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Tribe wrote:I want to revisit One-Eyed Jacks...what's the best looking release out there? I also have in my Amazon cart: Soldier Blue, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, Forty Guns and The Culpepper Cattle Co....any suggestions for one or two more to add? I'm pretty much on top of the "major" spaghetti westerns and I've seen and am still familiar with the Hollywood classics (Red River, Rio Bravo, The Searchers, Ox-Bow Incident, High Noon, etc.), as well as the more cultish westerns such as Johnny Guitar and Rancho Notorious....I'd like to catch the revisionist American westerns from the 60s and 70s....any additional suggestions?

EDIT: Any good things about Warlock? I loved the novel on which it was based.

I don't think 'Will Penny' has been mentioned yet; I suppose you could call that 'revisionist', to some extent.
'Hombre', with Richard Boone acting up a storm, and he's also in Don Siegel's elegiac 'The Shootist', and 'Rio Conchos', with Edmond O'Brien, all contenders, to varying degrees

I guess Don't Touch the White Woman combines a little bit of everything we've talked about so far from the sense of comedy to how the setting is not typically western. The script plays so straight this could easily be a Wellman film. The only thing that makes this film so bizarre, and it is a true trip, is the production design which at first seems random in this peculiarity and a couple of lines of dialougue. To go back to something Zedz said I think even if a car chase were to have occured in the film it would still better fit the classic stories than a new west setting. But this peculiarity adds just the right sort of to make the whole film work when it easily could've felt slight. We've seen all of these characters before (well maybe not Piccoli's media queen Buffalo Bill who alone is reason to search out this film), but they're twisted with just the right level of perversity. They're familiar, but also fresh allowing Ferreri to alter the story however he sees fit. There's almost a normalizing of these oddities that only goes to make them more alien. 'This is exactly how the west played out for the film's maker so why do you question it'. Even this doesn't go the way it leads as at first it seems to be playing the Three Resurrected Drunkards school of satire but it doesn't become as deliberate a critique of the Nixon administration. Ultimately those things become background gags for a more deliberate parody of pop figures and myth making. The setting does place pressure on the American way of doing these things, but the way he does this satire could have just as easily come from the French Revolution or ancient Rome. I guess the most telling moment is when the Indians decide to join together against the whites the camera doesn't focus on the big speech which again is written the same way it would in Ford. No, instead we get an elderly woman playing some music as children watch.

Speaking of Wellman, I decided on Yellow Sky as my spotlight title, and obviously if you haven't treated yourself to the film, take the opportunity. The opening twenty minutes or so constitute what is handily not only my favorite opening to any western but one of my favorite beginnings of any film, period-- a long, tortuous journey through salt flats as the spectre of thirst wreaks havoc on hero and villain alike. Not that what follows isn't choice, but it's the sweltering and dry aridity of the first act that sticks with me.

'Yellow Sky' a shoo-in for me; I probably prefer it to his more acclaimed 'The Ox-Bow Incident', which is just a tad too 'worthy' for me.

I found it forgettable. Quite literally. More than I once I've seen it on a dvd rental shelf and thought, "I should finally see this"... only to realize a few moments later that I've already had. And mind you, I first saw it quite recently at that. Might give it another shot. Track of the Cat is the Wellman for me, however.

Cold Bishop wrote:I found it forgettable. Quite literally. More than I once I've seen it on a dvd rental shelf and thought, "I should finally see this"... only to realize a few moments later that I've already had. And mind you, I first saw it quite recently at that. Might give it another shot. Track of the Cat is the Wellman for me, however.

I'm not saying this to get back at you, Bish,.- honestly! , but I thought Track of the Cat was just too stylized, and even precious for my taste

Yeah, Track of the Cat is utter dullsville (I swear I'm not biased against Wright/Mitchum pair-ups!). In the immortal words of zedz, such is the mystery of taste

To quote Jonathan Rosenbaum: It's the American Ordet! Surely not what you think of when you think Westerns, but great-but-atypical Westerns will be ranking highly here (Well hello, Johnny Guitar)

John Sturges' Hour of the Gun is a terrific revisionist western, beginning with a tense but deliberately bathetic re-staging of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and following it up with a lot of seriously un-heroic courtroom scenes and a protracted revenge plot. I have a very soft spot for James Garner, and seeing his Earp teamed up with Jason Robards as the ailing Doc Holliday, and both of them pitted against Robert Ryan as Clanton, is a treat. Great shoot-out at the end as well.

Cold Bishop wrote: but great-but-atypical Westerns will be ranking highly here (Well hello, Johnny Guitar)

Phew!
At least we can agree on something!

Sloper wrote:John Sturges' Hour of the Gun is a terrific revisionist western, beginning with a tense but deliberately bathetic re-staging of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and following it up with a lot of seriously un-heroic courtroom scenes and a protracted revenge plot. I have a very soft spot for James Garner, and seeing his Earp teamed up with Jason Robards as the ailing Doc Holliday, and both of them pitted against Robert Ryan as Clanton, is a treat. Great shoot-out at the end as well.

The Magnificent Seven' was one of the first Westerns I saw as a little lad, at my local singleplex, and I remember afterwards we all wanted to be James Coburn.
His entrance scene is about the only scene in that film that even deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the original.
I thought Hour of the Gun rather determinedly dour, and I also have a very soft spot for James Garner; I don't think any Sturges Western deserves the epithet 'great', but 'The Law and Jake Wade' might be his best, and closest to being a contender.

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.

zedz wrote:

Tribe wrote:I'd like to catch the revisionist American westerns from the 60s and 70s....any additional suggestions?

The Hired Hand, again.

Those who can get to London for January 19th should check this out.

I haven't seen 'Canyon Passage' but have been underwhelmed by the two Tourneur Westerns I've seen to date, - 'Wichita', and 'Way of a Gaucho'

My responses to Tourneur's Westerns have been mostly lukewarm - including those Yojimbo and zedz mention - though I remember Great Day in the Morning being something of a standout, even if it's been years since I last watched it.

zedz wrote: 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.

Is that what fans see in that movie? The characterization has always bugged me with Rio Bravo. It just feels like stale sitcom stock. I sadly must admit I haven't even been able to suffer through to the ending because the broadness of the characters is just aggravating. The film really needed to be pruned of the plots with the Mexican and Wayne's love interest. Though I got my wish via Carpenter so I'm glad somewhat.

'Rio Bravo' is the better film, but 'Red River' is the better Western
And I'm still awaiting dom's defence of that feelgood/feelbad ending!

Horizons West (Boetticher, 1952) - I'm no Boetticher expert, but for me this just isn't in the same league as the later Scott films. Echoing earlier comments on the similarity of the Gangster film to the Western, this is essentially Public Enemy / Roaring Twenties in post Civil War Texas - complete with good brother and good girl as counterpoints to the two main characters.

The problem is that the film sets up the different oppositions as potential subplots, but then largely ignores this aspect. An early ambiguity as to whether Robert Ryan really is a horse rustler (I was half expecting a twist revealing someone else to be the villain) soon peters out - and anyway, I suspect it would work better if there was a fully developed parallel narrative strand concentrating on Rock Hudson. It just falls between two stools - not quite character study of the gangster / robber baron, not quite parallel fall and rise of opposites. It's not without it's interest, but seems ultimatey just average - nothing to get terribly excited about either way. Now if someone who is more au fait with Boetticher would like to defend this, I'll be looking forward to read it - until then it gets ticked off as a minor film whilst I plan to revisit the Scott films...

I guess pre-Scott Boetticher is a different beast entirely. My taster was The Man from the Alamo, which was okay but nothing special. Yet another caution against simplistic auteurism, I guess.

The Lawless Breed

Decent Raoul Walsh version of the John Wesley Hardin story, but a lot of the dramaturgy was too boilerplate for my taste, and Rock Hudson is such a pallid performer that the films he’s in, or the actors he’s working with, need to be incredibly strong to compensate.

Nevertheless, there’s plenty to recommend in the film. John McIntire plays a double role, as Hardin’s biological and spiritual fathers, which is an interesting bit of stunt casting, and there’s a fabulously staged showdown in a dust storm about halfway in, one of the few scenes where Walsh gets to use his signature trick of staging climactic scenes in extreme depth.

One of the central irritations of the film for me was the degree to which the film indulged the central character, exonerating him of responsibility for his many killings on the grounds of ‘self defence’, even though it was generally his arrogance that landed him (and everyone around him) in the crap in the first place. It was so pronounced, in fact, that I was half-hoping it was deliberate, a deft way of skewering Hudson on his own glib screen presence, but on the other hand, so many Hollywood (and other) films use their flexible morality to indulge the bad behaviour of their protagonists – just so long as it’s photogenic. Thus the film earns bonus points at the last minute for realizing, and for having Hardin realize, that he was, in fact, a bit of a shit all along, but then loses half of them again because Hudson doesn’t have the chops to make anything much of such a complex moment.

Also watched The Texas Rangers from the same set, one of those elusive pre-Stagecoach talkie westerns. Well, sometimes elusive can be a good thing. It’s not a bad film, and it’s got a nice turn from Jack Oakie and a really good one from Lloyd Nolan, both outperforming nominal lead Fred McMurray, but most of the film is just going through the motions that the great westerns that followed took as their starting point and elaborated upon, or subverted, or ignored.

zedz wrote:Also watched The Texas Rangers from the same set, one of those elusive pre-Stagecoach talkie westerns. Well, sometimes elusive can be a good thing. It’s not a bad film, and it’s got a nice turn from Jack Oakie and a really good one from Lloyd Nolan, both outperforming nominal lead Fred McMurray, but most of the film is just going through the motions that the great westerns that followed took as their starting point and elaborated upon, or subverted, or ignored.

I was waiting for the punchline!
I don't think I've seen any Fred McMurray Westerns.
As much a 'fish out of water' as Cagney or Bogart, I suspect (or even blue-eyed Jay C.Flippen, where he played Red Indians) :-s

Re-watched The Ox-Bow Incident and while I'm not sure if it will actually make my list I do find it one of the most interesting Westerns of it's time. It's basically a Fox social picture with the twist of the old west. In a certain way it's very typical of those films(world's most polite lynch mob), but there are so many foreign elements to that the rug was taken right from under me. It definitely feels like a Fox picture, but it manages to ink in some of that poison that the Warner social pictures had(this is the appropriate time for me to plug Caged which is the best social picture ever made and one of the best Hollywood pictures). Wellman directs everything to shroud us in doubt. while in typical fox fashion it's obvious from the time the plot rears it's head that these men are innocent. In fact the story sets them up, when we finally get to the falsely accused, as mostly regular folk. Then we get to know them and while this doesn't go as far as Lang's Fury, for example, the script gives us enough information about them to prevent the characterization from being the typical Fox saints who have the world against them. In fact the lead accused has a moment where his trust is broken and his response is so shocking, intentionally considering the characterization of an other character, that I nearly fell out of my seat. Even our true lead, Henry Fonda, winds up being more useless than Jack Burton and a bit of a jackass. Hell the movie seems so disinterested in him that the camera avoids him when it can. This story doesn't need a Fonda and even when there is a Fonda to be found he's totally useless.
The moment that shows Wellman's true talent though is the last ten minutes. I won't go about revealing what happens, but despite the typical way a Fox picture will end this story, with the accused living, Wellman develops an extraordinary tension around that event via a catch-22. If they live he fakes out on his premise and renders the whole story moot with it's simplistic solution suggesting a much kinder world, but these characters are so interesting(not really good, but I want to see their further adventures) that I kind of wanted the film to fail in it's social goals. After the solution to the plot the film drops all pretenses of being a Fox picture and just turns into a cobra on all of these characters. If just on that subtlety and awareness this makes The Ox-Bow Incident the best Fox social picture(though I'll always have the over the top fun of The Snake Pit in first place).
It's not just odd as a social picture though. It's really not much of a western or rather it's not of the Stagecoach or The Westerner school of westerns. This really could have taken place in any time in America with no changes to the script. If the outfits weren't a constant reminder of place I'm not sure if anyone would call it that. What keeps it in the genre for me though is the sort of thing that separates the more action oriented samurai films from the ones that typically get lodged in with jidai-geki. This may be a more talkative and 'thoughtful' picture, but it also has the strips of forward movement and community in peril(this time from itself) that define the genre.

Big Money Rustlas passes the Potter Stewart test.

So, Once Upon a Time in America certainly didn't light a fire under me to check out more Sergio Leone, but I did begrudgingly indulge in the "Man Without a Name" trilogy recently and was on the whole pleased with the experience. Of the three, only For a Few Dollars More has a shot at making my list. That one's quite clever and narratively tight, with a good sense of play and structure. Also, the film has some fun with expectations surrounding Van Cleef's character and I was pleased with where it took him. That sense of fun in the structure there gets blown to hell in the tedious the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly though-- I don't understand why this is the go-to favorite for the trilogy, other than there's a lot of film in the film? The movie is essentially Eli Wallach's anyways, and I enjoyed his performance for a spell but a little bit would have gone a long way, and it turns out a long way goes short way. What? Whatever. There are sequences that work (I liked Wallach and Eastwood hanging back while the Civil War erupts in front of them), but too many that just don't or simply grate. The premise which starts the film, that of a bounty hunter and criminal working in cahoots, should have been the movie, not what follows. A Fistful of Dollars falls somewhere between the two, and was an entertaining enough romp, but didn't leave much lasting effect.

I also caught up with the Appaloosa, which overcomes the early obstacle of Marlon Brando's horrendous stage beard to be a decent enough western. John Saxon is amusing as the movie serial villain and there's some fun business with an arm wrestling match involving scorpions on strings, but the artsy cinematography sometimes feels at odds with the pulpy material despite its obvious beauty.

domino harvey wrote:So, Once Upon a Time in America certainly didn't light a fire under me to check out more Sergio Leone, but I did begrudgingly indulge in the "Man Without a Name" trilogy recently and was on the whole pleased with the experience. Of the three, only For a Few Dollars More has a shot at making my list. That one's quite clever and narratively tight, with a good sense of play and structure. Also, the film has some fun with expectations surrounding Van Cleef's character and I was pleased with where it took him. That sense of fun in the structure there gets blown to hell in the tedious the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly though-- I don't understand why this is the go-to favorite for the trilogy, other than there's a lot of film in the film? The movie is essentially Eli Wallach's anyways, and I enjoyed his performance for a spell but a little bit would have gone a long way, and it turns out a long way goes short way. What? Whatever. There are sequences that work (I liked Wallach and Eastwood hanging back while the Civil War erupts in front of them), but too many that just don't or simply grate. The premise which starts the film, that of a bounty hunter and criminal working in cahoots, should have been the movie, not what follows. A Fistful of Dollars falls somewhere between the two, and was an entertaining enough romp, but didn't leave much lasting effect.

I also caught up with the Appaloosa, which overcomes the early obstacle of Marlon Brando's horrendous stage beard to be a decent enough western. John Saxon is amusing as the movie serial villain and there's some fun business with an arm wrestling match involving scorpions on strings, but the artsy cinematography sometimes feels at odds with the pulpy material despite its obvious beauty.

For a Few Dollars More has been the one I've watched because I enjoy watching it most; the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly can be a difficult watch, and possibly could do with 10-20 minutes being lopped off it but its possibly the greater achievement. But I prefer both to 'Once...'
Incidentally I just watched Jim Jarmusch' 'The Limits of Control' and thought I noticed some of the buildings from 'For A Few Dollars More'; I must re-check them both and freeze frame!

I've never seen the Appaloosa, but I have it as part of a Brando box-set so I must check it out.

What? TGtB&tU, not fun? It's one of the most sheer entertaining westerns this side of Howard Hawks. Although OUATIW is clearly better.

And I haven't seen Appaloosa since I was a wee one, but you better bet that arm wrestling match has stuck with me over all these years. Perhaps need to catch up with it (although I had a similar fond memory of the titular armored truck in The War Wagon, but found the movie excruciating when I later caught up with it).