Two Mules for Sister Sara

Two Mules for Sister Sara is a 1970 American-Mexican Western film in Panavision directed by Don Siegel and starring Shirley MacLaine (billed above Clint Eastwood in the film's credits, but not on the poster) set during the French intervention in Mexico (1861–1867). The film was to have been the first in a five-year exclusive association between Universal Pictures and Sanen Productions of Mexico. It was the second of five collaborations between Siegel and Eastwood, following Coogan's Bluff (1968). The collaboration continued with The Beguiled and Dirty Harry (both 1971) and finally Escape from Alcatraz (1979). The plot follows an American mercenary who gets mixed up with a nun and aids a group of Juarista rebels during the puppet reign of Emperor Maximilian in Mexico. The film featured both American and Mexican actors and actresses, including being filmed in the picturesque countryside near Tlayacapan, Morelos. Ennio Morricone composed the film's music. Plot Just after the American Civil War, a former soldier named Hogan (Clint Eastwood) rides up on a naked woman about to be raped by bandits. He kills the bandits and discovers the woman is a nun, Sister Sara (Shirley MacLaine), who is raising money to assist Mexican revolutionaries fighting French occupying forces. When Sara requests that Hogan take her to the Mexican camp, he agrees, as he had previously arranged to help the revolutionaries attack the French garrison in exchange for half the garrison's treasury. As the duo heads towards the camp, evading French troops all the while, Hogan is surprised that the nun swears and drinks whiskey. While on their way to destroy a French ammunition train, Hogan is shot at by Indians and seriously wounded with an arrow. Sara is able to tend to his wounds, and she is able to set the charges that Hogan detonates to destroy the train. Eventually the two reach Juarista commander Col. Beltran's camp. Sara begs the local villagers for money needed to purchase dynamite for the assault on the garrison. In the lead-up to the attack, Sara reveals to Hogan that she is not a nun, but a prostitute posing as a nun because she is wanted by the French for her support of the revolutionaries. Although Hogan is shocked, the two team up to infiltrate the fort and let a squad of revolutionaries in through a trapdoor, while two other squads attack the gates and a fourth act as sharpshooters.