The actor’s hero, who made the highest-grossing western title of the 80s in cinemas, shows all the typical features of the genre. No one knows his name or his past, he hides a priest’s wheel under his gunslinger’s outfit next to his scars and saves his words for sayings like “matches are not for playing”.
Paradoxically, the gap of many years between Eastwood’s previous Western Outlaw Josey Wales and the subsequent Irreconcilable is said to be due to the actor’s temporary allergy to horses.
In addition, during the filming of The Pale Rider, he is said to have suffered the worst injury he has ever suffered during his career, caused by a horse that threw him from his saddle and dislocated his shoulder when he broke through thin ice.
Significantly, even then, in 1985, reviews of the era called Clint Eastwood an “iconic veteran” cowgirl who juggles both acting and directing, “so capably and intelligently that we realize how he’s improved over the years and how it took us , before we knew it”.
Since then, Clint Eastwood has won four Oscars, his characters have become a hit in collectors’ collections, and he is still making movies at the age of ninety-three. Among other things, the commemorative Pale Rider will offer an opportunity to verify the statement of director Sergio Leone, who launched Eastwood’s career in the so-called spaghetti westerns.
Nevertheless, he famously described him as “having only two acting positions: with a hat and without a hat”. As the mysterious avenger The Pale Rider, Eastwood delivers both.
