Opiniones de Metacritic

Play Misty for Me is not the artistic equal of Psycho (1960), but in the business of collecting an audience into the palm of its hand and then squeezing hard, it is supreme. It doesn't depend on a lot of surprises to maintain the suspense. There ARE some surprises, sure, but mostly the film's terror comes from the fact that the strange woman is capable of anything.

Eastwood's first film as director, and first exploratory probe for the flaws in his macho image as outlined in Siegel's The Beguiled. A highly enjoyable thriller made under the influence of Siegel (who contributes a memorable cameo as a bartender).

The Man With No Name faces a whole lot of pain in Clint's thrilling directorial debut.

When it’s not serving as an overdone travelog for the Monterey Peninsula-Carmel home environment of star, producer and debuting director Clint Eastwood, Play Misty for Me is an often fascinating suspenser about psychotic Jessica Walter, whose deranged infatuation for Eastwood leads her to commit murder. For that 80% of the film which constitutes the story, the structure and dialog create a mood of nervous terror which the other 20% nearly blows away.

Clint Eastwood wisely chose a strong, simple thriller for his first film as a director (1971), and the project is remarkable in its self-effacing dedication to getting the craft right—to laying out the story, building the rhythm, putting the camera in the right place, and establishing small characters with a degree of conviction.

Eastwood didn’t overreach with Play Misty For Me. It’s a tense thriller that’s inside his comfort zone in more ways than one. But he does overdeliver in the best way. Co-star Jessica Walter plays an obsessed fan, and Eastwood wrings every ounce of tension from a scenario in which a casual affair turns into a life-threatening mistake, and the film executes a potentially trashy scenario with respect for its audience.

A superior thriller, Play Misty For Me proved that popular actor Eastwood could direct himself in a film, concentrate on every aspect of the production from the visuals to the performances, and complete the shooting ahead of schedule and under budget. What he delivered was an engrossing study of how loneliness and longing can be transformed into irrational rage after a thoughtless act of selfish indulgence. Much of the credit must go to Jessica Walter for her outstanding performance which somehow manages to be chilling while at the same time sympathetic.

On an informal Richter scale of movie terror, Play Misty for Me registers a few gasps, some frissons and at least one spleen-shaking shudder. A good little scare show, in other words, despite various gaps in logic and probability.

It is not simply that the movie fails to make sense. A lot of good movies are weak on sense—though they don't often require a leading man to be quite so dense for quite so long in interpreting the behavior of a psychotic leading woman. But they must not be weak in sensibility, in that logic of emotional response that is the real motive power of the atmospheric thriller.