Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry: The Really Important Dialogue?

I see from the LA Times that there's going to be a box set of Dirty Harry movies.  Although the LA Times thinks it is somewhat surprising, Eastwood is re-embracing the movies.

As the LA Times says, Harry's "darkly whispered one-liners (". . . You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?" "Go ahead, make my day") were long ago drained of any real danger by stand-up comics, politicians and bumper stickers."

Thus, it thinks that "It's easy to imagine Eastwood the auteur treating the character like a bad 1970s fashion choice."  Not easy for me to imagine that.  I think it's easier to imagine that Eastwood would reach back to those movies and legitimize them as art.

I remember the first time I saw my first Dirty Harry movie--it was just after I'd graduated from law school and I was filling in some of my cultural gaps.  So about the same time I was reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, I was watching movies like Dirty Harry and Aliens.  Of course the "make my day" line is classic--and had long since been a common piece of culture.  But what struck me most about the movie at the time was not Eastwood's line, but ones from the San Francisco "establishment."  After Harry gets a confession from a serial killer, he's called into his boss' office.  There to greet him are the the district attorney and a judge who's also a Berkeley law professor!  How's that for a combination of symbols of the left-wing establishment?!  Instead of giving Harry an award, they yell at him.

From our friends at wikipedia, check out this dialogue:

District Attorney: Where the hell does it say [in the Constitution] you've got a right to kick down doors, torture suspects, deny medical attention and legal counsel. Where have you been? Does Escobedo ring a bell? Miranda? I mean, you must have heard of the Fourth Amendment. What I'm saying is, that man had rights.

Callahan: Well, I'm all "broken up" about that man's rights.

District Attorney: You should be. I've got news for you, Callahan. As soon as he's well enough to leave the hospital, he walks. ...

District Attorney: It does not matter what Ballistics can do. This rifle might make a nice souvenir. But it's inadmissible as evidence.

Callahan: And who says that?

District Attorney: It's the law.

Callahan: Well then, the law is crazy!

District Attorney: This is Judge Bannerman of the appellate court. He also holds classes in constitutional law in Berkeley. I've asked him for an opinion, your Honor?

Judge: Well, in my opinion, the search of the suspect's quarters was illegal. Evidence obtained thereby, such as that hunting rifle, for instance, is inadmissible in court. You should have gotten a search warrant. I'm sorry, but it's that simple.

Now, how's that for an indictment of the legal system?  And while it's awfully difficult to match up popular culture with political and legal culture, but I wonder if that indictment was helpful in changing attitudes towards the courts--and, of course, law professors?  (I've already questioned how much the popular image of law professors matches up with what we do; maybe we owe Dirty Harry for shaping the attitude towards law professors.)

Alfred Brophy

Comments

[WCS]

Also, if you recall, the fact pattern of the movie gave Harry all kinds of exigent circumstances: he was trying to rescue a kidnapped girl whom his arrestee had buried with a limited oxygen supply (a variation of the ticking bomb scenario). Harry had every reason to believe he could get to her in time to save her life, if he could just torture her location out of the bad guy quick enough. In fact, she was dead when the police dug her up, and the perpetrator goes free until he challenges Harry on the draw (the pond scene, at the end of which Harry resigns by skipping his badge into the water).

As I recall, however, this indictment of the establishment did not lead popular opinion but trailed it. That is why some of these lines were cheered in the theatre, which I remember clearly. Harry goes on in the next movie, Magnum Force, to balance his image by tackling a right-wing death squad. Then, in the third movie, The Enforcer, he takes out a cell of left-wing revolutionaries. In Sudden Impact, his black and white world gets confused, when the evil serial killer he hunts turns out to be female rape victim exacting punishment from the rapists. Through them all, his impatience with the police and legal establishments -- and the suppression rules -- appears time and again. Dirty Harry was not originally intended to be a cheap action flick like so many movies since then. They had substance, and I am not surprised that Eastwood is proud of this work.

[Alfred]

WCS--thanks for this history.

[Matt]

As a side note about Dirty Harry, supposedly the role was originally supposed to be played by Frank Sinatra. Sinatra hurt himself some how and so couldn't do it. It was offered to John Wayne who said he wasn't going to take Sinatra's "sloppy seconds" and suggested Clint Eastwood, who had done the westerns but wasn't doing that much else. It's hard to imagine either of the first two doing the role right, I think. It's also funny now to look back on some of the criticism of the character- it seems fairly quaint now, though maybe that says more about us. Also, the fact that this very tough guy wore a sweater vest through most of the movie is more than a little funny.