Tribe wrote:I'd like to catch the revisionist American westerns from the 60s and 70s....any additional suggestions?
The Hired Hand, again.
Catching up with other comments, I was also underwhelmed by
Track of the Cat. Interesting idea, but too stagey and lethargic in execution for what should have been really cinematic. (And I'd say the
Ordet comparison doesn't do the film any favours.)
I watched
Canyon Passage on the weekend, and liked it. It might make my list, but I didn't absolutely love it, so I'd be interested to hear opinions from those who count it among the greatest westerns ever made (and I know you're out there).
It's a wonderful example of just how much plot could be crammed into ninety minutes by a skilled director back in the day: the thing is positively seething with subplots and well-sketched secondary characters. But even in this respect it doesn't match gold standard
Winchester '73, in which a new (great) film seems to be starting every 15 minutes, and at some point condensation turns into awkward truncation, with a number of important characters getting executed off-screen as the film breathlessly sprints to a close. Most disturbing, and not necessarily in a bad way, is the way that Andy Devine, whose role has amounted to little more than a series of fat jokes up till then, gets slaughtered without so much as a glimpse of a plump onscreen corpse. It's an effective, shocking gearshift, but the film doesn't have enough space to let that moment explore its own dramatic tensions. More problematic is Brian Donlevy, basically the second lead, having his character's entire third act casually reported by a spear-carrier.
In the plus column is a reliably complex Dana Andrews, whose hero makes any number of bad decisions which encourage disaster without becoming bad himself; the film's detailed portrait of the social dynamics of a frontier community; and the apocalyptic ending. Nice Technicolor photography too.
I also re-rewatched
Rio Bravo, because my film-watching partner wanted to see "a really good western". This film runs about an hour longer than
Canyon Passage, with maybe a third of the plot, but that's precisely its secret. Hawks loves his characters and any excuse for lingering longer with them is alright by him (and me). The musical interlude late in the film would be a cardinal sin for any modern 'action' film, but for me it's Hawks' little nod to those among the audience who understand what he's doing. And he can get away with forestalling the climax so blatantly because he's banked enough audience investment in the characters along the way and because he's so good at staging the plot-advancing set-pieces that we know he'll deliver with the final big bang.
All of those set-pieces are spatially sophisticated. When they trail Ward Bond's killer to the saloon, Hawks pays careful attention to the four directions Dude and Chance have to cover - front, back, left, right - and our attention (and that of the characters) is directed to each in turn. Then, once we're carefully set up in the scene, we realize that the crucial direction lies in the third dimension: up. Once Dude has understood and mastered that additional dimension, the scene is concluded with two downward trajectories: the obvious one, and the concluding grace note of the thug having to go down and rummage around in the spitoon for his silver dollar.
The final shootout is also very carefully composed in space, with the placement of the four heroes crucial to the outcome. It's also a great example (as are the film's set-pieces when taken as a whole) of the film's theme of teamwork, with each of the participants contributing something essential and individual to the defeat of the enemy. Time and again, Hawks offers us the tremendously satisfying and unfortunately rare spectacle of placing his characters in a coherent, well-defined and knotty trap and then allowing us to watch them think their way out of it (e.g. Colorado enlisting Feathers' assistance for his impromptu rescue of Chance). And here's where the character stuff pays off as well, as in many cases the solution to the problem hinges on knowing how these characters operate (as when Dude urges Chance to give up, knowing how Stumpy will deal with the situation - I love it that the second prong of Dude's strategy, the ace up his sleeve -saying "Stumpy's all alone" when Colorado is there as well - doesn't even have to come into play).
Because the film is so discursive and relaxed, it breathes with life even while delivering on all the expected plot and entertainment fronts. It's a great film which it's always a pleasure, never a duty, to return to, and one which shows just how much Jacques Rivette learnt from Hawks.
, but I thought Track of the Cat was just too stylized, and even precious for my taste
