The Western List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[domino harvey]

The Last Frontier (Anthony Mann 1955) Since I've never heard anyone talk about this one and it stars Victor Mature, I went in with the lowest of expectations, but this soldiers vs trappers vs indians actioner has some of the same great psychological approaches Mann brings to his best westerns, and while this isn't one of them, there's still much to enjoy. I particularly liked Robert Preston from the Music Man as the heavy-- he makes a perfect dick, so he really sells the foolhardy military commander in a way few others would (and the film makes its low opinion of the military operations clear via a late-delivered couriered message in the film). So it's basically Fort Apache, only good.

Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah 1962) While others seem dazzled by the swan song of sorts by the aging leads, I was far more interested in the film's ideas concerning women, namely during the long "nervous bride" sequence in the middle of the film. Mariette Hartley's plain jane frontier girl, imprisoned by a Quakery father and given few options, rebels towards marriage with a man whose share and share alike attitude with his brothers mortifyingly extends to his wife-to-be. As Joel McCrea says, "I wish I'd known he had brothers!" All throughout the marriage and honeymoon sequence, which gets gradually more horrifying as the emotion drains out of Hartley's face, it occurred to me that for all the Hollywood sheen and romanticism given to the "Go West" era, it must have been among the absolute worst times and places to be a woman. It's a shame so few westerns explore the plight of the non plucky/mother/gunsmith/prositutue woman-- this is a pretty grim glimpse of what the average gal had to look forward to in this "wonderful" frontier.

the Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah 1969) Well, it's another of those inescapable touchstone pictures that has already inundated itself into the collective consciousness of the genera populace, but it fares better than a lot of other films with impossibly pristine reputations. Peckinpah's fetishization of violence exerted in order to undermine the western myth machine is a good idea in theory, but in practice I got the idea in the first twenty minutes and just lost patience with its implementation by the end. I'm not opposed to graphic violence in films by any means, but I'm not so sure it's any great victory to cinema that this film ushered in a whole wave of pictures that offer graphic violence as entertainment (a wave that has yet to break, sadly), even though at least this film is in theory doing so with some higher purpose in mind.

Certainly there is a lot of talent involved here, as four of the "Bunch" are Oscar-winning actors (what other dirty western offered that much clout?), and the unrecognizable Edmond O'Brien has particular fun playing against type. But beyond the dubious slow-motion spills, there are some other stylistic conceits that fall flat, such as the ADD cross-cutting during said spills and the needless use of random, minute flashbacks over the course of the picture. It's entertaining and well-made and I did enjoy the film, but I still have a general unease about its approach to violence that I'll need to mull over between now and when lists are due.

the Ballad of Cable Hogue (Sam Peckinpah 1970) Starts out promisingly enough, but by the time Robards rides into town and the camera continuously zooms in on Stella Stevens' chest, it became apparent that rather than a lighthearted western revenge tale, we're in the midst of a not particularly funny or amusing sex comedy that can't even make up its mind that it is a sex comedy (but sure loves obnoxious sped-up shots). And so it goes. It's hard to get too worked up about this one in either direction, but it just doesn't work.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah 1973) I don't have much patience with "revisionist westerns" in general, and this one sums up why quite neatly. Ample nudity, cavalier violence, gross details, and questionable protagonists don't make a film "edgy, maan." LOL @ the same Bob Dylan music cues being used over and over, though.

[HistoryProf]

It's funny you mention it, because I almost added that as (intentionally) terrible as that fake song is, it's better than any real song in the movie

"I Talk To The Trees" (sung in my best Clint Eastwood voice) is my party piece
(not to mention that I was addressed as 'Hey, Blondie' when TGTB&TU played in my hometown during my schooldays)

i'll never forget flipping channels and happening upon PYW during Talk to the Trees before I knew what the movie was. I thought it was some weird episode of Lawrence Welk or something. I still can't believe that movie exists. it's not even so bad it's good. it's just awful.

[Nothing]

domino, you're well off the mark on Pat Garrett, Peckinpah (and Wurlitzer's) best. Try looking beyond the nudity and violence, which is in any case tame by today's standards. Also, I hope you watched the 'Turner Cut' (ie. Director's Cut) and not Paul Seydor's abominable 'restoration' - if the latter, this may in part explain your indifference.

[knives]

Personally I'm more of a Cable Hogue guy. Pat Garrett occasionally feels like well trod ground while Cable Hogue is a one of a kind beast.

[Finch]

The Director's Cut Moniker for the Turner Cut is somewhat misleading, I think, as it only represents an assembly cut. But from what I've read, Peckinpah was by and large happy with this edit and would only have made some minor refinements to it. For me, personally, this rough-edges quality of the Turner Cut only adds to the charm of the film and it only really lacks the sequence with Coburn's wife which is about the only good thing the otherwise rubbish Snyder cut has going for it. It was extremely disingenious of Warner to present this as the cut that Peckinpah ultimately had in mind, and to then treat the Turner Cut with such indifference. They better fix this for the Blu release if and when this materialises. Count me among those who will have the Turner Cut in their Top Ten list - Peckinpah may have made better/more refined films, but Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid is my personal fave of his.

[zedz]

Interesting comments on Ride the High Country, domino. Peckinpah's attitudes towards women are incredibly messy and complicated - even if you leave biography out of it - but in many of his most provocative films in this regard (e.g. Straw Dogs, Alfredo Garcia, those scenes you refer to in Ride the High Country) it seems pretty clear that he's depicting, even castigating, a misogynist society and urging us to consider things from the victimised woman's perspective, rather than endorsing their mistreatment. It's admittedly a pretty grim picture he paints, with no real solution offered to the primitivism of an inescapably masculine society in which women end up having to 'play along' for their lives, but as you say, that's a valid critique for a western to make.

For my part, I treated myself to yet another viewing of Man of the West, thrown on when I had to find an indisputably great western for a houseguest. And once again, I can't see how this won't top my list.

There's just such mastery in every frame. Mann knows exactly what he's doing at every step and he has the measure of his extremely diverse cast. This is one film in which the director knows just how to marshall a range of different acting styles and have them work in counterpoint to one another.

For the first half-hour, the tone is light, a semi-comic mystery (what's Link's secret?) in which events conspire to dump an odd trio in the middle of nowhere. There's even the sort of fairy-tale way that they wander and wander and find themselves at a little farmhouse.

But this is no fairy tale and they weren't wandering after all. After a mood of menace is introduced, there's an even more definitive shift in tone when Lee J Cobb steps out from behind the curtain and electrifies the screen with his particular madness for several hypnotic minutes. After that, all bets are off, and the film starts digging into some extremely dark psychological territory, with more than a couple of spine-chilling moments:

Spoiler

specifically the two ritual strippings and the dying howl of the mute Trout

And all modern action film directors should look at the showdown in Lasso to see just how much more suspenseful and dramatic their set-pieces would be if they took the trouble to make them spatially coherent. And what do you know? If you bother with those basics you don't need frantic cross-cutting and myopic close-ups to punch up the action.

[knives]

Speaking of those directors side by side I tend to find Mann(specifically in Man of the west and The Naked Spur)to be doing the exact same thing Peckinpah would later try his hand at, but done even more viciously. Mann's fillms tend to work like Peckinpah westerns re-imagined as horror for me. They both look at masculinity's inate destructive nature and create near identical thesis around it.

Honestly can you tell which director I'm talking when I said the above if it were isolated.

[Nothing]

The Turner Cut, albeit with Garrett's wife included, is what Peckinpah apparently screened to house guests.

Re: Cable Hogue: like domino ( ) I was pretty put off by the crass breast zooms, undercranking and passages of dim sex comedy humour, although the film does grow somewhat on a second viewing.

[HistoryProf]

what does everyone think of Rango? Saw it with the family today (my daughter's second viewing, and she HATES going to the same movie twice), and I was suitably impressed. At certain moments I thought to myself, "if this were a live action film, Deakins would have done it just this way." lo and behold the credits roll, and I see his name under "cinematography consultant". It really is beautifully crafted, and gets all the right icons of westerns without being schticky or silly. It honestly blew me away as a great damned western.

[knives]

If you like it so much how about take a look at the thread for it which has many nice things to say about the movie.

[HistoryProf]

because I was asking in terms of where it fits in the genre that is the subject of this thread. duh.

[knives]

These Red westerns are just odd. They're like the most perfect mixture of Sirk's Taza and Ed Wood. All three in the set are endlessly enjoyable, but I'm not sure if they're good. I'm also infinitely amused that it's the Germans that were trying to take mighty whitey down a peg. The Sons of Great Bear is hilariously racist in that respect. It works to the film's benefit since the direction and acting are atrocious. It's some of the most stiff stuff I've seen in a foreign film. The opening is also one of the most bizarre things I've seen in a professional product. It feels like you're watching the trailer where two guys stand by a horse and walk off screen, cut to a scene in a bar that sums up the rest of the film perfectly, cut back to the horse. At the worst you're in so bad that it's good territory

The Great Snake is a better film even if it starts on the most sour note having a '50s sci-fi mockumentary vibe going on. Beyond that and a few oddities though it's legitimately a good film and stands next to Taza in a positive way. The politics are more downplayed with interesting characters throughout. Though it is slightly more muddled too with one too many Indian doesn't get modern culture gags. It doesn't have The Sons of Great Bear's fantastic score either, but doesn't need it.

Apaches is the closest one to being a great film and it's also the closest to something of a traditional western. It has a heavy action vibe with more than a few scenes reminding me of the first Die Hard picture. The later half is basically identical to Man on Fire with it's lead on a quest for revenge(though he kills far less than in those films). The direction is atmospheric and strong with a fine score used sparingly yet well. Even the comic relief is performed with this nice sorrowful touch. This is really the film to get the set for.

[Yojimbo]

Just received my 'Lonely Are The Brave' dvd, so looking forward to watching it, not least because of my enjoyment of another Dalton Trumbo scripted film, 'The Prowler'
I may watch it on a double-bill with 'Hud', which is arguably my favourite Paul Newman performance.

[Nothing]

Thanks, I'm always up for a good commie western. Apaches duly ordered

[domino harvey]

Branded (Rudolph Mate 1950) Basically a western-version of Two of a Kind, but without the qt factor of Terry Moore or Edmond O'Brien's everyman suaveness. So why even bother, right? Well, this one's at least got Charles Bickford as the cattle baron who very briefly gets conned into accepting Alan Ladd's false heir. Even though the film is structured so weirdly that the dramatic reveal of this occurs like thirty minutes in, that same ramshackle structure contributes to its entertainment value, as it's hard to figure where the pic is headed next when it keeps burning through endings.

Barricade (Peter Godrey 1950) This could have been a great western. All the elements are there: A feared criminal who leads a con town of hoods, forcing them to work in a mine under the auspices of protecting them from the law when actually keeping a cadre of guns around him as he waits for his brother to come back for the mine he stole. That's the premise of a killer B-western. This, sadly, is a different kind of killer B, helped by a trio of abominable acting, writing, and dialog-- if you love expository dialog, you are in luck! Also, poor Ruth Roman was born for black and white, not Technicolor.

Alvarez Kelly (Edward Dmytryk 1966) For a late period William Holden/Richard Widmark/Edward Dmytryk effort, this is probably some kind of masterpiece. On a normal scale, it's still one of the better Civil War westerns I've seen, and one of the more entertaining westerns I've sat through lately. The film has a nice, wandering approach to the Richmond scenes, which means the moments of violence and manipulation have more punch for the shock of their use. This is the kind of movie that seems like a borderline Burt Kennedy comedy one moment and then, wham, Confederate officer Widmark is shooting off one of cattle herdsman Holden's fingers and threatening that he'll lose another for each day he holds out on assisting the South with their plan to steal cattle from the North! The finale is pretty ingenious: a big Civil War battle with the novel twist of the cattle themselves being used as a weapon. This pic will make me smile fondly when I think about it and make my list.

[zedz]

Gun Fury

Pretty good Raoul Walsh western that makes a virtue of a stripped-down and elegantly structured narrative. It’s basically a race for the border, with one side slowly accumulating hangers-on while the other has an inversely proportional attrition rate. The leads tend towards the bland (Rock Hudson and Donna Reed, plus a relatively colourless villain in the form of Philip Carey) while Lee Marvin looks on from the sidelines with little to do, but Walsh makes the dynamics work anyway with his no-nonsense staging and breathless pace.

The film was originally shot for 3D, and I was particularly interested to see what Walsh might have done with the format, since he’s a thoughtful user of depth in his non-enhanced films. Surprisingly, apart from a handful of obvious effects, he’s rather restrained, and I suspect the biggest wow factor for the process would have come from the way he deploys his figures against stunning backdrops. Rather than cramming things close to the lens, he steps back, even with interiors, and lets the characters work with the weight of the space.

Nevertheless, towards the end there is a classic Walshian set-up-in-depth with interacting foreground and background action when hostages are exchanged, and the film provides yet another of his climbing and falling climaxes – though in much milder terms than High Sierra, Colorado Territory or White Heat.

Quality-wise, the disc was variable, with fluctuating colours and messy opticals, but it was perfectly watchable.

This was the first disc I’ve watched out of a bunch of very cheap discs that just arrived from Amazon UK, so I’ll keep you posted with any other finds. (Plus, I’ll endeavour to get onto the next Boetticher this weekend in the appropriate thread).

[Mr Sausage]

Just watched A Bullet for the General (aka Quien Sabe?). It's an ugly but entertaining little movie about an American dandy and a Mexican bandit who fall in love with each other. The bandit's impulsive nature and confusion about his feelings leads him to either kill or fuck-over and leave to die every single friend and family member he has. Finally, the American persuades the bandit to leave Mexico and start a new life with him in America. Bandit agrees, but right before the train is to leave he has a moment of gay panic and shoots his soon-to-be-lover before running off, insane and screaming.

Only sympathetic character is the poor woman bandit whose lover is killed, leaving her with nothing in the world (except disgust for everything, money, ideals, revolution, what-have-you). Also, it's a real tease to put Klaus Kinski in a movie, have everyone build him up by whispering how insane he is, and then forget about him after the first act, giving him a total of 25 minutes screen time, most of which involves him watching Gian Maria Volonte behave like a lunatic. Too bad.

[Nothing]

Erm, I think you're misinterpreting the ending. Chuncho achieves clarity at the end of the film when he realises that duty to his fellow man is more important than the acquisition of personal wealth.

[Mr Sausage]

Erm, I think you're misinterpreting the ending. Chuncho achieves clarity at the end of the film when he realises that duty to his fellow man are more important than the acquisition of personal wealth.

There's that. But the way it plays out, with Chuncho's inability to even utter the true reason for why he's killing the guy, and the way he goes into an apocalyptic frenzy right after (his screams for dynamite are less cries for revolution than for total destruction, self included), leads me to believe it's a lot more than regained revolutionary zeal. Most especially because after forgiving Nino for outrageous sins, including killing his brother and his beloved general, he's suddenly driven to an (unmentionable, unnameable) murder just because Nino butts in line at a ticket counter? Makes no sense, as indeed much of the movie would make no sense, unless you understand it as the result of latent homosexual desire. All of Chuncho's previous inexplicable and impulsive acts of murder happened due to his confused lust for Nino, so I feel no less inclined to credit them for his final act.

The movie is a bit hard to like since pretty much every character is despicable, regardless of politics (indeed, it's hard to credit the politics of the movie when all sides come across as sadists). The best moment in the movie, however, is given to the bourgeois ruler of the small village, who right before he is led away to a needless death, looks at his wife and apologizes for every time he let her down. It's a surprisingly human moment in a movie of grotesque caricatures.

[Wu.Qinghua]

I do agree with Nothing in this case. You have to keep in mind that "Quien sabe" is based on a script which had been written by Franco Solinas, who has not only been a member of the Italian Communist Party, but also provided scripts for Queimada, Battle of Algiers and so on. I suggest therefore that the movie is dealing not with bandits in general, but with "social bandits/rebels" (remember all the then-popular studies of Eric Hobsbawm), with imperialism/antiimperialism aka. the relationship between the metropoles (Nino) and the periphery (Chuncho), and with the the realisation of imperialist domination by the rebel as well as by the viewer of the movie. As far as I remember, Chuncho is calling for armed insurrection at the end of the movie ("Buy Dynamite!"), isn't he?
Btw, the movie resonated well within the German left when it was screened in German cinemas in June 1968. Fassbinder, then running a theatre group, proclaimed that he was moved by "Quien sabe" that much, that he decided to make a similar movie - which he did. He shot "'Liebe ist kaelter als der Tod/Love is colder than death" and dedicated it to Chuncho and Nino.

[Mr Sausage]

I do agree with Nothing in this case. You have to keep in mind that "Quien sabe" is based on a script which had been written by Franco Solinas, who has not only been a member of the Italian Communist Party, but also provided scripts for Queimada, Battle of Algiers and so on. I suggest therefore that the movie is dealing not with bandits in general, but with "social bandits/rebels" (remember all the then-popular studies of Eric Hobsbawm), with imperialism/antiimperialism aka. the relationship between the metropoles (Nino) and the periphery (Chuncho), and with the the realisation of imperialist domination by the rebel as well as by the viewer of the movie.

Yep, I am well aware of all of it. But none of this is mutually exclusive with the movie's bald-faced homoeroticism. On the surface the movie tries to make it seem like politics led to the final act, but it has also carefully set up other motivations, to the point where it all makes more sense--and is more interesting--if you credit them. I look at it like this: there is an explicit explanation and an implicit reason. The explicit explanation, given by the movie and probably by Chuncho to himself, who cannot admit his homosexuality, is that he murdered his would-be lover out of political zeal. The implicit reason is that he was afraid of what it meant to run off to America to live with this dandy, and shot him. This is why all Chuncho can say as explanatin is "Quien Sabe," "who knows," instead of giving a little speech about the revolution or whatever: because there is a fundamental confusion over his motives. When crimes become unnameable, there's something more going on, especially when one character spends most of the movie killing his friends while staring deeply into the eyes of a well-tailored pretty-boy he'd just met and barely knows.

As far as I remember, Chuncho is calling for armed insurrection at the end of the movie ("Buy Dynamite!"), isn't he?

Again, outwardly it can seem that way, but considering the homoerotic context of the whole relationship and how it ended, it comes across as a call for self-destruction after having murdered the only person he ever loved. So long as you shift your point of view from the political angle to the homoerotic one, the choices take on a totally new meaning.

[Wu.Qinghua]

Well, I am beginning to see your point. I doubt that this is the intended/preferred reading of the movie, but it's an interesting (and legitimate) interpretation nevertheless. I guess I have to revisit the movie - and Fanon's remarks on the colonizer and the colonized.

[Mr Sausage]

Well, I am beginning to see your point. I doubt that this is the intended/preferred reading of the movie, but it's an interesting (and legitimate) interpretation nevertheless. I guess I have to revisit the movie - and Fanon's remarks on the colonizer and the colonized.

Next time you watch the movie, ask yourself: how much sense would the goings on actually make if these two weren't in love?

[Wu.Qinghua]

Next time you watch the movie, ask yourself: how much sense would the goings on actually make if these two weren't in love?

I'll surely do ... But let me add, that I think it's not that easy to defend the interpretation of the Nino-Chuncho-relationship as a mutual love affair, as, though Nino admittedly shows signs of affection, but also of gratitude and fair-play, Chuncho's character and his relation/affection for Nino is more elaborated, complex and shifting. That is, I tend to stress the more instrumental character of Nino's relation to Chuncho as well as his personal appreciation (in word and deed) of Chuncho's (involuntary) assistance, which in my eyes qualifies him as a representative of liberalism/'progressivism' ...

[Mr Sausage]

Next time you watch the movie, ask yourself: how much sense would the goings on actually make if these two weren't in love?

I'll surely do ... But let me add, that I think it's not that easy to defend the interpretation of the Nino-Chuncho-relationship as a mutual love affair, as, though Nino admittedly shows signs of affection, but also of gratitude and fair-play, Chuncho's character and his relation/affection for Nino is more elaborated, complex and shifting. That is, I tend to stress the more instrumental character of Nino's relation to Chuncho as well as his personal appreciation (in word and deed) of Chuncho's (involuntary) assistance, which in my eyes qualifies him as a representative of liberalism/'progressivism' ...

Is there really any other way to understand this moment except as burgeoning homoerotic desire? The actions and emotions are incomprehensible otherwise. Just listen to the score! I'm not being perverse; I didn't go looking for a homoerotic subtext. It's pretty much slapping you in the face.