Play Misty for Me

Play Misty for Me is a 1971 psychological thriller film, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, in his directorial debut. The original music score was composed by Dee Barton.

Eastwood plays David "Dave" Garver, a KRML radio disc jockey who nightly broadcasts from his studio in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California and who becomes the target of Evelyn Draper, an obsessed female fan, played by Jessica Walter. Donna Mills plays his re-acquainted girlfriend, Tobie Williams. The title comes from Draper's habit of phoning in to Garver's radio show and asking him to play the classic Erroll Garner ballad "Misty".

The film paved the way for many later stalker films (such as Fatal Attraction ), particularly those with a psychotic female antagonist, and also those where the villain appeared to have died prematurely. It is also notable for its use of location shooting, mostly in the area of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where Eastwood has long made his home, and where he was elected Mayor in 1986. Additional scenes were shot at the Monterey Jazz Festival in September 1970, featuring jazz greats Johnny Otis, Cannonball Adderley, and future Weather Report founder Joe Zawinul (the commentator mentions :"that was the "Cannonball Adderley Group. They are playing at the Monterey Jazz Festival with Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Joe Williams and many others. Now we are gonna hear from "The Gator Creek Organisation" and "Feeling Fine"...").

The film features a romantic montage (views of Garver and Tobie peacefully roaming on the sea-side and lying down in the woods), backed by Roberta Flack's recording of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", a Ewan MacColl torch-song. Roberta Flack's version of the song (after staying first for 5 weeks during 1972 spring) became the 1972 Billboard Hot 100 number-one single of the year .

 

After seven films in which he personates a soldier or a cowboy, and before being Inspector Callahan in Dirty Harry, Eastwood directs, and stars as a civilian, in a film depicting the californian socio-cultural background of the early '7Os : the plot is based on the consequences of the then new sexual liberation ; a flamboyant gay named Jay-Jay puts in a short but incisive appearance ; black people are also shown living and working on an equal footing with white people, which was quite new in an early '70s movie : even the blaxploitation movie movement was hardly beginning by that time. As for the hispanic population, the only hints at it are the spanish toponymy (Monterey, Carmel, Sausalito...), a restaurant name, and the dish served there : "albondigas" soup....

• David "Dave" Garver - A handsome womanizer, working as night-radio disc-jockey in Northern California ("Being bold and pouring coal on KRML, in quaint little Carmel-by-the-Sea. We're next door to magnificent Monterey, home of the annual jazz festival..."), he is stuck in a bad situation when Evelyn Draper enters his life Usually, after work, Dave stops for an early-morning beer at Murphy's bar, "The Sardine Factory" (the bartender happens to be impersonated by Don Siegel, who directed Eastwood in 5 movies), then comes back in his Austin-Healey spider to sleep in his cozy little villa hidden in the woods near the sea: rooms rounding a patio with roses and green plants, old time-polished apparent beams, a modern version of the Milo's Venus standing in the passage, a rusty huge old penny-farthing stocked behind the living-room couch.But this morning Dave sees in the bar a young mini-skirted attractive woman. He summons Murphy to a game of "Cry Bastion", a fictitious bar-game played with manoeuvring corks against chips, uttering a lot of exclamations ("Palfrey's Gambit !...Dirty rat !...Are we playing Copenhagen rules ?...Fool's ploy, my man, fool's ploy !..."), and which unfailingly attracts lookers-on, especially females. Dave successfully ties up with the girl, buys her a drink ("Surprise me ...A screw-driver!"), and escorts her home. She offers herself to him. Dave recognizes her voice as Evelyn's, the girl who phones every night, asking him to play the Errol Garner jazz song "Misty" for her, and he tells her beforehand that he is in love with another woman : "I'm kind of hung up on one (girl)....- And you don't want to complicate your life...- That's exactly right..." But she concludes :" Neither do I. But that's no reason we shouldn't sleep together tonight if we feel like it"...

• Evelyn Draper - A female fan of Dave (depicted as a borderline personality disorder character switching from jealousy rage fits to abject maudlin tenderness), who crashes into his life and tries to smother him, and to have him make her his girlfriend. For her role Jessica Walter was nominated in 1972 for the Golden Globe, in the Best Motion Picture Actress in the Drama category.Dave tries to distance himself from Evelyn, and tells her rather bluntly that she can't drop at his place uninvited : "Or maybe I have female company and you come traipsing in with groceries !...". But she instantly transforms herself into an ugly shrew, shrieking :" And what am I supposed to do ? Sit here all dressed up in my little whore suit waiting for my lord and master to call? ...- Nobody asked you to wait for anything ! - You're not dumping me ! - Get off my back, Evelyn ! - Get off your back ? That's where you've been keeping me isn't it ?... You're nothing ! You're not even good in bed ! I just felt sorry for you, that's all ! Bastard! You poor, pathetic bastard ! ". And Dave crest-fallen flies away in his spider, but Evelyn 'll come back again to him, begging for pardon...Besides rampaging Daves's cosy social life, Evelyn also manages to ruin his professional life : she crashes into a business-lunch he is having with some broadcasting magnate, who happens to be a mature (not unattractive) lady, and she bellows (much to the customers delight and Daves's exasperation) : "Is that your idea of a dish ? She is a little old for you, isn't she ? What is this, "Be Kind to Senior Citizens Week" ?..".But Evelyn becomes more possessive and eventually, very dangerous. After several perverse assaults against a fretting Garver she considers now as her property, she takes the name Annabel (she is probably enticed by the context of love and death in the poem Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe ) in order to become a roommate of Tobie, Garver's girlfriend. So she'll penetrate Tobie's intimacy, and eventually hold her hostage. And to play even more with Garner's nerves, after harassing and smothering him in many ways, she tells him on the phone that she is in San Francisco airport, definitively leaving for Hawaï, is sorry for what happened, and quotes two lines of poetry : "And this maiden she lived with no other thought - than to love and be loved by me...".After Evelyn perpetrated two butcher-knife assaults, Dave is urged by Police Officer Mc Callum to remember the exact phrase Evelyn quoted (it might be a lead), but he is confused by the ambient turmoil. It is only at night, alone in his broadcasting studio, that he figures out "Annabel"'s identity after remembering the poem, and reading the verses preceding the quotation : "It was many and many a year ago - in a kingdom by the sea - that a maiden there lived whom you may know - by the name of Annabel Lee...". This causes Dave to call Tobie to warn her that her roommate is Evelyn, only to receive Evelyn's "invitation" to Tobie's house (where Tobie is already bound and gagged, with her hair cut off). Garver jumps into his spider, and (the end is worthy of Alfred Hitchcock ) speeds towards Tobie's villa. The villa hidden in the woods, overhanging a cliff, with the Pacific billowing underneath, is dark and silent, and a killer, butcher-knife in hands, awaits inside near her bait...

• Tobie Williams - Dave's re-acquainted girlfriend, a nice young woman and an aspiring artist. Mad at Garner because of his infidelities, she had left for Sausalito, where she lived alone for 4 months in Jay-Jay's (a gay friend) house. She has come back, and Dave and her first bicker in front of Jay-Jay, who stands for Tobie : "She could be a first-rate artist, if her hormones didn't get in the way... - There's not much he can do about that... - He could kill himself !...". To what Dave, cornered, replies with a classic homophobic " Jay-Jay, why don't you go cruise some sailors ?... - Please, answers Jay-Jay, don't mention sea-food !".Tobie accepts to forgive Garner, and to give him a second chance :"You mean you have given up girls ? - I haven't been the monk of the month, or something like that, but I have been making an effort...". There is quite a romantic part of the movie : the lovers (much relaxed since Evelyn is supposedly held up in a mental institution) stroll in the nature and explore their relationship by the sea-side. Long peacefull shots of surf-pounded rocks and sand beaches, green billows, knotty and bleached pines trunks over clover-leafed meadows (with Ewan MacColl torch song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" sung by Roberta Flack as sound background) contrast with the frenzied previous scenes. The soothed naked lovers embrace in a waterfall pool, have a bucolic intercourse on a fern patch under the old cypresses, and, silhouetted against the setting sun, kiss goodbye on a promontory, while the kelp-strewn Pacific heaves up and down...They'll also enjoy meeting again during the lively (and visibly shot on the spot) Monterey Jazz Festival .

• "Sweet" Al Monte - Dave's black friend and fellow disc jockey, who knows all too well about Dave's tendencies when it comes to the opposite sex. Very kind towards flippant Dave (who acknowledges that Al "is a real human being" and tells him "You'll make someone a tremendous mother", to what Al replies :"Too narrow in the pelvis...")), very cool, not adverse to "blowing himself a little number" (smoking some weed cigarette), he however warns Garner that "He who liveth by the sword shall die by the sword...".
• Sergeant McCallum - The Monterey police officer, gruff, with a bitter humor ("If we had a TV down at the (police)station, I'd break my arm before I turned your show on....- You have a lousy conversation - You make lousy coffee..."), but dedicated. He will do his best to help a police-reticent Dave in getting out of Evelyn's stranglehold.
• Birdie - Dave's black housekeeper, young and charming, who evidently has a crush on her boss. She renews the "black-mamma" stereotype, with a lot of deriding philosophy towards the rampaged bachelor rooms she is used to tidy up after a wild party . This morning (Dave is prostrate on the living room couch, he has drunk himself to unconsciousness after beeing forced by Evelyn to stay at home with her, while Tobie had invited him for the night...) Birdie inspects the living-room strewn with empty beer bottles  : "Here we go again. Stone-cold dead in the market. Must have been quite a party... - Go away, Birdie...- Any other bodies, any other juiceheads around here ?...- Come back tomorrow, will you ? Or next year sometime...". Birdie, while Dave asks her once more to came some later time, then heads towards the bed-room, saying "I better check the work-bench...It's already later time Pussycat...What I can't figure out is, with all this action going on here: what are you doing out there couching it ? ...- What is this, some kind of Kinsey Report  ? Do I come over to your house and ask a lot of dumb questions ?... - You just ought to, Pussycat, might open up a whole new way of life to you...".

Birdie will suffer from the wrath of Evelyn : when she enters Garner's villa and discovers Evelyn breaking the furniture into pieces, gutting the cushions and lacerating everything, the maddened woman 'll stabb her, in a scene directly inspired by Hitchcock's Psycho . But Birdie'll survive, and when the paramedics carry her to hospital, she has the cheek to tell Garver who just ran up to the spot  : "It's gonna cost you double to clean up this mess...".