Eastwood has many films to his name as actor-director, but in the case of this film he was not originally planning to direct it himself. He was very impressed by The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid by Philip Kaufman and asked him to direct. After Kaufman had rewritten the scenario and started work on directing, Eastwood decided to take over after all. Eastwood wanted to make an epic film and that eventually wasn’t in keeping with Kaufman’s approach. In the end The Outlaw Josey Wales became a Western in which the peace-loving farmer Josey Wales has to become an outlaw and gunfighter to be able to avenge the murder of his family by a gang of deserters. The film follows him on his lengthy wanderings through various southern states at the time of the Civil War. The film received a mixed response form the critics at the time — The Outlaw Josey Wales dates from long before the time when serious critics took an interest in Eastwood. The New York Daily News wrote: ‘…seems to last two days. Never before (…) has so much time been devoted to such trivia.’ Time reflected the opposite extreme: ‘one of the year’s ten best’. When the film was released, the American press objected to the level of violence in the film. Variety: ‘If each killing were instead to be a scene of sexual intercourse, the film would be super-X in calibre.’ Nevertheless, The Outlaw Josey Wales was among Eastwood’s most popular films and it was re-released several times.
