1972: Junior Bonner

Junior Bonner (1972, Peckinpah) 6/10

"I'm working on my first million. You're still working on 8 seconds" (Curley Bonner)

Prescott, Arizona is dying. Once enveloped in its classic western traditions and iconography, this small rural outpost is slipping into modernity. Railroad stations once linking the town to the outside world are passed over by freight traffic; the desert ranches that once filled the outskirts of town are now torn down to make way for the development of mobile homes. Stripped of its identity, the community and its vitality are vanishing into the sands of time.

It is the Fourth of July weekend and the community is gearing up for its annual rodeo, the centerpiece of its "Frontier Days." High school marching bands and ornate fllotillas compete for space amongst antique cars, stray dogs and lost causes on the town's sloped main street. Yet, this cause for celebration is muted for aging, nomadic rider Junior Bonner (Steve McQueen). Returning to his home town, Bonner is attempting to mend his pride and his family.

Utilizing Sam Peckinpah's familiar thematic interests in masculinity, aging and the extinction of the West, Junior Bonner demonstrates the director's ability to engage in topics that particularly illuminate his protagonists' desire for a final attempt at fulfilling their potential. In the case of Junior Bonner, Peckinpah creates a dichotomy between father and son, as each try to re-establish their masculine pride and soothe old wounds.

The spectre of the past haunts Junior Bonner. Skillfully demonstrated in a series of black and white flashbacks, Junior Bonner is chased by the painful memories of a spasmodic fall during a recent contest. Wounded by a ferocious bull owned by wily rancher Buck Roan (Ben Johnson), Bonner finds pain in more than his taped broken ribs. His ego is equally wounded. To eradicate his mental and physical anguish, Bonner bribes Roan to ensure that he and only he will be selected to ride Roan's cattle in the bull riding portion of the local competition.

Splitting the prize money fifty-fifty with Roan means little to Junior Bonner. Unlike his devious brother Curley (Joe Don Baker), money is not the world to Junior Bonner. His attitudes are a dying breed: belonging to a world in which self-respect and familial selflessness is more important than materialism. Antithetical to this are Curley's selfish attitudes. Taking advantage of his father's alcoholism and financial disarray, Curley purchases his father's 600 acre ranch for half of its $30,000 value. Bulldozing it to the ground, Curley plans to use the land for quick personal financial gain:building a giant mobile home park amongst the quarries of stone, gravel and bric-a-brac.

Curley speaks in the rhetoric of a unifier. He talks of consolidating the family, providing Junior with a job and his mother with domestic security. Yet, his actions are derisory: the stuff of a showman. Unlike his father or brother, his brand of entertainment is self-serving. Peckinpah cunningly illustrates this by demonstrating the divergent public reactions to the establishment of the rodeo and Curley's mobile home park.

Other than a few curious children, there is hardly anybody in town who appears excited over the erection of this annual event. Their eager eyes have instead moved over to Curley's mobile home park. Adorned in a carnivalesque atmosphere, Curley's park is feted by vast crowds, who are inquisitive of his modern contraptions and lured by free hot dogs and hard candies. Thus, Curley's dream of harmonizing his family are contrary to his actions. Rather than aid his father, he sends him packing onto the street. His equally myopic wife disapproves of her children going to the rodeo, despite the fact it offers an opportunity for the family to gather for one last time.

Following in his father's footsteps, Junior is a small-time celebrity on the rodeo circuit, who like his father Ace (Robert Preston) is seeing the extinction of his kind. Now descending into alcoholism, Ace is a forgotten figure in his own hometown. Separated from his wife Elvira (Ida Lupino), Ace dreams of emigrating to Australia to engage in another vacuous get-rich-quick scheme. Elvira on the other hand has resorted to renting out her small house to boarders, while Curley plans to sell the home and whisk his mother away into one of his isolated metal units.

While Curley paves the way for the future by destroying his father's delipidated home for other families, he is unable to mend his own. An interesting facet of Peckinpah's film is that old wounds are not neatly healed by film's end. Elvira refuses to re-unite with her inconsiderate husband, Ace appears unwilling-despite his talk-to change into an emotionally mature men and Junior is not inclined towards settling into the rigid lifestyle his brother plans to offer him. Each appear to be going their separate ways as does Bonner's bland love interest Charmagne (Barbara Leigh) by film's end.

The west may be dying for Junior Bonner, but he still clings to its values. His happiness is not found in selling plots of land, but in wandering along desert highways and performing at equally retrograde venues. By focusing less on the rodeo itself and Bonner's desire for personal redemption, Peckinpah crafts a wonderfully small and intimate modern western not at odds with his visually flamboyant and expressive style. Utilizing a wide range of zoom shots, split-screens and slow-motion techniques, Peckinpah establishes a style that complements rather than alienates a setting that places an emphasis on time.

McQueen's low-key performance is suitably grand for the material. Like Ida Lupino, McQueen nurtures a performance rooted in earthiness enhanced by a twangy accent and a famliarity with rolled cigarettes. Ben Johnson grins admirably, while Robert Preston is astutely dank, dirty and jovial. Joe Don Baker tries a little too much to be a southern Richard Burton, while Barbara Leigh is forgettable and superfluous. Peckinpah creates a cryptically desolate paradigm: a distinctly American sub-culture knowingly on the verge of death.

While regional historical societies have preserved Prescott, Arizona and other outpost communities from complete extinction, the characters and settings astutely encapsulated in Junior Bonner belong to a bygone era. The dynamic of detachment between modernity and the past is wonderfully dissected throughout the film: grafting the push and pull between the frayed fences of the historic rodeo and the empty tactics of Curley's real estate showman. Fittingly, Peckinpah concludes the present is unwilling to find a purpose for these people and their ways: resulting in their additional fractured separations and subsequent diaspora further into the American cultural wilderness.

* Junior Bonner is available on MGM Home Video

Other Peckinpah Films Reviewed:
Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid (1973) 8/10

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque

2005: The Proposition

The Proposition (Hillcoat, 2005) 8/10

"Australia. What fresh hell is this?" (Captain Stanley)

The Australian Outback is one of the world's most mythical and inhospitable places. Less than ten percent of the Australian population lives in this region of eucalyptal forest, skeletal brush, sun-baked sand and orange rock. In its most liberal definition defines almost seventy percent of the Australian continent, yet the term is most commonly associated with the country's most arid and remote areas populated in Australia's national mythology by ancient Aboriginal cultures and lawless mauraders such as Ned Kelly.

In the late 19th century, British modes of "civilization" and Victorian culture collided with the indigenous population as Australia transformed from a penal colony to a bastion of imperial virtue. Like the American West, with its folkloric associations of rebellion and its earthy Aboriginal society, the Outback became unfairly equated with barbarity and insubordination: stereotypes which remain to this day. It is this clash of civilizations and societial attitudes which permeates John Hillcoat's exemplary revisionist western The Proposition.

Based on a screenplay by Australian songwriter Nick Cave, The Proposition is a throwback to the violent historical revisionist approaches of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone, but with a richer social critique. In rural Queensland, notorious outlaw Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) is captured along with his simpleton brother Mikey (Richard Wilson) by English emigree Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone). Desperate to impose his legal authority on the area, Stanley offers Charlie Burns an extra-legal proposition: his and Mikey's freedom in exchange for the capture and assassination of the gang's vicious and sociopathic leader, Arthur Burns (Danny Huston) within nine days. If Charlie fails, Stanley informs him that Mikey will be hung on Christmas Day.

Thus begins Charlie's descent into the nether regions of the Australian Outback in search of his sadistic brother and Cave and Hillcoat's exploration of civilization, honour and family. With the rowdy Burns family substituting for Australia's most famous gang of familial Irish immigrants, the Kelly Gang, this desolate film centers upon codes of civility and culture. Drafted from the backalleys of London in order to tame the Outback, Winstone's Captain Stanley is a complex figure. In the genteel house he resides in with wife Martha (Emily Watson), he embodies the values and virtues of Victorian culture.

The couple dine on roast dinners served by aborigine servants, while sitting in a room adorned with British regalia (Union Jacks; royal portraits) and silverware. Martha orders dresses from catalogues and imports roses and conifers from England in a dire attempt to replicate an English garden surrounded by the yellow blasts of sand. Even their white picket fence is mostly constructed from bark stripped from decaying trees. Their attempts to establish an authentic Englishness on their property are implicitly artificial in the construction and absurd in their design amongst the harsh indigenous landscape which envelops their small home.

A wonderful example of this is found in Captain Stanley's Christmas greetings to his departing Aborigine servant. With a rifle in hand, Stanley apprehensively prepares for further violence; while decked in Victorian attire, his servant removes his shoes at the gate: emphasizing the awkwardness of enforcing British culture on an unwilling population and in an inappropriate environment. Furthermore, while Stanley attempts to civilize the community, he fails to recognize the irony of his failed attempt. He and his fellow policemen are racist, ignorant and arrogant toward the Australian climate and aboriginal culture. They fear the surrounding landscape and its native people, yet pompously express their ability to conquer it through further colonization of the culture. Their method of order is not through equality and justice, but through violence and capitulation. Rather than reconcile with the Aboriginal population, they hire an Anglicized Aborigine to interpret and hunt down fellow tribal members.

Yet, even he questions their tactics as he mutters "strange mob, you whites;" after a group of police officers on a routine patrol, engage in ritualistic and juvenile attempts to urinate upon one another near a tree. This inverted notion of civil behaviour is also found in the treatment of prisoners and the work habits of the community's political and legal constituants. Scenes of excessive floggings, verbal abuse, public drunkenness, explicit sexual banter and gross misuse of firearms typify the blatant misappropriation of power and authority by government and police officials in the community on a daily basis.

Education is also examined in the character of Jellon Lamb (John Hurt): a self-proclaimed adventurer who has travelled to China, Congo and Russia in search of fortune. Yet, for all his knowledge of Darwinian biological theory and foreign societies, he is supremely ignorant and racist: mocking the suggestion that white and Aboriginal peoples are physiologically equal and openly berating the Irish-born Charlie Burns. Similarly, Arthur Burns who is notorious for his brutal sadism, routinely quotes from philosophers in his mild-mannered, hushed voice.

Key to Arthur Burns' approach to life is the emphasis on family. Hiding in the rocky enclaves, Arthur lives with a blend of criminals and Aboriginals including his lover/wife. Together the group forms a "family" which Arthur prides over everything else. Upon Charlie's return, Arthur desires for his brother to return into the familial fold. But within Charlie's soul there is internal turmoil. In the film's media res opening, we learn that Charlie and Mikey had earlier left Arthur's gang. The modern integrationist concept of community is beginning to take root within the Australian landscape: supplanting traditional bonds of family. Thus, for Charlie, family no longer holds as much sway as it once did. Yet, within the community's English imaginary with its perverted notions of justice, there is perhaps little room for (re-) admission into European society: a fact belatedly revealed to Charlie.

Furthermore, the ancient codes of honour no longer are bound by blood, but rather by a flawed sense of social improvement as noted in Stanley's reluctant responses to the town's savage judicial equilibrium. When Captain Stanley breaks such a code by passively allowing the townspeople to flog Mikey in the dusty town square, he understands that Arthur with his traditional codes of family will respond with a violent repraisal. Charlie on the other hand desires progressive reconciliation: noting that while violence begets more violence, it does not balance the scales of justice: a notion the town's legal authorities fail to understand in their primal sense of "civilized" frontier justice.

Featuring a songbook engrossed with violence, betrayal and death, The Proposition highlights the central concepts and ideas prominent throughout Nick Cave's entire musical and literary career oeuvre. In his literate script, the actions and attitudes of the central characters are not black and white, but are painted in thick shades of grey. The internal motives and actions of the film's central characters often opposes their external public personas, while the Aboriginal population are not explicitly revered, but shown as either meek figures who have capitulated their cultural identity or are attempting a final gasp to preserve it against Eurocentric hostility.

Like the Italian and revisionist westerns which inspired it, The Proposition is a film which meditates upon the implications of violence, while visually demonstrating it. Hillcoat's direction uses a minimalist approach, which often results in the harshest acts shown in brief passages or heard off-screen. Furthermore, the violence in The Proposition is never gratuitous, but integral to the savagary of the story. Yet, through strong editing and direction, the film allows for the audience to feel the film's explicit aggression, while often not being privy to actually seeing it. This is noticeable in the appropriate lack of footage detailing the film's most explicit acts of violence such as rape, flogging and torture.

In Benoit Delhomme's sparse and stylish cinematography the harsh beauty of Australia's rustic plains is brutally exposed; astutely complimenting the film's understated performances particularly by Danny Huston, Guy Pearce and Emily Watson. The complex, psychological nature of the film's story impressively extends to the performances of criminally underrated veteran English actors John Hurt and Ray Winstone.

In the past four years, the Western has slowly begun to revive itself with the releases of Tommy Lee Jones directorial debut The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Ron Howard's 2003 film The Missing and Seripham Falls starring Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnon. Future releases such as the Brad Pitt led The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford and Walk The Line director James Mangold's remake of 3:10 To Yuma, demonstrate a possible return to the defunct genre in a style similar to that of the musical with films such as Dreamgirls and Chicago. Although a return to cultural prominence and popularity the genre held in the Fifties and Sixties is unlikely, the release of socially imbued minor classics like The Proposition herald positive possibilities for the genre's future.


* The Proposition is released on R2 DVD by Tartan Home Video and by First Look/Maple Home Video in R1.

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque

1949: Hellfire

Hellfire (R.G. Springsteen, 1949) 3/10

With its rugged characters, perpetual gunplay and penchant for violence, the Western has rarely been seen as a “woman’s genre.” Traditionally viewed as a breeding ground for correct codes of masculinity and community, the genre’s brief flirtations with femininity have often been relegated to “B” pictures such as Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar, Samuel Fuller’s Forty Guns and Sam Raimi’s lamentable The Quick and The Dead. But arguably one of the genre’s earliest and strangest attempts at creating a strong female gunslinger is R.G. Springsteen’s 1949 film Hellfire.

Shot for Republic Pictures in their ill-favoured Trucolor technique, Springsteen’s eccentric western is the schizophrenic lovechild of Nicholas Ray and Cecil B. DeMille. This half-feminist/half-religious western centers on the attempts of reformed outlaw Zeb Smith (William Elliott) to build a church in memory of a deceased pastor (H.B. Warner) who literally took a bullet for Zeb after the latter cheated in a game of cards. Initially reluctant to accept the dying words of Brother Joseph, Zeb converts to Christianity and abandons his immoral life in order to play “according to the rules” laid down in Brother Joseph’s Bible.

Desperate to find donations to build his church, Zeb stumbles into the town of Dry Springs, but receives only ill-mannered responses for his troubles. As he departs town, Zeb runs into Doll Brown: a female outlaw who has just murdered her husband Lew Stoner in the local saloon. When her former brothers-in-law find out about Lew’s death they opt to seek revenge on Doll, rather than collect the $5000 reward offered by Marshall Bucky McLean (Forrest Tucker).

Zeb on the other hand sees an opportunity to not only obtain funds for his church through moral purposes, but but at the same time save the soul of Doll Brown. After tracking her down, Zeb informs Doll that through the Bible he can convince her to repent for her sins. Although she resists his preachings, Doll allows Zeb to ride with her on a quest to find her missing sister Jane: resulting in both characters attempting to find their own brand of truth

With its Bible-quoting former outlaw and a cunning femine anti-hero, Hellfire is certainly an anomaly in Republic Pictures’ Saturday matinee portfolio. In fact the film was such a curiousity piece that its executive producers and screenwriters unsuccessfully sued Republic for their failure to properly market the picture. But with its opposing moral points of view embodied in Zeb’s religious musings and Doll’s heavy-drinking and fast-shooting lifestyle, Republic had a film that while overtly Christian in its tone is equally racy in Doll’s willingness to use her sexuality as a bartering tool for information about her sister's location.

For many critics Springsteen’s film is an early feminist western due in large part to Marie Windsor’s aggressive performance as Doll Brown. Her character is as equally adroit on the saddle in men’s attire, as she is working as a saloon performer. She is able to reside in two gender-based worlds and flourish in both: allowing her to criticize societies treatment of women with verve. When searching for her sister Jane in a Cheyenne saloon, she informs Zeb that working at the saloon is the only respectable profession open to a woman who does not want to become a housewife. After following a lead to the saloon, Doll is grateful to find that the woman in question is not her sister, as she finds a prostitute-cum-singer turning tricks behind a curtain: the antithesis to the strong, indepdent woman Doll espouses to be.

In regard to her gender identity, Doll is an eternal state of flux. On the one hand, she chastizes prostitues for their disregard for decency, yet hypocritically she willingly uses her sexual allure and experience in attempt to rustle information from Marshall McLean. As well as resisting Zeb’s moralizing, Doll also chides at his attempts to make her more feminine via her clothing and his insistence that she settle down into domesticity. Thus, Doll is a woman who strives for complete independence from a patriarchal society. She wishes to play according to her roles, rather than the one’s outlined in Zeb’s Bible. Subsequently, the male-orientated society within Hellfire both fears and adores Doll. When dressed in sultry saloon attire, she receives accolades, money and sexual options; when clothed in her male cowboy gear she is viewed as a threat to masculinity due to her ability to excel with a six-shooter and assimilate into maleness

While Doll spends Hellfire’s ninety minutes searching for her sister, Zeb strives to bring the Lord’s word to a closed eared population. William’s Elliott’s limited range restricts his broad appeal in Hellfire: a picture he directly produced as an homage to his silent western hero William S. Hart’s film Hell’s Hinges. Despite his charm and good intentions, Zeb’s constant sermonizing and desires to bring Doll in to custody through her own will appear phony in accordance with his repeated illicit activities. While his initial intentions are noble, they quickly morph into parsimonious sentiments. Frequently, Zeb thwarts the attempts of local deputies to bring Doll back to Dry Springs in order to validate his claim that he can both convert her and encourage the anti-heroine to turn herself in. This mitigates his character’s Muscular Christianity: turning him from a humble preacher into an quietly lofty zealot.

Indisputiably the film’s most successful artistic flourish is the symbolism equated with fire. The film’s opening credits use fire to represent the eternal payment for sin and immorality. Yet, throughout the remainder of the film, fire is corresponded to salvation. Zeb’s burning of the guns used to assassinate Brother Joseph to prevent his certain death; the procurement of a heated stoker on the injured flesh of Brother Joseph to save his life; and the throwing of ash into the eyes of the Stoner brothers to prolong Doll’s life are just some of the many instances in which fire is used as a method of corporeal salvation.

Springsteen’s emphasis on both the film’s religious overtones and its feminist undertones produces a polarized product. Hellfire’s extraordinary female protagonist verifies its cataloguing as a feminist film, but its edifying lead character, preachy context, attempts at gender role restoration and closing credits emblazoned with “Amen” are highly reactionary in constrast: leading to a more suitable definition as a religious western. Through Springsteen's lack of a strong vision, the film becomes two competing stories, which fail to synthesize into a cohesive work.

As a result, notwithstanding Marie Windsor’s remarkable character, the film suffers an identity crisis which impedes the narrative. A director of countless B-grade action and western pictures for Republic, R.G. Springsteen’s mis-en-scene is at best average and at worst unremarkable. Collectively, Hellfire’s supporting cast of genre mainstays fall under this same banner. But its flaws aside, Hellfire is still a strikingly uncustomary oater. Showcasing two competing socio-political frameworks in a setting, which rarely accords either such a lengthy forum.

* Hellfire is currently unavailable on DVD

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque

1958: Man Of The West

Man Of The West (1958, Anthony Mann) 7/10


“There is a point where you either grow up and become a human being or you rot, like that bunch” (Link Jones)

One of nouvelle vague director Jean-Luc Godard’s favourite films from 1958, Man Of The West is a classic exploration of one man’s quest to discard his violent past. The film stars the asutely cast Gary Cooper as Link Jones a shy and suspicious reformed outlaw who-armed with some clothes and a satchel of money- embarks on a train to Fort Worth in searching of obtaining a school teacher for the newly created town of Good Hope: a dust bowl community shaped by modern ideas of law, justice, education and equality.

As the title states Jones is truly a “Man of the West.” Upon boarding his train at Crosscut, Jones finds difficulty in adapting to the modern claustrophobic surroundings: his ill-equipped body fights for room and space on the small seating area. Jones had suffered a similar fate upon entering the town of Crosscut, as he tried to orientate his senses within the narrow streets filled with bric-a-brac, tiny entrepenural kiosks and other trappings of late 19th century modernity.

His rural sensibilities make him easily stand out on the train; arousing the interests of a local con-artist named Sam Beasley (Arthur O’Connell)who believes he can rustle money out of Jones by selling him the services of the local saloon singer Billie Ellis (a rather wooden Julie London) :whom he claims is trained as a school teacher. But despite his lack of academic education, Jones has an innate sense of character, which leaves him anxious when the train suddenly stops to collect more fire wood from an isolated depot. As the train’s male passengers disembark to gather wood, the train is robbed by the infamous Tobin gang. Jones is briefly knocked unconscious and is dismayed to find both the train and his bag are no longer there. Furthermore, both Ellis and Beasley have also been left stranded at the rural outpost which is hundreds of miles away from the nearest town.

But in the rolling green pastures, Jones is able to use his knowledge of the environment to find an abandoned farmhouse in which he once resided. Upon entering, however Jones realizes that he and his fellow passengers are not alone: as the house is currently inhabited by the infamous outlaw Dock Tobin (a barely recognizable Lee J Cobb in an overstated performance) and his gang. On the train Beasley had briefly remarked how the area was once dominated by men like Tobin, but now has been tamed by modern law and order: casting the actions of outlaws and gunslingers like Tobin into the annals of history.

In fact Tobin himself is too a historical relic. No longer is he the fierce outlaw of yesteryear, but rather a tyrannical and aging crazed figure. Yet, despite his mental illness, the remaining remnants of his gang are still awed by his past triumphs and have pledged allegiance to him in a bizarre quasi-family structure in which he is referred to as “uncle” and his follwers are “cousins.” One such former cousin is in fact Link Jones: a man who split from Tobin’s gang in order to start afresh in the new town of Good Hope. Yet, despite all of his efforts, both Jones and the neighbours in his new home have never allowed himself to forget his past. Nor will Tobin and his sadisctic disciples.

Desperate to ensure the safety of himself and his fellow train passengers, Link lies to Dock and convinces the deluded old man that he wishes to re-join the gang,. The reunion of the elder Tobin with his favourite “nephew” inspires the drunken fool to reveal his ambitions to plunder the mining town of Lassoo. But the younger members of Tobin’s gang such as Coaley (Jack Lord) are suspicious of Links intentions, as the former gang member attempts to distance himself from his former “cousins,” while finding himself strangely lured into their world of violence, hyper-masculinity and sexual threats.

History and the attempts to reclaim one’s personal past is an underlying theme of Mann’s film. Throughout the picture Cooper’s Link Jones struggles with his former identity: stressing to Billie his maturity, his rehabilitation and the inescapable shadow of his past actions. In many ways Link Jones suffers the same fate as another complex Western character John Wayne’s former Confederate officer Ethan Edwards in John Ford’s The Searchers. Like Edwards, Jones is uncomfortable in the confines of his present-day environment. No matter how hard Jones has tried to alter his attitudes and values to those of modern civility, he is still drawn to the expressive acts of physical violence which men such as Coaley so prominently display and engage in. For Jones, like Edwards, the open range is his home and the locale where he feels most comfortable; yet despite the spaciousness of the Tobin’s property he is unable to escape, even under the cover of night. Like his past, he is bound in symbolic chains to this environment and only through a cathartic purging of his past can he cleanse his soul and truly start anew.

As the group travel further toward Lassoo the environment attunes to the men’s souls: becoming harsher and more dearth in appearance as they travel further away from a domesticated and tamed civilized world. The rolling hills outside Tobin’s base are replaced by barren quarries and arid wastelands as the Lear-like Dock Tobin basks in his own pompous self-worth: a quality which the members of Tobin’s “family” rarely address their concerns in subversive tones out of both fear and a sense of duty to the man. It this sense of in-bred obedient conformity which pushes the clan to the outskirts of Lassoo; only for Jones to discover that the mining hub is simply a ghost town inhabitated by two Mexican peasants. The town like Tobin is a skeleton of a bygone era of frivolous wealth and moral disorder.

Yet, despite his mental incapacity, Tobin still commands- and receives- respect and allegiance from his admirers. He outlines the moral codes and attitudes for the men and acts like a father-figure in nurturing their opinions. While Jones has developed a sensitive demeanour since abandoning Tobin, his followers are imbued with a physically aggressive and violent sense of gender identity. This violence is best noted in an unnerving scene in which Coaley orders Billie to perform a striptease for the men, whilst holding Jones at knifepoint: slitting part of his neck in the process. Yet, when the intoxicated Dock Tobin orders Coaley to cease, the latter duly obliges. Later when Dock orders his men to engage in wrestling matches with one another in a drawn-out sequence, they readily oblige to his command.

Yet, despite his attempts at reform, this conformist view of masculinity intrigues Jones with its demeaning banter, sexual aggression and homoerotic feats of physical strength. When Tobin halts the wagons outside a bucolic terrain and orders Coaley and Link to fight, the pair enter into an intensive and grueling form of fighting: both trying to impress the senior Tobin. Yet, when Cooper realizes the regressive elements of his actions, he soon lets out his earlier fury at Coaley by stripping the latter of his clothing: emasculating him with a forced “striptease.” Jones’ revanchement for Coaley’s earlier sexually demeaning actions towards Billie results in complete and utter embarrassment for Coaley. Not only has his sexual identity been violated by another man, but he has suffered a retribution which his peers equate to a feminine sexual act. Thus, not only has his masculinity been weakened, but also his hetereosexuality has been diluted in public. His tearful attempt at revenge is symbolic not only of his cowardice, but his inability to fulfill the physical duties of a frontier man as prescribed by Dock Tobin.

Despite his difficulties with modernity and its accompanying urban environment, Cooper’s Jones on the otherhand has, at least on the exterior, matured into a fully-developed modern man. By separating himself from Tobin’s astern sense of family, Jones has seemingly grown-up and become an independent adult. This is reflected in his ability both to strike it out on his own terms in Good Hope and deal with the consequences of his past actions. Unlike the childish Coaley, he has accrued a sense of respect and responsibility: treating Billie with respect and feeling guilty over his past sexual actions.

When Billie is threatened with rape by Coaley and Tobin, Cooper attempts to protect her and shield her from the animalistic advances of his former comrades. Billie welcomes Link’s sensitive mannerisms and sense of gentlemanly conduct. Yet, Billie’s sense of gender politics is rather perplexing as her character is easily the least developed in film. Her defining characteristic in the film is found in her frozen responses to sexual violence and threats to her body. Given her comments to Link regarding his sensitivity toward physical intimacy, it is interesting to note that after she is raped, Bille informs Link that she will return to Crosscut to sing and therefore not attempt to foster any (illicit) relations with him: as though the rape has destroyed any chances of her eloping with a respectable man under the auspices of a “civilized” world. Thus like Link Jones, she too now suffers with her past.

The diminutive detail to the characterization of Julie London’s Billie is an anomaly in Anthony Mann’s Man of the West: a film rooted in the complex inner workings of its characters. Like Ford’s The Searchers, Mann’s film presents a protagonist who is struggling to find meaning in both his past and his present. And while Link Jones is not as fiercely unpleasant as Ethan Edwards, he does have a psychological depth of character often lacking in action-oriented pictures of the era. As Ernest Haller’s evocative and serene cinematography isolates the characters from life’s symbolic geography, so to does playwright Reginald Rose’s screenplay with its tragic Shakespearean overtones: pressing characters into nefarious situations, which alter their tone and conduct as the darkest elements of human nature arise from their souls.

Rose and Mann use Link’s search for a schoolteacher and his missing money purse as a "MacGuffin" to inquire into the psychology of human nature and the definition of civilization. The re-acquisition of the money is simply a vehicle to drive forth the film’s analytical details and existential purpose: a point driven home by Cooper’s scant attempts to find the money. Furthmore, Cooper’s character in the mould of the eponymous hero in George Stevens’ Shane: there is a vile brutality in his later "heroic" conduct, which is selfish in its intents, rather than altruistic.

By the final frame of Man of the West, the concept of civilization, like Billie’s clothes is left in tatters. Its heroes are imperfect, their objectives are parsimonious and the aftermath of their actions does not restore the balance or a sense of natural order. As Cooper and London crawl away on their horses from the rocky desert terrain, there is no romantic embrace, or words eneveloped in triumph. Rather the feelings of incompletion and betrayal are re-inforced as neither character believes they can place their faith in civilized institutions, nor the values of justice, fairness and equality they promote.

* Man Of The West is available on R2 DVD through MGM Home Video

Other Anthony Mann Films Reviewed:
He Walked By Night (1948) 8/10


Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque

1973: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973, Peckinpah) 8/10

"This country's getting old and I aim to get old with it. Now, the Kid don't want it that way. He might be a better man for it. I ain't judging. But I don't want you explaining nothin' to me. And I don't want you saying nothin' about the Kid and nobody else in my goddamn county."- Pat Garrett (James Coburn)

A leisurely paced final western from legendary director Sam Peckinpah about ideas of individual identity, the maintenance of one's own system of values, the evolution of the West and the process of aging and maturity, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a bleak examination of the bonds of friendship and the ties that break them.Pat Garrett (James Coburn) a former outlaw turned sheriff has been assigned the duty of capturing his friend and ex-collegue Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson).

Whilst Garrett may now don fancy attire, live in a white picket fence home and enjoy the respect of the New Mexican business elite; he is in actuality torn and bitter inside. While the Kid is despised for his murderous thievery by the giant corporate cattle ranchers such as Chisum, he is envied by his former mentor Garrett who admires his sense of ideals and hopes to give Billy more time by continually avoiding to capture the man.

Instead Garrett pursues his own psychological journey meeting with former allies under the notion of finding Billy the Kid. Through this one gets the sense of Garrett trying to confront past elements, whilst being unable to relate or tackle the real problems that currently plague him such as his detached relationship with his wife and his inability to come to terms with his newfound respectability and consequential responsibilities.All the while, Billy continues to expand his mass popular support and gain new supporters such as his fidgety knife-wielding sidekick Alias (Bob Dylan). It is this type of power that Garrett envies as he is reduced to displaying his power through force and intimidation. No longer respected by his peers, family or the community, Garrett has become a puppet of the corporate state and has to decide between his loyalty to his friends or his employers.

In many ways this film is like Peckinpah's earlier masterpiece The Wild Bunch in its detailed account of two former allies now foes battling once another. Like The Wild Bunch's Deke Thornton, Garrett is now the employee of the artifice of the state; whilst Billy like William Holden's Pike is an organic rival to the ideas of state. Unlike The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid tackles subjects such as aging more directly as two different values systems come to the forefront: Kid's vision of an open individualistic state versus the ideals of Chisum and the corporate state that attacks those who rebel against it.

Similar elements of companionship and brotherhood are explored, but at a much more visceral and personal level.This is assisted by Coburn's ultimately cool performance as Garrett, in which he is able to convey over time a maturing Garrett through the changes in his personality and his aging complexion. Similarly Kristofferson is able to offer a bubbly playfulness to contrast Garrett's seriousness. Dylan appears miscast and doesn't really add anything to the picture, while the stellar supporting line-up of western veterans such as Jason Robards, Katy Jurado and Slim Pickens rounds out the fine cast.

Peckinpah's lyrical gunplay and editing come to the forefront in the 2005 "Special Edition Cut" made by Peckinpah scholars based upon Peckinpah's writings and the supposed aesthetical intentions of the late director. Certainly, while this isn't a director's cut it does add something new to the process and provides something less extensive than the '88 Preview Version, which may be more in line with Peckinpah's vision. Ultimately, this is a splendidly bleak and grimy Western that tramples on the last remnants of the Western mythology with cold calculated precision and flair. It is at least a minor classic of American cinema and Westerns in general, rather than a fully fledged flawless work.

* Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is released through Warner Home Video as part of the Sam Peckinpah: The Legendary Westerns Collection

Other Peckinpah Films Reviewed:
Junior Bonner (1972) 6/10

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.