Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Beguiled is a 1971 psychological thriller directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood. Set during the Civil War in 1863, it follows a wounded Union soldier who is taken in by a Confederate girls' school in rural Mississippi, where his attempts to charm the women around him lead to jealousy, betrayal, and his death by poisoning.
Don Siegel directed and produced The Beguiled. Clint Eastwood starred as the wounded Union soldier John McBurney, alongside Geraldine Page as headmistress Martha Farnsworth and Elizabeth Hartman as the schoolteacher Edwina.
The main exterior location was the Ashland-Belle Helene Plantation in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, near Baton Rouge, a historic antebellum estate built in 1841 and once the home of Duncan Farrar Kenner. Some interior scenes were filmed at Universal Studios. Principal photography began in April 1970 and lasted ten weeks.
The Beguiled was a commercial disappointment, grossing little over a million dollars. It earned less than a quarter of what Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song made at the same time and fell below fiftieth on the charts within two weeks of release.
Tarantino called The Beguiled the closest Don Siegel ever came to making an art film. He credited the film as ultimately successful but noted it brought out Siegel's worst stylistic impulses, including a dream sequence that made explicit what the story should have left ambiguous.
The Beguiled is based on Thomas P. Cullinan's 1966 novel. Sofia Coppola also adapted the same novel in 2017, with Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst, and Elle Fanning; that version had its world premiere at Cannes in May 2017.