The Beguiled

"his love...or his life..."

1971 1h 45m EN

👍

7.0

SOLID

★7.0TMDB · 525

ThrillerDramaWar

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

Offbeat Civil War drama in which a wounded Yankee soldier, after finding refuge in an isolated girls' school in the South towards the end of the war, becomes the object of the young women's sexual fantasies. The soldier manipulates the situation for his own gratification, but when he refuses to completely comply with the girls' wishes, they make it very difficult for him to leave.

“his love...or his life...”

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Cast

Clint Eastwood
John McBurney
Geraldine Page
Martha
Elizabeth Hartman
Edwina
Jo Ann Harris
Carol
Darleen Carr
Doris
Mae Mercer
Hallie
Pamelyn Ferdin
Amy
Melody Thomas Scott
Abigail

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Don Siegel
Writers: Albert Maltz, Irene Kamp, Claude Traverse
Languages: English
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Shot for just $0.5M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

ERA

Did you know

55 years old — a genuine piece of film history.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Don Siegel, shot by Bruce Surtees. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Lalo Schifrin. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Carl Pingitore shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page and Elizabeth Hartman carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "his love...or his life...".

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt0066819 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Don Siegel directs. Bruce Surtees behind the camera. Lalo Schifrin scores. Carl Pingitore cuts. Profitable at the box office. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Shot for just $0.5M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
255 years old — a genuine piece of film history.
3Directed by Don Siegel, shot by Bruce Surtees. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
4Original score by Lalo Schifrin. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
5Editor Carl Pingitore shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
6Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page and Elizabeth Hartman carry the top of the cast.
7Marketing tagline: "his love...or his life...".
8IMDB entry: tt0066819 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
9Classified under 14 themes, including "based on novel or book", "mississippi river", "slavery", "sexual repression".

The technical file

Cinematography: Bruce Surtees
Original score: Lalo Schifrin
Editing: Carl Pingitore
Production design: Ted Haworth
Costume design: Helen Colvig
Makeup / hair: Larry Germain
Stunt coordinator: Buddy Van Horn
Runtime: 105 min · 1h 45m
Status: Released
Budget: $475,000
Box office: $1,100,000
Return: 232% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): R
IMDB: The Beguiled (1971)

Also by

Don Siegel

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

Community reviews

What people are saying

r96sk2022-01-14
★ 7/10
Undeniably creepy. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about <em>'The Beguiled'</em>, though. It's definitely one of the more bizarre films that I've seen, intentionally so of course. I'm just not convinced if it's a good film though, it does do a grand job at making the viewer feel uncomfortable but beyond that I'm not sold. Take out the oddness and there's not much there, I feel. With that said, it undoubtedly leaves an imprint and does what it intends to so I guess it levels out to be something worth watching. Clint Eastwood gives an almost eerily convincing performance, while those behind him are all solid - with the standouts, to me, being Geraldine Page and Mae Mercer. It's certainly 'out there', you gotta give it that. Overall I have mixed feelings, but I am leaning closer to positive than negative.
Martin Oaks2026-09-26
★ 8/10
Anatomy of manipulation In 1971, Donald Siegel delivered one of the most fascinating, atypical, and dark works of American cinema of that decade. With astonishing audacity, he managed to subvert the tropes of the war genre and the Western to venture into the realms of psychological thriller and Southern Gothic. The story is set in 1864, during the final stages of the American Civil War; there, John McBurney, a severely wounded Union Army corporal, is rescued by Amy, a young girl from the nearby Farnsworth Seminary. This girls' boarding school, surviving in absolute isolation under Confederate territory, becomes the setting for a dense chamber drama after the strict headmistress, Martha Farnsworth, and the timid teacher, Edwina Dabney, decide to shelter the enemy soldier under the guise of Christian charity and medical care before turning him over to local patrols. The arrival of this mature, attractive, and mysterious man at a mansion inhabited exclusively by women of different ages—doomed to frustration, loneliness, and rigid sexual repression—acts as a violent psychological catalyst. Fully aware of his fragile predicament, McBurney decides to use manipulation and deceit as survival tools, orchestrating a subtle game of seduction tailored down to the millimeter to the emotional voids of each of his hostesses. Unfortunately overshadowed by the runaway success of "Dirty Harry", released the same year by the same director, "The Beguiled" stands out, in retrospect, as the artistic pinnacle of the fruitful collaboration between Siegel and Eastwood. Tarantino aptly went as far as to define it as the closest Siegel ever came to making an auteur film, and the piece completely justifies that status thanks to a bold mise-en-scène that progressively dismantles the physical, unshakeable masculinity that Eastwood usually projected on the big screen. His performance is daring and superb, shedding the traditional hero role to embody an opportunistic parasite whose own charms end up backfiring in the most tragic way possible.