Monthly Archives: September 2013

The Far Country

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 18, 2013

The Far Country—James Stewart, Walter Brennan, Ruth Roman, John McIntire, Corinne Calvet, Jay C. Flippen, Harry Morgan, Robert Wilke, Royal Dano, Jack Elam, Kathleen Freeman (1954; Dir: Anthony Mann)

In another of Mann’s stories about an alienated loner, Jeff Webster (James Stewart) has driven a herd of cattle from Wyoming to Seattle, where they are loaded on a steamboat for Skagway, Alaska Territory. It is 1898, so the Alaskan gold rush is on. Webster and his garrulous partner Ben Tatum (Walter Brennan) plan to drive the herd even farther north to Dawson, where there isn’t a lot of beef and they can get top dollar for their cattle. Then, as Ben tells anyone who will listen, they’ll buy a ranch in Utah, where they’ll spend the rest of their days.

Jeff isn’t just a loner; he’s a loner who’s good with a gun and killed two men on the drive to Seattle. When the boat’s authorities try to arrest him, he is hidden by saloon owner Ronda Castle (Ruth Roman), who’s taken a romantic interest in him. As he’s driving his cattle off the boat, Jeff inadvertently disrupts a public hanging conducted by Gannon (John McIntire), the local authority who is a law unto himself with a band of thugs (Jack Elam, Robert Wilke) to back him up. He confiscates Jeff’s cattle, and Jeff takes a job leading Ronda Castle’s wagons to Dawson, up over the Chilkoot Pass. When he get the wagons over the pass, he goes back to Skagway in the middle of the night, steals his cattle back and drives them over the pass toward Dawson.

Jeff Webster (James Stewart) makes a new acquaintance (Ruth Roman) while escaping the law on the way to Alaska.

Once in Dawson, Ben makes connections with the regular folk, including Renee Vallon (Corinne Calvet), a young girl they had met in Skagway. With the gold has come a rougher element and some crime, and the process is sped up by Ronda’s Dawson Castle saloon. Jeff sells his cattle at a high price and buys a local gold claim. Meanwhile, the Mounties haven’t yet figured out how to extend their authority over the unruly area. Jeff finds himself with several conflicts: two potential romantic interests; the salt-of-the-earth regular residents and claimholders against the glitzier newcomers out for a fast buck; and regular law and order against Gannon’s variety of law.

Yes, Gannon has shown up in Dawson, with an even larger gang of thugs than he had in Skagway. Claim-jumping becomes a regular feature of life in Dawson, as do murder and robbery. Jeff resists taking a hand until he’s robbed and left for dead, and Ben is killed. Renee nurses him back to health, and although his arm is still in a sling, he has a final shootout with Gannon and his minions.

Jeff Webster (James Stewart) confronts a gleefully corrupt Gannon (John McIntire, with henchman Jack Elam on his left).

This is one of the best of the “northerns” set during the Alaska gold rush (see also North to Alaska, White Fang and The Spoilers), and like many of them, it features a character based on the real-life conman Soapy Smith, who took over Skagway for a time. This has a larger cast than some of Anthony Mann’s westerns, and they’re quite good. Both Ruth Roman and Corinne Calvet are believable romantic interests, so that the final choice is not a foregone conclusion. John McIntire is excellent as Gannon, the Soapy Smith character. Walter Brennan’s talkative Ben makes personal connections much more easily than Jeff, but he tends to let information slip when he shouldn’t. Jay C. Flippen and Kathleen Freeman are both part of the good Dawson crowd. Stewart is edgy as he usually was in a Mann western; he wears his usual hat and rides Pie, the horse he rode through seventeen westerns. One key plot point relates to a bell Jeff hangs from his saddle horn.

James Stewart demonstrates that Randolph Scott wasn’t the only star of western movies who could have a romantic triangle going, first with saloon owner Ruth Roman and then with mining lass Corinne Calvet.

The script was by Borden Chase, who provided the scripts for previous Mann films Winchester ’73 and Bend of the River, as well as for Red River and Night Passage. The film was shot on location at Jasper in Alberta. Cinematography was by William H. Daniels. The DVD version in general circulation (2010) is unfortunately only a full-screen, pan-and-scan version.

The Man from Laramie

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 17, 2013

The Man from Laramie—James Stewart, Donald Crisp, Arthur Kennedy, Alex Nicol, Cathy O’Donnell, Aline MacMahon, Jack Elam, Wallace Ford (1955; Dir: Anthony Mann)

This was the last of five westerns in five years with the very effective pairing of director Anthony Mann and leading man James Stewart. It was the only one in Cinemascope, and it’s one of the best. (Mann and Stewart also made three non-westerns, and Mann made three or four westerns without Stewart.)

As this film opens, freighter Will Lockhart (Stewart) is taking three wagons of supplies from Laramie, Wyoming, to Coronado, New Mexico. At his last campsite before arriving in Coronado, he surveys the site of the Dutch River massacre, where a patrol of twelve cavalrymen were all killed by Apaches with new repeating rifles. Lockhart’s brother was one of the twelve, and he’s come to find and kill the person responsible for selling the guns to the Indians.

In town he delivers the supplies to the general store run by Barbara Waggoman (Cathy O’Donnell), niece of the local cattle baron who basically owns the town and most of the surrounding countryside. He was lucky to get through; the Apaches have prevented most such shipments from arriving in Coronado. He’s looking for return cargo to Laramie, and Barbara directs him to nearby salt flats, where she says the salt is free for the taking.

As Lockhart and his men load their wagons, a number of cowboys led by Dave Waggoman (Alex Nicol) ride up with guns drawn. Dave thinks the salt is on Barb Ranch land and isn’t free to just any one. On Dave’s orders, the cowboys burn Lockhart’s wagons, kill his mules, and rope him, dragging him through a campfire. Before matters go any farther, Vic Hansbro (Arthur Kennedy), the Waggoman foreman, rides up and stops the altercation. The next day in Coronado, Lockhart beats up Dave and fights Vic to a draw before Alec Waggoman (Donald Crisp), the cattle baron himself, stops things. Alec offers to pay for Lockhart’s destroyed wagons and animals and suggests that he leave the country.

We see that Vic and Barbara would get married, but Barbara wants Vic to agree to leave the area before she’ll marry him. She needs to get him away from her uncle’s powerful and slightly malevolent influence. Vic feels that Alec has promised him a stake in the Barb Ranch and he is unwilling to leave that. Dave, Barbara’s cousin, is described as “weak,” and we see that he has poor judgment and a sadistic streak. Kate Canady owns the Half Moon, the only significant spread in the area not controlled by Waggoman. She’d like to hire Lockhart as her foreman, but he says he doesn’t know anything about cattle. The inference is that he’s been in the army. Eventually Lockhart takes the job with Canady. Lockhart: “You’re just a hard, scheming old woman, aren’t you?” Kate: “Ugly, too.”

Alec Waggoman is played by Donald Crisp with his usual appearance of stern rectitude, but Alec isn’t averse to breaking his word occasionally. Despite his promises, he seems willing to cast Vic off with nothing if it helps him get what he wants. Alec and Kate have some ancient history and were engaged in their younger days. It’s a pretty complex group of characters, although Lockhart doesn’t have as much of the potential instability that Stewart’s characters sometimes show in other Mann westerns.

As Lockhart trails some Half Moon stock on to Barb range, Dave Waggoman takes a shot at him. Lockhart returns fire, hitting Dave in the hand. When Dave’s backup cowboys arrive, Dave has them hold Lockhart while he shoots him point blank in the right hand in a brutal scene.

This is the low point for Lockhart, but the Waggoman faction is having internal troubles of its own. Alec Waggoman is going blind, unknown to his son and foreman. Dave and Vic are the ones selling guns to the Indians, and when they fall out over how to manage it, Vic kills Dave. When Alec finds a discrepancy in accounts and goes looking for a wagonload of guns, Vic pushes him down a cliff and leaves him for dead. Lockhart finds him and takes him to Kate for medical help. He’s also developing his own romantic interest in Barbara, who seems attracted back despite her arrangement of sorts with Vic.

Lockhart (James Stewart) is not letting his wounded hand stop him.

Ultimately, Lockhart finds the wagon with guns by following Vic. He forces Vic to push them over a cliff before deciding he can’t just take his long-awaited revenge and shoot Vic. Vic’s escape is only momentary, though. He encounters the Apaches who were coming for the guns they’d already paid for, and they surround him and shoot him down.

As things quiet down, Lockhart suggests to Barbara that if she’s going east, she’ll pass through Laramie and should ask for Capt. Lockhart. (Laramie and Fort Laramie were not the same place, and someone headed east from New Mexico would have to go considerably out of her way to pass through either.) Meanwhile, Kate Canady takes over the care of the now-blind but still alive Alec Waggoman. Finally, they’ll be married, several decades after that wedding was initially planned.

The cowboy, the girl and the horse.

These characters are all written to be more complicated than you’d find in most westerns. Stewart and Crisp are both known quantities as actors, and they’re as good as you expect. Alec Waggoman as a character has some Lear-like overtones, if you like that sort of thing. Kennedy as Vic seems better than Nicol as Dave, but some of that may be because Dave’s role is written to be more overtly unattractive. Vic’s motivation is not always clear and seems to be changing during the movie. Cathy O’Donnell manages to convey a certain amount of stubbornness coupled with romantic confusion but is otherwise not terribly memorable. (Stewart seems too old for her. And it’s hard not to think that Joanne Dru, Virginia Mayo or Coleen Gray would have done better with the role.) Aline MacMahon is very good as Kate Canady; she has some of the most acerbic lines in the film. Wallace Ford is good in brief appearances as Lockhart’s scout Charley O’Leary, and Jack Elam puts in an equally brief appearance as the town drunk and informer before he’s killed. It all works, even though there are some loose ends to the plot that are never explained.

The Searchers

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 16, 2013

The Searchers—John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood, Ward Bond, Vera Miles, Harry Carey, Jr., Olive Carey, Dorothy Jordan, Hank Worden, Natalie Wood, Lana Wood, Ken Curtis (1956; Dir: John Ford)

In the movie’s opening shot, the camera sits in the dark interior of a cabin as the silhouette of Martha Edwards (Dorothy Jordan) moves to the door. Both Martha and the camera look out into the bright sunlight at a distant horseman—Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), her brother-in-law. It’s 1868, supposedly on the Llano Estacado of Texas. We can tell, however, that it’s shot in John Ford’s favorite location, the Monument Valley on the Utah-Arizona border. Edwards has been away at the War Between the States, and it’s taken him three years after the war to find his way back to what home he has. As he greets his only living relatives, he kisses Martha on the forehead, and we sense that some of his distance is caused by his warm feelings for his brother’s wife. It’s never more explicit than that, though.

Similarly, we’re never really told what he’s been up to for the three years since the war ended, except that he didn’t go to California and he has $180 in freshly minted Yankee gold. The implication is that he never surrendered (“I don’t believe in surrenders”), and he’s been outlawin’ somewhere. Just as he’s getting reacquainted with his family, up rides a band of Texas rangers led by Capt. the Reverend Samuel Johnson Clayton (Ward Bond), with a neighbor whose cattle have been run off by Indians. Ethan and young Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), an Edwards foster son whose parents were killed by Indians when he was small, join the rangers and take off in pursuit.

Martin (Jeffrey Hunter) and Ethan (John Wayne) begin their search.

The cattle raid was just a ruse, though. The Comanches double back and hit the Edwards place, killing the parents and young son and taking captive the daughters, Lucy and Deborah. After the initial chase, the rangers get called to other responsibilities, and then it’s just Ethan, Martin and young Ben Jorgensen (Harry Carey, Jr.), Lucy’s beau, on the trail of the raiders. Early in the chase, Ethan finds Lucy’s body and buries it. When Ethan is forced to tell Ben, Ben goes crazy and is killed attacking the Comanches by himself. Now it’s just Ethan and Martin on an odyssey that will take the next five years.

Periodically they drop back in on the Jorgenson ranch, where it develops that Laurie Jorgensen (Vera Miles) and Martin have feelings for each other, although Martin’s never around enough to do anything about it and Laurie gets increasingly desperate. Over time, Ethan and Martin figure out which Comanche band has Debby and try to catch up with it. Ultimately they do, more than once. Martin inadvertently acquires a Comanche wife, Look, and she suffers the fate most Indian wives do in westerns (see Jeremiah Johnson and Little Big Man, for example).

The search continues.

This may be a plot centering on how the chase is conducted over five years, but it’s principally a character study of Ethan Edwards, all edges, absolutes and internal conflicts. He doesn’t concede that Martin has any actual relationship to any Edwards, although they’re all the family the boy has known. Martin has some Cherokee blood, which Ethan doesn’t like; he keeps calling the boy Blanket-head. Ethan won’t swear an oath to the Rangers because he’s already sworn one to the Confederacy. When he and Martin are attacked by venal trader Jerem Futterman and two henchmen with robbery in mind, Ethan doesn’t mind shooting them in the back as they’re trying to get away. They’re bad guys and that’s all they deserve. The camera work emphasizes Ethan’s obsessive qualities: When he’s aiming at Comanches with his rifle, he can almost kill them by his look without pulling the trigger. In a winter scene, Ethan and Martin check out white female captives the cavalry has recently taken back from the Comanches. They’re kept in a rough chapel at a cavalry post. None of the rescued women appears to be stable mentally, and as Ethan walks to the door to leave he turns suddenly and looks at them. In the dim room we can barely see his eyes under the brim of his hat, but his look is obsessive and filled with anger and frustrated purpose—excellent acting and a brilliant shot.

Ethan surveys a group of recaptured white women and children.

It becomes more apparent to Martin that Ethan means to kill Debby (Natalie Wood, then 18) when he finds her. She’s been sullied by living too long among the Indians and has been defiled by her relations with them. In one of their brief encounters, Laurie makes Ethan’s case for killing Debby to Martin as she attempts to persuade Martin to discontinue the chase and stay with her. That was likely an accurate attitude for the time, although one that this movie doesn’t really share.

The movie depends on Ethan, and John Wayne plays him superbly—so much so that it’s hard to think of any one else in the role. (Maybe a younger Tommy Lee Jones—Jones can play this kind of implacability, as he did with Woodrow Call in Lonesome Dove.) This also has one of Ward Bond’s more colorful parts, and he makes the most of it as he repeatedly rides in and out of the plot. (As he gives the order to attack: “Brethren, leave us go amongst them.” “Mount! M-O-N-T-E, mount!”) Mrs. Jorgensen is played by Olive Carey, widow of one Harry and mother of another, and she’s good in the very limited requirements of the part. At the time Jeffrey Hunter was an up-and-coming young actor, and he’s good enough here. Hank Worden plays Mose Harper, an addled scout, and it’s one of his better roles. A 15-year-old Patrick Wayne makes his significant film debut as a young cavalryman. The clunky note in the cast is Ken Curtis, who plays Charlie McCorry, a young Ranger suitor of Laurie’s. Although his dialect may be authentic, it simply sounds like he’s having trouble talking around his teeth. German actor Henry Brandon as Scar looks very imposing, and Scar is played as an intelligent and courageous leader, if one, like Ethan, filled with and perhaps crippled by hatred.

Ethan changes some by the end, regaining a bit of his humanity. But the closing shot is a bookend of the opening shot. The camera is inside the dim Jorgensen cabin, looking out the front door into the sun-lit landscape. Walking in the sun and through the doorway toward the camera, Mr. and Mrs. Jorgensen take the newly-liberated Debby into their care. Next come Martin and Laurie, moving into the cabin the same way. As they enter the cabin interior and walk past the camera, that leaves only the figure of Ethan standing on the porch looking in, holding his right elbow with his left hand in perhaps the most memorable single image from the film (Wayne said the posture was an homage to Harry Carey). He watches for a moment, seemingly with a touch of longing, then turns and walks out into the bright sunlight—to what future we have no idea. Presumably he has more peace now, but he still doesn’t belong with regular people.

Ethan isolated.

The direction is John Ford at his best: Low camera angles in the Monument Valley emphasize the rock formations, the sky and John Wayne’s looming size. There is brilliant use of light and dark in interior shots. The editing shows remarkable and very effective restraint in the attack on the Edwards cabin; after setting the atmosphere by showing the fear of various members of the Edwards family, the only element of the attack shown is Comanche chief Scar (Henry Brandon) finding the very young Debby (Lana Wood) huddled by her grandmother’s grave. In a current western, it would be hard to imagine not showing the violence, but the effect of doing it Ford’s way here is to emphasize the off-screen violence’s effect on the characters and especially the violence within Ethan Edwards. There’s a lot of information in this movie conveyed without dialogue, so watch closely.

The cinematographer was Winton C. Hoch, who had won back to back Oscars in 1948 and 1949, as well as in 1952. The music by Max Steiner involves the usual Ford Americana themes: Lorena, Bonny Blue Flag, Garry Owen, etc. The participation of the Sons of the Pioneers now seems a bit old-fashioned, like the comic relief. Based on a novel by Alan LeMay, the screenplay was written by frequent Ford collaborator Frank Nugent (nominated for an Oscar for his work with Ford on The Quiet Man). For an extended discussion of both (a) the historical roots of the story (the Comanche capture of Cynthia Ann Parker as a child and her ultimate tragic recapture 24 years later), and (b) the making of the movie in the 1950s, see The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend, by Glenn Frankel (New York, Bloomsbury, 2013).

It has been said that another historical influence on this story was Brit Johnson, an African-American teamster who spent years in a successful quest to find and ransom his kidnapped wife and daughter from the Comanches, then almost immediately set off again to find and rescue yet another child kidnap victim. Brit Johnson was killed by the Kiowas.

There are only five westerns on the AFI’s list of the 100 greatest American movies, and The Searchers is the highest-ranked of them at no. 12. (The other four are High Noon, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Wild Bunch and Unforgiven. There are six if you count Treasure of the Sierra Madre. See http://www.afi.com/100years/movies10.aspx.)

Seven Men from Now

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 14, 2013

Seven Men from Now—Randolph Scott, Lee Marvin, Gail Russell, Don Barry, Walter Reed, John Larch (1956; Dir: Budd Boetticher)

In the opening scene, former sheriff Ben Stride (Randolph Scott) enters a cave from a driving rain storm and approaches the campfire of two strangers. They’re a little edgy, and they start talking about a recent killing in the town of Silver Springs. Stride sits at the fire and takes a cup of coffee. One of the two asks Stride, “Did they catch the ones who done it?” “Two of ‘em,” responds Stride, carefully watching the others. They draw and Stride gets them both. We don’t know why Stride was the one hunting them, but he walked right in and did it fair and square. And according to the title there are five more to come.

Randolph Scott as Ben Stride, looking for seven men.

On his way the next morning Stride crosses trails with the Greers, an eastern couple whose wagon is stuck in mud. He helps them pull out and guides them to a deserted stage stop, where they encounter Bill Masters (Lee Marvin) and Clete (Don Barry). Masters is somebody Stride once put in jail, and who claims not to have been involved in the robbery in Silver Springs, although he’s interested in the stolen gold. For a while the four travel together, and they rescue a man pursued by Apaches, only for Masters to kill him moments later as the rescued man tries to shoot Stride in the back. Three of seven down; four more to go.

Masters has eyes for Annie Greer (Gail Russell), whose husband John (Walter Reed) is garrulous, unskilled in the ways of the west and perhaps weak. Masters pushes John Greer in a remarkable scene in a wagon in the rain just telling stories, until Stride makes Masters leave.

Masters (Lee Marvin) telling tales in the rain.

It turns out Stride is a widower; it was his wife working in the Wells Fargo office who was killed in Silver Springs. Stride lost the last election for sheriff, and when he declined to take a job as deputy, his wife had to work. He’s now attracted to Annie Greer, too, but she’s married and Stride has a strict moral code. Stride and Masters are both heading for Flora Vista, which they think is the likely point for whoever took the Wells Fargo gold to try to get it into Mexico. The Greers are going there to catch a trail west to California.

Masters reaches Flora Vista first after leaving the slower-moving Greers, and there he encounters Payte Bodeen (John Larch), the leader of the gang that planned and committed the robbery and murder. Masters tells them Stride is on his way, and two of the gang are dispatched to intercept Stride in the desert before he gets to Flora Vista. Stride gets them both, but injures his leg and loses his horse in doing so. The Greers, following along behind in their wagon, find him and patch him up as well as they can. John Greer admits that he had unknowingly agreed to take the stolen Wells Fargo box to Flora Vista, and he leaves it in the desert with Stride. Stride figures it will draw the remaining killers to him.

He’s right, and it also draws Masters and Clete. The final shootout for the gold is between Stride and Masters, and it’s great. By the end of the movie, John Greer is also dead, more bravely than one might have expected, and there is the suggestion that Stride and Annie Greer might get together. But they might not, too. That makes this movie one of only two (along with The Tall T) of the Boetticher westerns where Scott may end up with a romantic interest.

An injured Ben Stride (Randolph Scott) faces off against Masters (Lee Marvin) in the desert.

The editing of the shooting scenes is very interesting. Although Stride wins at least two of these, we never actually see him draw and shoot. We see Masters constantly playing with his guns, drawing them, loading them, twirling them, and he’s clearly fast, dextrous and confident. Fast as Masters is, Stride is faster, but it’s mostly in our minds. This is a remarkable contrast to how shootout scenes are shot in later westerns, especially after The Wild Bunch.

Scott plays much the same character in all the Boetticher westerns—capable, taciturn, obsessed with vengeance, sure of himself and that he knows all the rules. Lee Marvin is one of the two best villains in a Boetticher movie, and although he is an obvious bad guy he’s not without a certain dangerous charm. The interactions between Scott and Marvin make the movie memorable. You can also see Scott’s frequent uncredited co-star, his beautiful dark palomino horse Stardust.

The script was written by Burt Kennedy for John Wayne, but Wayne couldn’t take the part of Ben Stride because he was scheduled to be in John Ford’s The Searchers. However, this one was produced by Wayne’s Batjac Company and was successful enough to start a series for director Boetticher. The rest were produced by Randolph Scott and Harry Joe Brown—combining their names in that of their production company, Ranown.

This is the earliest and one of the best of the westerns directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Randolph Scott, all made during a surprisingly brief period in the late 1950s. “Spare” is one word frequently used to describe the storytelling in them. They typically don’t have large casts or budgets, and they’re not long, but they work well. Burt Kennedy wrote this one, as he did the best of these collaborations. This and the other Boetticher westerns were unavailable for decades, appreciated only by a small cult of fans and, of course, the French. But you can now find them on DVD, and they’re well worth watching, especially the stronger entries in the series (The Tall T, Ride Lonesome and Comanche Station).

The Tin Star

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 13, 2013

The Tin Star—Henry Fonda, Anthony Perkins, Betsy Palmer, Neville Brand, John McIntire, Lee Van Cleef (1957; Dir: Anthony Mann)

Grizzled bounty hunter Morgan Hickman (Henry Fonda) meets green sheriff Ben Owens (Tony Perkins in one of his first roles): “How long you had that badge?” “Since Sheriff Parker…uh, got killed.” “Nobody else wanted it, huh? How come they picked you?” “I’m only temporary.” “You’re more temporary than you think.”

The title is a generic sort for a western featuring a lawman; in fact, a short story with this name was made into the classic High Noon. In this case Hickman has come to town to collect the reward on an outlaw he brings in, dead and draped over his pack horse, only to find himself despised by the respectable townspeople. The inexperienced sheriff is just finding his way in a difficult job and tells Hickman he’ll have to wait for his money until he gets confirmation from the party offering the reward. This means Hickman will have to spend at least several days in the hostile town until he can get paid. The town bully and livery stable owner is Bart Bogardus (played by experienced villain Neville Brand, who was said to be the fourth most-decorated American soldier during World War II); Bogardus thinks he’d be a better sheriff than Owens. Hickman bails Owens out of a difficult situation with Bogardus and unintentionally becomes the young sheriff’s mentor.

Hickman (Henry Fonda) submits a claim to the green sheriff (Anthony Perkins).

Meanwhile, the hotel won’t rent Hickman a room, and he finds accommodations with young widow Nona Mayfield (Betsy Palmer) and her half-Indian son. In addition to making a place for himself as sheriff, Owens is also trying to get Millie Parker (Mary Webster) to marry him. But she’s the daughter of the previous (and now dead) sheriff, and she won’t marry him unless he takes off the tin star. The beloved town doctor (John McIntire) is killed, and Owens loses control of his posse to Bogardus. It becomes a mob. Meanwhile, Hickman and Owens find and capture the killers, but may not be able to hold them against Bogardus and the mob. As Hickman and Owens become better friends, Hickman reveals that he had been a lawman in Kansas when his own family needed help, and the townspeople he thought were his friends wouldn’t provide the assistance he needed. He now has few illusions about the relationships between townspeople and those they hire to protect them, and he thinks they ask too much while providing too little in return.

Hickman gives the youngster a few tips.

In the final confrontation between Owens and Bogardus, Hickman puts on the star again in support of Owens, but Owens, armed with what he’s learned from Hickman, is the one who has to deal with the situation. And at the end Hickman takes off with the young widow and her son to find another town that wants somebody to wear a star.

Romancing the widow.

This is one of a number of westerns from the 1950s that explored social issues, especially one of those concerned with a sense of community and how much townspeople owe to those who enforce the law against the lawless. (Compare it with High Noon, Man With the Gun, At Gunpoint, 3:10 to Yuma and Rio Bravo, for example.) The townspeople usually come off badly in such situations, so much so that it has become a cliché (see Support Your Local Sheriff, for example, which exploits that cliche to comic effect).

The cast here is appealing, with a good relationship between American everyman Fonda and the young Tony Perkins. Palmer is attractive and straightforward as Fonda’s romantic interest. John McIntire is his usual avuncular self as the town doctor, but he’s basically the same character as Walter Brennan in At Gunpoint. McIntire was a Mann favorite, and shows up more colorfully in Winchester ’73 and The Far Country, too. Villains Brand and Van Cleef do exactly what they’re supposed to do.

Anthony Mann directs Fonda and Perkins in a scene.

This is the better one of the two good westerns directed by Anthony Mann that don’t feature James Stewart. (The other is Man of the West with Gary Cooper.) Mann was more interested in psychological and social issues than some directors of westerns in the 1950s, but he knew what he was doing. This is in black and white, at a time when most movies with ambitions (even westerns) were in color. But it doesn’t suffer for all of that.

For another movie featuring Fonda as an experienced ex-lawman helping a younger and greener peace officer, see Warlock, made a couple of years later.

Comanche Station

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 12, 2013

Comanche Station—Randolph Scott, Claude Akins, Nancy Gates, Skip Homeier, Richard Rust (1959; Dir: Budd Boetticher)

Jefferson Cody’s wife was stolen by Comanches ten years ago, and now every time he hears of a white woman among the Comanches he goes out and buys her back. The movie opens with a typical Budd Boetticher shot of a lone horseman making his way through the Lone Pine rocks, and the horseman is Cody (Randolph Scott) on another such errand. This time the white woman is Nancy Lowe (Nancy Gates), and she’s grateful for the rescue but uncertain how she’ll be received when Cody returns her to her husband and family.

Nancy_Gates_and_Randolph_Scott_in_Comanche_Station

Jefferson Cody (Randolph Scott) barters with the Comanches for Mrs. Lowe (Nancy Gates).

Cody and the newly liberated Mrs. Lowe are resting up at Comanche Station, a stagecoach swing station locked up for now, when three other riders come up, engaged in a running battle with the Indians. They turn out to be Ben Lane (Claude Akins), cashiered from the cavalry by Cody years earlier when Cody was a major, along with two younger henchmen. Cody helps them fend off the Comanches, and they form an uneasy alliance until they can all get through to Lordsburg and safety.

One of Lane’s young guns is killed by the Comanches, and Lane saves Cody when Cody is attacked while reconnoitering—this despite the fact that everybody knows that Lane hates Cody and plans to kill him so he can collect for himself the $5000 reward offered by Mrs. Lowe’s husband. So the question isn’t what he’ll try, but how and when, as it was in Seven Men from Now, The Tall T and Ride Lonesome. We even have a pretty good idea of what the outcome will be (this is a Randolph Scott character we’re talking about, after all), but the interplay between the adversaries and the drawing of moral lines (or not) are what make it interesting.

Jefferson Cody (Randolph Scott) and Ben Lane (Claude Akins), adversaries temporarily riding together.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Lowe thinks that Cody is only bringing her back to Lordsburg for the reward, too. She clearly doesn’t understand either the degree of obsession that takes over Randolph Scott characters in these Boetticher westerns, or their unyielding moral rectitude. So that has to play out, too. Maybe her husband isn’t worthy of her and she’ll decide to ride off with Cody. After all, Lowe can’t be much of a man if he doesn’t go after her himself, can he?

There are a couple of twists at the end, and this is one of the best of the Boetticher-Scott films. As with the best of them, this one was written by Burt Kennedy, and there’s some good dialogue that provides character development and differentiation in very few words. Scott doesn’t talk much, as usual, and when he does it’s in a convincing quasi-Southern accent. (Scott grew up in North Carolina.) Claude Akins as Ben Lane is playing a slightly more sympathetic bad guy than he is normally given, although the character of Lane doesn’t have the layers that, say, Lee Marvin or Richard Boone might have brought to the role. His two young guns as played by Skip Homier and Richard Rust are excellent. Nancy Gates, who retired from movies after this film, is attractive, feisty and convincing as Mrs. Lowe, although not as much is required of her.

Much of the movie is spent either fighting Comanches or trying to get away from them, but there’s an undercurrent of sympathy for Indians that runs through this, as in other Boetticher films. It’s usually voiced tersely by Scott at some point in the film.

Cody (Randolph Scott) is surrounded by Comanches.

This was the last of the Ranown westerns directed by Boetticher, and although there are remarkable similarities in plot, casting, location and production team for all of them, they never become too formulaic. Or if there is a formula, it’s so skillfully executed that they’re compelling nevertheless. They’re enjoyable individually as westerns, and taken together they constitute a remarkable body of work within a short period of time. For decades, this and the others were not available on video or DVD, but in late 2008 five of them were released in a set. Boetticher’s and Scott’s best work can now be much more widely appreciated, as it deserves. There could easily be two more of the Boetticher-Scott westerns on this list of greatest westerns –The Tall T and Ride Lonesome. Randolph Scott hung up his spurs and retired from movies after Comanche Station, to be lured out of retirement only for one last movie: the superb Ride the High Country with Joel McCrea.

Rio Bravo

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 11, 2013

Rio Bravo—John Wayne, Dean Martin, Angie Dickinson, Ricky Nelson, Walter Brennan, John Russell, Claude Akins (1959; Dir: Howard Hawks)

Well, John Wayne, yes, of course. But Dean Martin? Ricky Nelson? Who’d be able to make this work at all, let alone make it memorable? Director Howard Hawks, that’s who. Rio Bravo’s initial commercial success and the enduring respect in which it is held are usually credited principally to Hawks, with considerable justification. Hawks was one of the great directors of his long era, from silent movies to the 1970s, and he didn’t work in westerns all that often. Rio Bravo was a commercial sort of movie, not held in great critical regard at the time of its release in 1959. But that respect has increased over the ensuing 60 years, and it still scores high in re-watchability. Various of the elements of the casting and film shouldn’t work, but they do.

The title apparently comes from the fact that Mexicans refer to the Rio Grande as the Rio Bravo. The central plot is fairly common. Sheriff John T. Chance (Wayne) of Presidio County, Texas, is holding the local land baron’s brother in his jail on a murder charge, and faces insuperable odds in trying to keep him there until a U.S. marshal arrives to take custody of the miscreant. Tension builds as Chance puts together his beleaguered team, strategy develops on both sides and the odds against Chance rise. Subplots involve the rehabilitation of his alcoholic deputy Dude (Martin) and an unlikely romance between Chance and young gambler/dance hall girl Feathers (Angie Dickinson).

Dude battles his demons.

This was a first film for Martin and Nelson, and very early in Dickinson’s career. Wayne was in the stage of his career (after The Searchers) where his characters became frankly middle-aged. Martin and Nelson were both better known as singers than actors, and for commercial purposes (and presumably to show male bonding), there had to be a scene where song breaks out. It’s the cheesiest moment in the movie, but surprisingly it doesn’t undercut the development of the film. Martin is excellent, as he was in another, later western (The Sons of Katie Elder). Nelson didn’t have much of a film career, but he was fine in this as youthful gunfighter Colorado Ryan. Dickinson was remarkable as the young gambler Feathers in a May-December romance with Chance.

There are lots of moments that stick with you: Chance giving the most threatening “Good evening” greeting you’ll ever see on film as he passes a suspect character on the street at night. In a saloon, an angry Chance turns, bashes a bad guy with his rifle and then says of the bleeding thug on the floor, “Aw, I won’t hurt him.” In the villain’s saloon, a frowzy, despised Dude rubs his stubbled jaw, spins, draws, shoots and drops a killer in the shadows above him who’s been dripping blood into a beer on the bar. Chance’s tough love to the recovering alcoholic deputy: “’Sorry’ don’t get it done, Dude.” Any of three exchanges between Chance and Feathers in her hotel room. Walter Brennan’s incessant cackling and complaining as Stumpy, the lame jailhouse guard. Colorado finally buying into the big fight by tossing Chance his rifle in the street while the bad guy’s thugs have the drop on him. The constant playing of the Deguello, the threatening Mexican trumpet and guitar music (composed by Dimitri Tiomkin) emanating from the bad guy’s saloon, supposedly meaning “no quarter will be given.” John Russell’s tall, smooth and impeccably dressed villain verbally spars with Chance at the jail. (This was Russell’s most memorable role in a modest career.)

Arresting brother Joe.

And there are lots of small touches that work well in retrospect: The way Wayne’s character favors a rifle (as he did in Hondo and several other movies) as his weapon of choice, and how he handles it. Martin’s sloppy attire and convincing degradation when his character is a drunk. The use of roll-your-own cigarettes throughout the movie, as an indication of male bonding. Wayne’s convincingly battered hat, which he used from 1939’s Stagecoach for the next 20 years of movies (see, for example, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Hondo), tilted forward on his head with the front brim bent slightly up.

A few touches don’t work as well: The singing scene is not universally beloved. And the stock-Mexican portrayals of the hotel keeper and his wife don’t play as well today as they may have 60 years ago. But the movie is remarkably sure-footed, and what seems to be a leisurely plot development seldom drags.

Chance and Feathers

Hawks said that one of the interests for him in making Rio Bravo was to make a counter-statement to Fred Zinneman’s High Noon, released six years earlier and nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Instead of trying to get help from townspeople and cattle drovers (as does Marshal Will Kane in High Noon), Chance here prefers to rely instead on a very small group of professionals for his support. Hawks was also not impressed with the drawn-out slow-motion violence of Peckinpah’s influential The Wild Bunch a decade later; he thought that violence was more effective if it was over quickly as in real life, instead of glorifying it in extended slower sequences.

Hawks was known for stealing from himself, re-using material that had worked in his other films. The Chance-Feathers relationship is very reminiscent of the middle-aged Bogart and young Lauren Bacall in Hawks’ To Have and Have Not (1944). Even some of Feathers’ lines are virtually the same, and she shows a very similar aggressiveness in the relationship. Walter Brennan was also a principal supporting character in To Have and Have Not. There are similar pop musical touches in both movies, with Hoagy Carmichael in To Have and Have Not and Martin/Nelson in Rio Bravo.

Director Hawks and Angie Dickinson

Later, Hawks would remake Rio Bravo twice more, with diminishing success each time. 1966’s El Dorado featured Wayne again, with Robert Mitchum in the Martin role and a young James Caan in the Nelson role. It worked, but not as well as Rio Bravo. Rio Lobo in 1970, again starring Wayne, used many of the same plot elements. It was Hawks’ last film and not one of his more successful in a number of ways. John Carpenter took the plot as the basis for his 1976 urban action film Assault on Precinct 16.

Some credit for the enduring success of Rio Bravo should go to excellent screen-writing by two frequent Hawks collaborators: Jules Furthman (a screenwriter since 1915, with Mutiny on the Bounty, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, The Outlaw, Nighmare Alley) and Leigh Brackett (The Big Sleep, Hatari, El Dorado, Rio Lobo, The Empire Strikes Back). As with most great films, however, a number of elements worked together well to produce something worth remembering.

North to Alaska

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 10, 2013

North to Alaska—John Wayne, Stewart Granger, Capucine, Ernie Kovacs, Fabian (1960; Dir: Henry Hathaway)

This “northern” is fueled by sexual tension and fights, most of them of the rollicking variety complete with lots of mud and cartoon-like twittering noises when somebody gets punched. That is, it has an overlay of comedy. The story owes a lot to earlier movies about claim-jumping in Alaska, such as The Far Country and The Spoilers.

The plot has former Washington logger and now Alaska miner Sam McCord (John Wayne) heading south from Nome to buy heavy mining equipment and bring back for his partner George Pratt (Stewart Granger) the supposed Pratt “fiancée” Jenny, whom George hasn’t seen in three years. Their mining claim is now producing gold richly enough to afford both. In Seattle, McCord finds that Jenny is working as a domestic and is now married to a butler; but in a house of ill repute he also finds the elegant Michelle Bonet (Capucine) and decides to bring her back for George. Michelle, also known as Angel (the backstory for the French actress in this film is that she’s from New Orleans, thus accounting for the accent), is more interested in McCord himself, who, although loudly anti-marriage, generally treats her like a lady.

Partners Sam McCord (John Wayne) and George Pratt (Stewart Granger).

Meanwhile, sleazy gambler Frankie Cannon (Ernie Kovacs in a rare but very effective movie role) has gained control of the town’s largest saloon/hotel and has started an underhanded operation to take over other people’s claims, including the McCord-Pratt claim. Cannon and Michelle also have a past relationship, which Cannon would like to resume.

On McCord’s return to Nome, the differing aims of McCord and Bonet eventually surface, while McCord and Pratt defend their claim against Cannon and fight between themselves. Pratt’s younger brother Billy (played a bit broadly by the singer Fabian) is more a distraction than necessary to the plot. One is tempted to attribute his presence in this movie to that of another teen idol, Ricky Nelson, in Rio Bravo a year earlier. Neither conflict (McCord-Bonet and McCord/Pratt-Cannon) is all that serious, and the ending is fairly predictable. The sub-conflicts (McCord-Pratt over Bonet and Bonet with her own past) also work themselves out well enough. You can tell this movie was made in the early 1960s because the alleged prostitute Michelle never actually sleeps with McCord and thereby regains her long-lost status as a “good girl.” It’s hard to imagine a current filmmaker playing the relationship that way.

Ernie Kovacs as sleazy gambler/claim jumper Freddie Cannon.

The movie, while not in the very top level of John Wayne westerns, takes its time developing the plot and is pleasantly watchable. The commercial success of the movie was apparently attributed to the exuberant fight scenes. This led to the making of the similar McLintock! a few years later, which had no discernable plot but good muddy fight scenes and a feisty romantic relationship. The theme song here, as performed by Johnny Horton, was a popular hit in its time and might be second only to Tex Ritter’s High Noon theme among sung musical themes for westerns. The experienced and versatile director Henry Hathaway had his roots in silent movies and was capable in a variety of genres, including westerns (Rawhide, Garden of Evil, How the West Was Won, True Grit). He made 31 westerns in his lengthy career.

Pratt, McCord and Michelle argue things out.

Incidentally, one of the ways Hathaway held down the budget in this movie was to shoot most of it around Point Mugu in southern California, rather than on location in Alaska.

This film is part of a modest tradition of good westerns that were set in the Alaska gold rush days of the end of the 19^th century. They include The Spoilers, a much-remade film in the first half of 20^th century, the 1942 version of which has a legendary fight scene featuring bad guy Randolph Scott and good guy John Wayne; The Far Country (Anthony Mann-James Stewart); and White Fang, based on the Jack London novel (featuring Klaus Maria Brandauer and a young Ethan Hawke). Soapy Smith was an actual con man who, under a cover of respectability, for a time took control of the corrupt civic government and police in Skagway, Alaska, during the gold rush. Several of these northerns feature a version of the real-life Smith character (Kovacs here, John McIntire in The Far Country, Randolph Scott in The Spoilers) and strong, sympathetic female saloon owners (Marlene Dietrich and Anne Baxter in different versions of The Spoilers and Ruth Roman in The Far Country).

The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 9, 2013

The Magnificent Seven—Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Brad Dexter, James Coburn, Robert Vaughan, Charles Bronson, Horst Buchholtz, Eli Wallach (1960; Dir: John Sturges)

The exotic Yul Brynner seems an odd choice as the star of a western, but he’s become one of the iconic figures in the history of westerns because of his role as Chris Adams, leader of the seven in this relocated remake of Akira Kurosawa’s marvelous The Seven Samurai. John Sturges’ talent for directing large-scale action was never in better form, and a number of elements combined to make this one of the most memorable westerns of the 1960s—a period that represents the apex of a certain kind of Hollywood western.

The movie opens in a southwestern town with a dead Indian, whom prejudiced locals won’t allow to be buried in the local Boot Hill. A newcomer, Chris Adams (Brynner) volunteers for the dangerous job of driving the hearse to the cemetery, and unemployed cowboy Vin (Steve McQueen) rides shotgun. They make it up the hill, only to be faced at the cemetery by a small mob of armed and angry objectors, whom they handle with ease.

Chris (Yul Brynner) and Vin (Steve McQueen) ride to Boot Hill.

Among those impressed are three town fathers of a Mexican village plagued by bandits. They’re looking for help in ridding themselves of Calvera (Eli Wallach in his Mexican bandit chieftain mode) and his band of 30 or so banditos, who prey on the village regularly and kill any one there who shows signs of resisting. Better employment is hard to come by, and Chris assembles a team of six, starting with himself and Vin. They include Harry Luck (Brad Dexter), an old acquaintance of Chris’s who refers to him (not entirely convincingly) as “You old Cajun”; Bernardo O’Reilly (Charles Bronson); Lee (Robert Vaughan), a smooth but high-strung gunslinger now on the run himself; and Britt (James Coburn), a taciturn, knife-throwing cowboy. The final member of the group is Chico (Horst Buchholz), a young Mexican would-be gunfighter initially rejected by Chris. But as the band goes south into Mexico, Chico follows and is eventually accepted as one of them.

The villagers have considerable misgivings about their new defenders. But as they prepare for the return of Calvera, Chris and his band teach the villagers some rudiments of self-defense and begin to form relationships. Bernardo, for example, becomes a favorite of the village children, and there are a few romantic attachments that develop with female villagers, notably for Chico. Cold gunfighter Lee has nightmares, and, after a drinking bout, confesses his fears to a couple of the villagers.

The adversaries.

Calvera and his bandits return, and initially they are easily driven away by the unexpected resistance. But they return yet again and Calvera tries to understand what drives these Americans who are now leading the resistance to him. His native humor and ruthlessness both show through. And there is the final battle, which four of the seven do not survive. The action sequences are extremely well directed and edited.

As Chris and Vin leave the village at the end, Chris mutters the bottom line on all the killing: “The old man was right. Only the farmers won. We lost. We always lose.” But at least he isn’t dead. The movie’s most memorable line might be Calvera’s: “If God had not wanted them sheared, He would not have made them sheep.” A few lines seem a little anachronistic, like Vin’s reference to a man falling off a ten-story building.

There are small touches that work very well, and some that raise questions. When Vin is loading a shotgun and shakes each shell before popping it in the shotgun, and then tells Brynner, “Let ‘er buck,” that seems authentic. In fact, McQueen and Brynner did not get along particularly well, and Vin’s sequence of mannerisms are McQueen’s way of stealing the scene against Brynner’s gravity. The Mexican villagers seem unusually well-laundered, though—lots of bright whites in a very dusty setting.* And one wonders why McQueen’s character Vin wears chaps so much in town, where they’re not necessary. You’d think they’d be too hot and cumbersome in what seems to be a very warm climate. Brynner and Buchholz as actors don’t exactly fit the backstories of their characters. But it all works surprisingly well notwithstanding those quibbles.

No, The Magnificent Seven is not as good as Seven Samurai, and it’s not nearly as long, either—just over two hours in playing time, to more than three for Kurosawa’s masterpiece. It has an epic feel without so much of the epic length, as well as less philosophical darkness. However, it may be the most successful example in film history of transplanting a story from one cinematic genre to another. Kurosawa was said to have given John Sturges a sword in appreciation after the release of the Sturges film. (For another successful western based on a Kurosawa samurai film, see Sergio Leone‘s A Fistful of Dollars, based–without prior permission–on Yojimbo.)

The seven defending the town from Calvera’s men.

Much of the brilliance of this film lies in the casting and character development of the seven, and of Calvera. The enigmatic, bald Brynner, with his vaguely Asian background, would seem to be an unlikely fit for a western. Even though he’s the leader of the seven and has more camera time than any of them, he remains enigmatic to the end of the movie. His bearing and his all-black dress seem a little unusual, too, but it all makes for one of the iconic characters of the genre (reprised by Brynner in one sequel and in the science fiction thriller Westworld). This was the breakthrough movie role for McQueen, who’d starred on television in Wanted: Dead or Alive. He would go on to have one of the greatest movie careers of the 1960s and 1970s, although that career did not include many more westerns. Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughan, James Coburn—every single one of the seven would be a significant star by the end of the decade, with one exception: Brad Dexter. And as these characters are introduced and later developed, enough time is spent to insure that we are interested, but they remain not entirely explained. Wallach is superb as Calvera, the greedy, human and philosophical bandit chieftain, and an interesting villain contributes significantly to the success of any western. (See him again in a similar role in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.)

One of its elements may be the best of its kind in any western: Elmer Bernstein’s score, especially the theme. Bernstein was the quintessential movie composer of his time; he worked quickly, and in a broad variety of genres. He scored hundreds of movies, and this may be his most memorable music. The cinematography of Charles Lang, Jr. is excellent, too. McQueen, Coburn and Bronson would work with Sturges again in The Great Escape, and this film would spawn three sequels—none remotely approaching this first in the series for quality and watchability. Decades later (1998-2000) it would even be a short-lived television series. And a new cinematic remake is currently in production and scheduled for release in late 2016, with Antoine Fuqua directing and Denzel Washington in the Yul Brynner role.

*The well-laundered whites of the peasants were apparently one result of Mexican authorities not liking the depiction of Mexican nationals in 1954’s Vera Cruz, also filmed in Mexico. For a period of several years thereafter, they were much more vigilant in policing the way Mexicans were shown in American films shot in Mexico. So the villagers in The Magnificent Seven were never dirty in their white peasant clothing.

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Ride the High Country

Nicholas Chennault ~ September 6, 2013

Ride the High Country—Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott, Mariette Hartley, Ron Starr, James Drury, R.G. Armstrong, John Anderson, L.Q. Jones, Warren Oates, John Davis Chandler, Edgar Buchanan (1962; Dir: Sam Peckinpah)

This was director Sam Peckinpah’s second movie, one of the two that are counted his very greatest, and one of the first notable passing-of-the-old-west movies. As aging former lawman Steve Judd (Joel McCrea) rides into a town in California’s Sierra Nevada at the turn of the century, he hears cheers from the citizenry lining the streets. He sees no one else and figures the cheers must be appreciation for him and his earlier career, and he tips his hat. Then he is rudely shooed out of the way by a policeman, as a camel and horse race around a corner and toward a finish line. The cheers were for the racers.

In fact, Judd and his career are largely forgotten. He’s been getting menial work where he can to survive, but time and the west itself have passed him by. He finds old friend and fellow former lawman Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott) working a shooting booth at a carnival, billed as the Oregon Kid. Judd has been lured here by the offer of a good-paying job escorting $250,000 in gold down from a remote mining camp to the bank in town.

It turns out that expectations are too high on both sides of the deal. The father and son who run the bank (Percy Helton and Byron Foulger, very good in bit parts) were unaware of how old Judd now is; and in fact there’s only about $20,000 in gold. Judd is to get $20 a day, plus another $20 to be split between Westrum and his headstrong and girl-crazy young partner Heck Longtree (Ron Starr).

Contemplating the limited rewards of a life spent in law enforcement.

The dialogue between Judd and Westrum as they ride the high country toward the camp of Coarse Gold has several recurring themes: lost loves and disappointments of the past, the way that a career in law was too dangerous and didn’t pay enough to get married and have a family, and an easy way with scripture. They come to a farm, where they seek lodging for the night with Joshua Knudsen (R.G. Armstrong), a man even more given to spouting scripture than they are. His daughter Elsa (the luminous young Mariette Hartley) is anxious to experience more of life than is available on her mountain farm with an oppressive father. She goes so far as to encourage Heck’s attentions. It turns out she fancies herself engaged to a miner in Coarse Gold, and she sneaks off to follow Judd’s small band when they leave the next day. And it also turns out that the gold isn’t all that’s coarse in the mining camp.

Her miner is Billy Hammond (James Drury in his pre-Virginian days), the most presentable of the five despicable Hammond brothers (John Anderson, Warren Oates, L.Q. Jones and John Chandler Davis are the others). Longtree deposits Elsa with the Hammonds with considerable misgivings, while Judd and Westrum conduct their business in the camp, where the people are as coarse as what they mine. That night Elsa, Billy and the Hammonds go to Kate’s Place for her to be wed to Billy by the inebriated Judge Tolliver (Edgar Buchanan). Immediately after the wedding, she discovers that marriage with a Hammond is not at all what she was expecting. Judd rescues her, and the small band retreats from Coarse Gold amid threats from the Hammonds.

Mariette Hartley in her first movie.

Indeed, they are bushwhacked by the Hammonds on the trail while Judd is discovering that Westrum plans to make off with the gold himself. Heck and Judd fight off the Hammonds, killing two of them (Sylvus, played by L.Q. Jones, and Jimmy, played by John Chandler Davis). As they approach the Knudsen farm, they find that the three remaining Hammonds have made it there before them and killed Joshua. Heck and Judd both take bullets, and, after a standoff, Judd and Westrum decide to take on the Hammonds “straight on, just like always.” It’s a powerful ending.

This movie contains one of the great lines in a western, a line that a surprising number of people know. As the aging Steve Judd and Gil Westrum talk about what they’ve learned and where to go from here in their lives, Steve says, “All I want is to enter my house justified.” He doesn’t explain more than that, but it resonates. It’s what gets him to the end of movie, and we know that he does indeed enter his house justified—whatever that means. (See Luke 18:14 in the New Testament, where the line comes at the end of a parable on the difference between conventional righteousness and the real thing. The line was apparently added by director Peckinpah from something he’d heard his father say.)

This was not a pretentious or large-budget film when it was made. Peckinpah was known mostly for directing television westerns (Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke, The Rifleman and his own brief series, The Westerner). But he makes the elements come together here superbly to form one of the great westerns. First is the casting: Joel McCrea at 57 and Randolph Scott at 64 were near or even past retirement, but one can’t imagine any one else in their roles. Scott has much more dialogue than we’re used to hearing from him, and he handles it with considerable dry humor. The supporting characters are well-written and well differentiated. The screenplay was written by N.B. Stone Jr., known mostly for television writing but also for the excellent Man With a Gun. Its Old Testament flavor and dry humor play very well with the two principal characters. Stone even has the drunk Judge Tolliver stand in a whorehouse and give a rather touching speech on marriage.

“Straight on, just like always.”

Elsa: “My father says there’s only right and wrong–good and evil. Nothing in between. It isn’t that simple, is it?

Steve Judd: “No, it isn’t. It should be, but it isn’t.”

Lucien Ballard was the cinematographer, and his work was remarkable, as usual. Note the use of the actual Sierras in the Inyo National Forest, and the way that bits of the story are told by means other than dialogue or the faces of the actors, as when Westrum makes a move for the gold and Judd catches him at it. That part of the story is told with the camera just showing legs and feet, and it works very well. And in the final shot, the dying Judd is shown from a very low angle against the looming mountains, almost as if he were one of them. He slowly rolls over and out of the frame, and the camera doesn’t follow him. It’s like watching a mountain crumble.

Steve Judd enters his house justified.

This was Randolph Scott’s last film and Mariette Hartley’s first; it was also Joel McCrea’s last film of any consequence. In some ways, this is a throwback to the kinds of roles Scott played in the early 1940s, when his character was often trying to decide whether to be a good guy or an unusually ethical bad guy (Western Union, Virginia City). Gil Westrum and his choices are central to the movie. The one cast member who is less than optimal is Ron Starr as Heck Longtree. He’s irritating for the first half of the movie, but he is convincing enough in making his character’s changes as the movie progresses. It’s just that he’s working here with giants (Scott and McCrea) in the principal roles and with extraordinary character actors. Hartley outclasses him, too.

The high country of the title, in the end, is not just the magnificent mountain scenery in which this film takes place. It’s also the moral ground on which the unyielding Steve Judd makes his stand. And perhaps it’s the place he’ll meet Gil Westrum in a while. Westrum’s last line, spoken to Judd, is “I’ll see you later,” which seems to bear much more meaning than it usually would. Hartley said that after the last scene with McCrea, she turned to Scott to find him with tears streaming down his face. For many, this and not The Wild Bunch is Peckinpah’s masterpiece.

Ride the High Country was shot in just 26 days; Peckinpah was not yet as self-indulgent as he would quickly become. As with Shane, the studio had no great confidence in this mid-budget western and did not promote it heavily. Screenwriter William Goldman said he spoke to an MGM executive at the time who said the film had tested strongly, but they felt the film “didn’t cost enough to be that good.” According to MGM records, the film made a loss of $160,000. Notwithstanding the lack of promotion, the film was named by Newsweek and Film Quarterly as the best film of 1962; it won first prize at the Venice Film Festival; and it received the grand prize at the Brussels Film Festival (beating Fellini’s 8 ½). Europeans loved it before American film audiences recognized what a classic this is.

A word of warning: This has been shown on Encore’s Westerns channel, but the print they’re showing is a bad one that gives no no sense of how magnificent the cinematography of Lucien Ballard is or of the clear beauty of the panoramic vistas in the mountains. Nor do they show it in widescreen, which is how it was shot and how it looks best. It’s amazing how much these problems reduce the enjoyment of watching a great movie. Look for a good DVD or Netflix instead. This is one classic that is crying out for a Criterion Collection blu-ray treatment.

Great Western Movies

An In-Depth Guide to Westerns