A Look Back At Don Siegel's Great Crime Films

I'm a big fan of the late film director Don Siegel.

I often watch his films again whenever I catch them on TV, especially his great crime films, like Madigan, with Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda (seen in the above photo with Don Siegel on the left), Coogan's Bluff  and Dirty Harry, both with Clint Eastwood, and Charley Varrick, with Walter Matthau.

Siegal also made a good spy thriller with Michael Caine called The Black Windmill and he directed John Wayne's last film, a great Western called The Shootist. 

Oliver Lyttelton at indiewire.com takes a look back at Don Siegal and five of his notable films.

In the credits to his masterpiece "Unforgiven," Clint Eastwood included a dedication: "for Don Siegel and Sergio Leone." Leone was a no-brainer, one of the great filmmakers who worked with Clint on a trio of films ("The Good The Bad And The Ugly," "A Fistful Of Dollars" and "For A Few Dollars More"). But Siegel was less beloved of cinephiles. A cosmopolitan Chicago native who studied at Jesus College, Cambridge, he started directing montages at Warner Bros. (including the opening scene of "Casablanca"), before breaking into features, with a string of B-movies with everyone from Robert Mitchum to Elvis Presley (the latter on 1960's "Flaming Star"), but became most notable for his work with Eastwood on five pictures from 1968's "Coogan's Bluff" to 1979's "Escape From Alcatraz."

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/the-essentials-the-films-of-don-siegel-20120420