THANKS A 'MILLION' AT 74, A HUMBLE EASTWOOD PROVES A MASTER OF HIS CRAFT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Winning his second directing Oscar for ``Million Dollar Baby,'' 74-year-old Clint Eastwood said, ``I'm just lucky to be here. Lucky to still be working. And I've watched Sidney Lumet, who is 80, and I figure I'm just a kid. I've got a lot of stuff to do yet.''

We don't know what his biggest competition, ``The Aviator's'' Martin Scorsese, said about losing for the third time to an actor-director. Probably just as well. But then Eastwood is a far worthier conqueror than Robert Redford or Kevin Costner will ever be.

In ``The New Biographical Dictionary of Film,'' David Thomson says of Eastwood, ``Has there ever been so unneurotic, so steadfast, or so steadily improving a filmmaker?'' It's hard to think of one. And Eastwood started out pretty well, with ``Play Misty for Me'' in 1971, then the 1973 ``High Plains Drifter.''

But he has indeed matured creatively through a series of artistic stretches (``The Outlaw Josey Wales,'' ``Honkytonk Man''), ambitious failures (``Bird,'' ``White Hunter, Black Heart'') and the kind of thoroughly misguided projects (``Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil'') that happen to all directors, good or bad.

Now, with four classics in a dozen years (``Unforgiven,'' ``The Bridges of Madison County,'' ``Mystic River'' and ``Baby'') - a record to match anybody's - there seems to be no limit to Eastwood's artistic growth. And at an age when most great filmmakers' best work is behind them.

But is Scorsese irrevocably past his prime? Unlike some greats who've had either decades-long (Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks) or shorter-run (Peckinpah, Coppola, arguably Kubrick) bursts of brilliance followed by steady decline, Scorsese has come back from perceived periods of artistic slippage. Ten years after ``Raging Bull,'' few anticipated anything as bracing as ``GoodFellas.''

But while it can't be said that such titles as ``The King of Comedy,'' ``The Color of Money,'' ``The Last Temptation of Christ,'' ``The Age of Innocence,'' ``Casino'' and ``Gangs of New York'' were top-notch Scorsese, they were clearly the work of a superior film artist.

Which gives us every reason to believe that, like such treasured directors as John Huston and Woody Allen, Scorsese has another signature masterwork, or more, in him, regardless of how many lesser films he makes in the interim.

Now that the Oscars are over, both of our best working directors are on to new projects. Scorsese teams with Leonardo DiCaprio again for ``The Departed,'' which starts shooting in Boston in April. Eastwood will direct ``Flags of Our Fathers,'' about the men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. Chances are we'll see them at the Oscars again.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) CLINT'S BABY WINS

(2 -- color) Clint Eastwood, who won his first best director Oscar for ``Unforgiven,'' repeats the feat with ``Million Dollar Baby,'' whose star Hilary Swank looks on in this red carpet photo.