Cinema Talk

Sam Peckinpah’s second film is rightfully considered a landmark in the western genre, but that doesn’t exactly make it the masterpiece that many hype it up to be. More than anything, it is just a simple, almost mindless joy to watch. It’s a harmless type of fun to see Randolph Scott in his very last performance as well as to see Warren Oates in one of his earliest. It’s nice to see the end of one generation of western aesthetics collide with a new generation. This is, after all, technically the last “classic western” and everything that has come after has been labeled  revisionist, or modern, or something to that effect.

My personal enjoyment of this film does come with some context. It helps a great deal to not only be familiar with the film’s cast, but to also be a big fan of it. I can definitely get behind any film that puts Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott together, let alone anything that features Warren Oates. Had these roles been filled by actors I had no interest in, the film itself will probably be fairly unremarkable. However, these people are in these roles and each and every one of them is a joy to watch. At first, it took awhile to get use to seeing Scott play a character that was so self-conscious of his age. In all of the Boetticher films I’ve seen with him, he seemed to hide that a great deal, appearing experienced, but not enough to be an old fogey. Here, though, he and McCrea are made out to be exactly that.

Eventually, though, it becomes quite easy to get use to as it turns out, Scott is essentially playing the exact same character he’s ever played except now he’s completely tired of his career. Seem familiar? Well, I suppose that definitely works in this film favor. There isn’t a particularly strong feeling that Scott himself is going to throw in the towel after this performance, but there are a few subtle hints that help give his character some complexity. Joel McCrea has a few similar moments, but the third “hero” (if you can call him that) seems to be put in simply to give a young guy for the oldies to shake their heads and roll their eyes at.

Other than that, though, Peckinpah is very much focused on pushing the plot forward. Thankfully, though, there are a few legitmately amazing moments. A good example would be pretty much every sequence with Warren Oates, but the wedding sequence seems to take the cake, at least in my opinion. It definitely has a great sense of kinetic energy that seems to welcome in the new generation of western filmmakers, while still paying its due to the originals. I suppose that’s what this is, overall. Peckinpah obviously wasn’t as concious of what a landmark his film would be when he made, but the viewer does, and personally, I think that helps the film’s case.

This is, at least to my knowledge, John Ford’s first full-fledged masterpiece. There are some charming touches in the earlier films of his that I’ve seen, but nothing as cohesively mindblowing as what is going on right here. It definitely helps a great deal that so many of my favorite Japanese directors seem to have been influenced a great deal by this. Of course, Ford’s influence on the Japanese is something worthy of a group of essays but it is still so fascinating (to me, at least) to see it unfold in the actual films. There’s so much to soak up here from the impressionistic photography (reminiscent of Murnau) to the straight-forward but extremely effective structure.

The film begins with the death of a commanding officer leading a British patrol unit through the Mesopotomian desert. Only he knew the way to the patrol’s destination, thus his death leaves the left of the unit lost. The group struggles to make it through the day, but they eventually stumble upon an oasis. Their joy is short-lived, however, as they find that desert’s dunes are covered with snipers in every possible direction. That doesn’t stop them from trying to escape from their oasis. Tensions come to the surface and soon, many of the survivors are driven to the brink of insanity, which leads to their demise.

I guess praising a film’s structure doesn’t make it out to be terribly exciting, but there’s definitely something special going on here. Personally, I’ve always felt a greater connection with the aesthetic and emotional parts of cinema, but there is something genuinely suspenseful about the apocalyptic nature of the narrative. Of course, Ford never imposes this idea on the audience, which only adds to how truly terrifying this film is. I suppose it kind of helps that Boris Karloff gets plenty of screentime, but again, this is a completely different type of horror. I still feel I’m short-selling the film a bit. One of Ford’s scariest touches comes in the sound design. The sound of the invisible snipers picking off the protagonist is so quick and quiet, but almost immediately alarming.

I say this a bit too often probably, but it really is the atmosphere that carries most of this film. The beautiful desert landscapes look unforgiving but beautiful and when it’s set up against the film’s aging stock, a whole new dimension of poetry is added. It’s not entirely unlike watching some of the archival footage in My Winnipeg for a whole feature length film. Sure, it might not be fair to give a film credit for something it has physically inherited over time, but it’s age seems to play such a crucial part in its tone. It probably helps that the cinematography here is just as lovely as in any of Ford’s more acclaimed efforts from the 1930s.

No doubt about it – one of the best westerns ever and as a result, one of the best movies ever too. It really isolates everything that I love about the best works of Mann, Ford, and Boetticher, but also manages to eliminate all the minor problems I have with those films. Wellman’s The Ox-Bow Incident is just as strong, though that film itself becomes overshadowed by the story’s social conscious. Here, there is nothing remotely socially-driven, just a bare bones and beautifully photographed western. I’ve watched a lot of westerns lately, some good, others not so good, so it was smart on my part to see a film that reminded me why I fell in love with the genre in the first place.

If there is one small problem with this film, I’d say it is Gregory Peck as he is probably the only element that come close to being an exaggerated hero. No doubt, Henry Fonda would have been a better fit for such a role as his passiveness is much more realistic than Peck’s hamminess. Still, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Peck’s performance is particularly bad. It’s just not one of the brighter parts of the picture. In his defense, his slightly theatrical performance may just be a decision made by my subconscious portrayal of Peck based on his other performances. Really, he’s just about as great as Randolph Scott in Comanche Station or Kirk Douglas in Along the Great Divide.

The real star here, outside of the landscapes and pitch-perfect atmosphere, is definitely Richard Widmark who seriously makes every remotely “evil” character he’s ever portrayed a lot more charming. It’s this odd but extremely intriguing dynamic: he’s a sleazeball, but almost in a classy way. Sure, he’s doing the same character here as the one in Pickup on South Street but he’s has that persona down perfectly. He is, in all honesty, probably more “dramatic” of an actor than Peck, but both have charming tendencies that aren’t describable. Needless to say, they work really well together, despite the fact that they don’t even share that many “one-on-one” scenes, which is another element that reflects just how “contemplative” the film’s tone is.

As I mentioned before, the most important aspect is the surroundings of these characters. It’s not simply beautiful landscapes. That’s something one can find in pretty much any western ever, but it is how Wellman composes his images with this perfect mood. A big contributor to this mood is the music, or lack thereof. One of the most immediate and striking aspects of the film is the absence of transition music. Rather than anticipating the mood of the next scene, Wellman seems to have his characters passively float from one sequence to another. I know I equate a lot of westerns to Antonioni-esque action films, but it definitely applies here. In fact, I’d say this is just as legitimately arty as L’Eclisse, which is a mighty big claim for an American studio film from 1949. It’s a film that is cold and bitter at the surface, not unlike its characters, but is a warm and expressive cinematic achievement underneath.

Now this, on the other hand, was really fantastic. I expect a film this great out of Tourneur at this point, but I would never expect one of his films to be great in the same manner as this one is. For one, it has beautiful, albeit very early, technicolor compositions. Undoubtedly a gimmick on paper, but plays in so well with the atmosphere. The character dynamics are some of the most refreshing I’ve seen in a western in a long time. Ultimately, the film doesn’t quite live up to the amount of emotional depth implied at the very start, but it definitely comes close and it’s an entertaining ride along the way.

Dana Andrews plays an experienced drifter, Logan Stuart, who gets caught up in a love triangle with his best friend and said friend’s wife-to-be. This friend is George Camarose, a long-time gambler, who has (in contrast to Logan) stayed in Oregon for a long time. Stuart is transporting George’s long time lover, Lucy Overmine to Oregon for something of a reunion. Contrary to so many of the westerns I’ve seen as of late, the main romantic interest here does not lie between a passive man and resistant women, but rather between two people who already know each other to begin with. In addition, the women here is neither naive or entirely committed to her original romantic interest. From the very beginning, there is a sense that Lucy’s interest in George is beginning to die down.

It is at this point that her interest in Logan is on the rise, but any plans the two have for running off together are put on hold. We are introduced to Logan’s long-time friend Ben Dance, played by Andy Devine in one of his more likable performances. Caroline Marsh, another romantic interest of Logan’s, lives in the Dance household. Needless to say, things are pretty complicated at this point, but what is so impressive about the film is that these complications all come from the characters’ relationships rather than any overarching plot. It is only towards the end that the half-assed story involving angry Indians attacking villages come to the surface.

Instead, there’s plenty of great relationship problems and characters who seem to serve no purpose. The latter element may seem like an insult, but the addition of several “minor” characters adds to the film’s very free and loose feeling, as well as that perfect Americana sensibility that Tourneur seems to comprehend better than anyone else. A perfect example is Ward Bond’s character, who can, by default, be labeled as a villian. Of course, it probably helps that Bond himself is one of the most fascinating actors of all time, but his limited screen time seems to imply that Tourneur perfectly mapped out this world from the inside out.

The technicolor cinematography is another great addition, even if it takes some time to get use to it. Tourneur is definitely not the sort of director I would think of as being particularly successful in color, if only due to the defiance of the black-and-white in Out of the Past. Here, though, there is a similar beauty that is perfectly translated into the realm of technicolor. This is much more than just a colorized version of Tourneur’s usual aesthetic. There’s some touches (such as the seemingly random glows of red) that don’t work well with the inherent saturation of early technicolor stock, but even then I feel like condoning Tourneur just for trying something different.

A decent, little film right here, but considering the potential implied by being a western directed by the great King Vidor, it is ridiculously disappointing. None of the performances are all great, the visuals are impressive but nothing Vidor hasn’t topped already, and the story is pretty conventional. Perhaps this isn’t all that surprising since it came before John Ford basically revived the dying genre with Stagecoach but that can’t really excuse one of Vidor’s least exciting efforts. Maybe he’s just not all that great with westerns, because this and Duel in the Sun are by far my least favorite films of his. Both seem sort of like a wasted opportunity.

While Vidor’s best films like The Champ and The Wedding Night give off an unparalleled (at least by the standards of the 1930s) type of naturalism, this film is almost relentlessly fake. Had I seen this film first, I certainly wouldn’t have labeled Vidor as Hiroshi Shimizu’s American counterpart. It really is such a shame, too, that most of the film was shot on a bluescreen as Vidor’s visual elegance matched with some natural landscapes could yield something truly amazing. In that case, it is almost a bit unfair to call the film a disappointment. I was expecting it to pretty much blow my mind, but I think Vidor would even admit that he made this film only at the request of the studio. There’s definitely no way he put as much effort in here as he did in some of his better films.

The performances aren’t as crushing of a blow as the absence of Vidor’s usual poetic touches are, but they’re still not very good. In all honesty, it’s only Fred McMurray’s performances that can really critically sway someone from one side to another, but he does nothing really to help. I suppose it can be argued that his wooden and hammy performance has an almost subversive sort of passiveness to it,  but he’s no Randolph Scott, Henry Fonda, or Robert Mitchum. Had any of those performers been in that role, they probably would have saved the film. As it is, this is only a curiosity in Vidor’s filmography.