Ramrod (André De Toth, 1947)
In this project, one thing I have noticed is that many of the great Westerns share a common element, namely the ability to make palpable the precariousness of civilization. Situated on the edge of the wild, they find the nascent frontier community, its social structures and systems of order, as being built on the most flimsy and tentative of social contracts, seemingly nothing more than an unspoken agreement by all parties to follow the rules of civilization. And they often find that all it takes is for one party to make a single transgression for the entire system to begin to crumble. This makes the Western an ideal template for André De Toth, and not just for his talent at identifying the carnality and baseness simmering under the surface of society. André De Toth, perhaps above else, had a talent at identifying the connectivity and unseen interdependency among people. He never made what one could call an ensemble film, and one is hard-pressed to imagine him making a "web of life" film that were so in vogue the last decade; he keeps his films small, compact, tight. Nevertheless, his direction has a knack for delineating and emphasizing the interrelation between his cast of characters, the way actions cut across the social fabric of his films, even as the characters he depict, often rugged individualists, fail to grasp their significance. The primary mode of his films are a web of deceit and treachery, the image of the group in "collective trouble" (as Michael Grost puts it), with the moral failing of even one character enough to initiate the trouble until, by the end of the sordid mess, everyone emerges with a varying level of culpability for what has transpired. De Toth directed several Westerns, usually very good (
Springfield Rifle,
Last of the Comanches). But it was his two westerns,
Ramrod and
Day of the Outlaw, made a decade apart, that stand out. They do so precisely for the way they merge this element of the Western with this element of De Toth's style and vision.
Ramrod is one of the most savage of 40s Westerns, filmed with De Toth's signature stylistic curtness and unflinching eye for brutality. It's also a textbook De Toth film: one act of deceit or violence begets another until the entire group has been thrown into chaos. The web of drama is vast enough that the film can hardly contain it: the film begins unapologetically
in media res, and a viewer could be forgiven if, for the first ten minutes of the film, he feels two steps behind the drama. The various interests and actions of its characters accumulate, intertwine and conflict until - unbeknownst to them - the final cocktail of ego, ambition and animosity conspires to destroy them all.
This is apparent in the title. Ramrod: the ranch foreman, the leader of the entire outfit, a title that connotes a certain image of authoritarianism and tight discipline. It's a position of power, and this film outlines a struggle for power, a bitter fued between Veronica Lake and Preston Foster's rival ranchers for the very future of their land, and from which all the rest follows. It's a name that connotes a certain degree of brutality. It doesn't just bring up the image of the ramrod used for loading pistols, but also an image of more blunt, direct force of violence, a name consisting of two verbs which together give one the image of a violent scuffle or melee. This is a film that navigates the release of out-of-control violence, and doesn't shy away from the cruelty it entails. Furthermore, the title gives one a sense of sexuality, particularly a violent sexuality, phallic in nature. To the raging testosterone and rival masculinity already present in the premise, De Toth introduces Veronica Lake, a Western
femme fatale, bringing a spark of seduction and
l'amour fou to the proceedings, and disrupting the structures of power by reversing the roles of gender. It's no coincidence that the film opens with the complete emasculation of a character, Lake's husband and first ramrod, who is instead broken and driven out of town. He may not have been "man" enough, but the rest of the film finds the cast of character desperate to prove themselves otherwise, to prevent themselves from suffering the same emasculation... all to disastrous effect.
"We do it my way, or no way at all..."
Joel McCrea begins the film determined to stay out of a conflict that doesn't involve him... but when the Ivy Ranch tries to muscle him out the way they did Mr. Dickason, he instead draws himself into the conflict out of spite: he won't be emasculated. It's a rare moment of ego in a character that otherwise follows the classic McCrea persona. Although coming early in his cycle of Westerns, the persona is already fully formed: the McCrea here is noble, wholesome, firm in conviction, but in a courteous, even gentle manner that seperates him from the likes of a John Wayne. He's an essentially decent character. At first glance, it's a characterization that seems antithetical to the cinema of De Toth, enough to perhaps derail the film. But if we're presented with the traditional Joel McCrea, he's surrounded by an unconventional narrative, exploring the darker regions of the Western where he rarely ventured. A change in environment doesn't come lightly: a De Toth player is always affected by the web of characters surrounding him. As those who surround him turn more ruthless, the toxic atmosphere is enough to defile even the decency of the cinematic Joel McCrea.
McCrea's very virtue becomes his chief flaw. The titular ramrod, he wants to run his outfit straight-arrow, following the letter of the law and refusing to play dirty. He's keeps himself grounded to the foundations of civility and justice, but in doing so is unable to notice the ground beneath him as it crumbles away. His effort are constantly undone, by not just the rival ranchers, but even his own men... and his own employer. The way the actions of others can ripple through the "web" and have unintended consequences is no more apparent than in the turning point of the film:
Lake has Foster's Frank Ivey framed for a crime he didn't commit, an act that has the unseen effect of framing McCrea; Ivey believes McCrea was behind the frame-job and sends all his guns after him.
That the Western hero is reluctant to fight, but is later drawn into a conflict is nothing revolutionary, but in De Toth's film it has a different context. The McCrea of, let's say,
Wichita, can shoot a man down in the street, but the act has a moral function: the function of taming the West. That moral righteousness is nowhere to be found here. When, at the end of the film, having shed his own blood and that of others, McCrea proves himself as the true "ramrod", it's marked not by triumph but futility. His righteous fury has been built on lies and deceit. If his character grows at all, he grows more cynical and world-weary. If he has a happy ending, it's only in removing himself from the "web" that constitutes the film.
"And being a woman, I won’t have to use guns..."
Lording over the web is Veronica Lake's Connie Dickason (not so subtle), whose characterization embodies the frustration that both distinguishes and limits the film. She's an early entry in the line of powerful and assertive women that would make up the proto-feminist Westerns to come: Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge in
Johnny Guitar, Barbara Stanwyck in
The Furies and
Forty Guns. But it would be incorrect to properly call her character proto-feminist: she is also characteristic of the
femme fatale, manipulative, vindictive, sexual. Yet, if the fear of emasculation hangs heavy over the film, De Toth's camera seemingly de-emphasizes Lake as
the castrating agent. Lake is both and neither the deceitful man-eater nor the wronged woman. She oscillates between moments of ruthless cunning and genuine contrition, so much so that the character in between often seems missing. It is an incoherent and even unsuccessful portrayal, but one which is fascinating in that is shows De Toth straining against the codes of generic convention. For the first third of the film we are completely sympathetic to the character; by mid-point, we find her venomous. Yet, everything which she inevitable does is laid out in that first third. If we're sympathetic with her, it's in her determination to break free of the confines of the patriarchy, both figuratively and literally... the very transgression that makes the femme fatale so menacing. The film is situated so that we cheer the intention, and boo the action. We despise her sexual manipulation of the male characters, even as she states the intent from the very beginning: when she tells her father she "won't need to use guns" , that as a woman, she'll have things much easier, we have no doubt which weapon she has at her disposal.
The film may posit the dark-haired, domestic Arleen Whelan as the feminine alternative to Lake, but De Toth gives even the "good" woman surprising touches of independence: 1) Whelan is not just a housewife-in-waiting, but a private business owner of the frontier, a dressmaker who supports herself and lives alone, 2) the film, without judgement, implies she's carrying on a casual, open affair with Don DeFore's character, with no expectation of marriage ("
She's know I'm a drifter"). What we get from Lake is not a monstrous woman, but almost a child-like figure, toying with destructive forces that she can't control (note the way De Toth's camera emphasizes her small stature, and her pouty youthfulness). This is perhaps sexist in its own right, showing a girl shouldn't play in a man's world. Yet, if the character remains schizophrenic, existing only as a sexually active or hysterically passive being, it's that the male social environment of the film won't respond to any other mode of femininity. It's ingrained in her very position of power: she may be the "leader", but her power is entirely dependent on male agency. De Toth could damn the character, but he chooses not to:
At the end of the film, she is not killed, nor jailed, or ruined. If her transgressions, under the auspices of the Code, are punished, it is not in any conventional manner. She in fact gets what she wants: the triumph of the Circle 66 and control of the land. Her punishment, however, is strictly emotional and spiritual: McCrea refuses to forgive her and walks away. This is only justice if we accept that she is not a monster or sociopath, but that her sorrow and remorse is genuine.
At one point, a character tells Connie that she is "like a horse or dog, or a man or any other woman... once I understand you, you're alright." The problem is that no character understands her, perhaps not even De Toth. But he at least acknowledges that deficiency. If the character is ultimately incoherent, it makes one thing clear: De Toth is unable to accept the conception of the "femme fatale", unable to accept the reactionary sexism that explains it. It would be one year before he truly took on the archetype, in
Pitfall's qualification and rejection of the
femme fatale, but already he is straining against it. If given the a script with a "bad girl", he can't accept the characterization at face; he has to know what makes her bad, what makes, in his own words, "
a character a human being".
"I feel the way you must feel about killing Ed Burma."
"You don't know. You're just guessing."
No one escapes the web. Whether one tries to stay neutral, tries to capitulate, or tries to restore it to civility, it consumes everything in its path. Just as McCrea goes from reluctant bystander to willing participant in the range war to, by the end, standing opposed to both sides of the conflict, so does it grow to effect everyone. Charles Ruggles' Ben Dickason tries to stay out of the conflict, despite being as large a landowner as the two rival parties. Estranged from his daughter, and acquiescing to Frank Ivey, who he treats like a son, his neutrality leaves him impotent, standing back to watch as his family destroys itself. On the other side, you have Donald Crips as an aging sheriff. His character reveals himself to be of true grit, possessing the sort of moral backbone that McCrea is left only to aspire to. But like McCrea, his good intentions are spoiled by the machinations around him. He is deceived into using his moral authority for an immoral purpose, and pays for it. Of these "bystanders", none is more important than Don DeFore's Bill Schell.
A character actor known for playing an affable everyman, here he's cast against type as an ammoral, trigger-happy hired-gun. It's a characterization that works precisely because he plays the role with same grinning affability and jovial high-spirits that made him a sitcom staple later in life. There's something of poor man's Dan Duryea about him, but inverted: if Duryea carried a sense of sleaze with him even when he played good guys, so does DeFore seem inherently decent even as he's convincingly cruel. He enters the film with the sort of good-natured charms that makes you think this will be another of his long line of likeable best-friend/neighbor roles. But as the film rolls on, he shows a real mean streak, culminating in the cold-blooded murder of man he reluctantly drags into a gunfight. Like McCrea's Dave Nash, he's a drifter who's dragged into the conflict. Despite being best friends, the film almost sets Schell up as Nash's double: Nash wears white, Schell wears black; Nash is chilvarous, Schell is womanizing; Nash follows the letter of the law, Schell is more than eager to use violence. If Nash can convince himself that he's doing what he's doing for Connie's sake, Schell isn't as high-minded: he just likes watching Ivey and his men squirm. When, halfway through the film, Schell starts undermining Nash and shacking up with Connie, you think he's heading to a final showdown with Nash as much as Ivey and Connie are.
But then something interesting happens. From the comic relief to a potentially ruthless heel, DeFore ends up something else entirely: the heart and soul of the film. If Nash is ignorant of what's going on around him, and if Connie is deluded into thinking she can control the course of events, only Bill Schell seems to acknowledge the web that's threatening to destroy them all. Only he's able to ascertain and accept his own culpability in it, and in his own small way, to attempt to make amends for it. And if he knows it's too late to stop the chain of events, he at least tries to soften the final violent blow. His small moment of decency is enough that even De Toth gives it special privilege. Near the final minutes of the film, where the logic of conventional narrative and the star system dictates that De Toth should keep his focus on his stars, he instead leaves them behind completely, and gives a near ten-minutes stretch to focus on Don DeFore. Not only that, but he puts all his talent to work: DeFore's stand-off in the mountain, a 4+ minute nearly wordless sequence, is perhaps the stylistic high-point of the film. Compare it with the blunt, sudden climax given to Nash, it's obvious that De Toth is acknowledging Schell's sacrifice and its importance to his narrative. It is De Toth's style, an odd synthesis of misanthropy and humanism; of acknowledging how easily the worst of people can come out, all while acknowledging that human decency and morality doesn't disappear because of it. It's an acknowledgement of the messy range of human nature. Among the oppressive determinism that piledrives through the film, only DeFore acknowledges the "web" and takes a moral stand against it. In one of De Toth's darkest films, he provides an ounce of human compassion and courage. One can say that it is quintessentially De Toth-ian that this humanity comes in the form of a sadistic bandit.
But ultimately, as a De Toth film, this is one where his misanthropy reigns over his humanism. The web is woven too complexly to break, and the out-of-control violence only ends once its exhausted itself, with no one left to die. In fact, it was probably not until his final blistering masterpiece,
Play Dirty, that he would exercise his misanthropic muscle again so completely (and how!). It is this oppressive and demoralizing atmosphere that both distinguishes
Ramrod as an exceptional Western, and also limits it ultimate appeal.
Ramrod is ultimately a tragedy written with cigarette burns, bruised fists and sickening shotgun blasts. Over a decade later, De Toth would return with another Western about a frontier community spinning out of control. If that film is even more savage and oppressive that this one, it ultimately finds De Toth expanding its moral dimension ten-fold as well. Human courage and human depravity coexist in De Toth's cinema. By the end of this one, we're left unsure which prevailed.
