Clint Eastwood regaled the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday with stories from his long career, predicted a possible return to acting and decried the rise of political correctness.
Eastwood was honored with several screenings of his films, including one marking the 25th anniversary of “Unforgiven.” In a staged conversation on Sunday, the 86-year-old director said he would revisit acting “someday.”
The last time Eastwood appeared on screen was 2012′s “Trouble With the Curve.” Before that, he starred in his own 2008 film, “Gran Torino.”
Eastwood didn’t talk about current political events, but while discussing his then-controversial 1971 film “Dirty Harry,” he waded into a topic he’s touched on before: so-called political correctness.
“A lot of people thought it was politically incorrect,” Eastwood said of “Dirty Harry.” ″That was at the beginning of the era that we’re in now, where everybody thinks everyone’s politically correct. We’re killing ourselves by doing that. We’ve lost our sense of humor.”
Sofia Coppola’s remake of Don Siegel’s 1971 film “The Beguiled,” which starred Eastwood, is to premiere this week in Cannes, but Eastwood sounded unfamiliar with Coppola’s movie.
He’s currently preparing to direct “The 15:17 to Paris,” about the foiling of a 2015 Islamic State group attack on a train heading to the French capital from Brussels.
Three Americans, two of them off-duty members of the military, contributed to the subduing of the gunman. Eastwood said the film suited today’s “strange times.”
Festival-goers mobbed Eastwood’s talk. Warner Bros. executives, including studio head Kevin Tsujihara, sat in the front row. Much of the conversation, moderated by Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan, touched on Eastwood’s attitudes about moviemaking.
“If you have good luck with your instincts, you might as well trust them,” Eastwood said. “It’s an emotional art form. It’s not an intellectual art form at all.”
