Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)
Directed by Don Siegel
Of the five films that studio vet Siegel made with rising star Clint Eastwood—all-killer/no-filler peaks of the extended uproar now known as the New Hollywood—this gritty odd-couple Western was the most overtly comic. Improbable circumstance teams the improbable nun of the title (Shirley MacLaine at her tartest) with a mercenary loner (Eastwood) on a mission across Mexico to aid the Juarista rebels struggling against French imperialist intervention. The story is by oater champ Budd Boetticher, but the liberation politics and au courant cynicism are courtesy scripter Albert Maltz, one of the original Hollywood Ten. Ennio Morricone’s score just pins the tail on the donkey. Eli Goldfarb (Mar 9, 13, 9:15pm; Mar 11, 6:45pm at Anthology Film Archives’s “Screenwriters and the Blacklist: Before, During and After”)