is it just me or was this movie REALLY BADLY DIRECTED

I like Clint Eastwood's later films, but I think Play Misty For Me might be one of the worst directed movies I've ever seen. I say that because it had a pretty well-written script and characters, and still managed not to be a good movie.
In horror movies, the director always has to cheat a bit, and make it look like it's harder to escape from a situation than it actually would be- ie cut really quickly, and only use closeups, so that you can't tell the character should have been able to see the knife coming and run from it. It's hard to explain, but watch any well-made horror movie (ie Psycho, and most De Palma films- no matter what you say about De Palma, he can direct convincing horror scenes) and you'll see what I mean.
In this movie, Clint Eastwood utterly fails at this in one crucial scene, which I won't mention in order to avoid spoiling it for anyone who hasn't seen it. All I'll say is that the scene is directed so badly, it almost looked like a parody.
If that were its only fault, it would still be a good movie. However, at this point in his career, Clint was highly amused by long shots of himself driving along a coastal highway. It didn't make a bad opening scene, but I really was not interested in seeing virtually the same sequence nearly every time Clint drives his car- especially in a movie where much, much more interesting things happen. Clint also pauses for twenty minutes or so near the end to show a slow love scene, and then a jazz concert. In these scenes, we see nothing of relevance to the characters- in the love scenes, we don't see the couple's faces, we see them posed in pastoral scenery and we see shots of their legs in the grass. In the jazz concert, we hardly see the characters at all. It seems as if Clint thought he was making a concert film for ten minutes.
If he wanted to make a film that was a mishmash of styles, he should have indicated it at the beginning. But, as it stands, we have a movie that abruptly turns into a soft-core easy listening music video, and then a concert film a good two thirds in, and then gets back to finishing the story it started earlier.
Oh yeah, and the cinematography is dark and dull. The Californian coast is beautiful, but you wouldn't know it from this movie. Maybe the old film is deteriorated? In any case, compare the cinematography in this film to many other movies, and you will probably agree with me that the colors in this movie are dull and pasty-looking. I saw a super-8 film of my family from 1971, and even that looked better than this.
It's a shame, because it's a good story, with believable characters. As a matter of fact, the script and the acting are so good in parts that they almost redeem it. But they don't. In a world where bad scripts can be made into fun movies with good direction (Dressed to Kill, to me, is a good example of that), it's a shame to see good stories ruined by bad direction.
Clint- if you by any chance should read this (though I doubt it)- don't take offense, I think you became a great director when you got older.