautifully, laced with a quietly ironic wit, and quite lovely to look at.