Last few western before the end of February.

Day of the Outlaw (1959), directed by Andre De Toth. This is De Toth’s final western and it is bleak. It is both of its time and ahead of its time. It is of its time in the cast of ne’er-do-well characters who brutalize and threaten a town, especially the town women. It is ahead of its time in its presentation of an anti-hero as the main character. This is a revisionary western before the term came into prominence. Shot in a snowy mountainous location (Wyoming), the film gives us characters at the extreme limits of emotion; they exhibit hate, lust, greed, anger, fear, and desire. The plot pits two men, Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) and Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives), against each other in a standoff that can only end in death. Starrett is a bitter rancher who pines after another man’s wife and who hates the coming of barbed wire to the range; Bruhn is a former military man who leads a gaggle of thieves and brutes, and whose control of these brutes is breaking down. De Toth’s camera moves slowly as it follows the activities, and it accentuates a stifling constraint even amid a sprawling landscape. The black and white photography, courtesy Russell Metty, nicely expresses the cold and the divisions among the various factions in town. The winter weather also underlines the starkness and iciness of things. The snowy conditions prefigure films such as Corbucci’s The Great Silence (1968), and Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). This is an impressive mood piece.

Apache Warrior (1957), directed by Elmo Williams. This low budget western purports to be a “true story.” It tells a story about the Apache Kid (Keith Larsen), a scout for the cavalry who finds himself outside the law and on the run. Trailing him is his one-time friend Ben Ziegler (Jim Davis). Then there is Marteen (Rudolfo Acosta) as a villainous Native American. None of this has much to do with actual history, and the action is largely played out on sets. The film tries to be sympathetic towards Native Americans, but really this is a film in which a white guy assists a Native guy to escape the authorities and the bounty hunters, after the white guy realizes the Native guy is really his friend. This film does not have a lot to recommend it, except perhaps for some historical interest as a 50s western trying to overcome the familiar stereotypes, and not quite managing to do so.

Westbound (1959), directed by Bud Boetticher. This is the least interesting of the Randolph Scott/Bud Boetticher films. Boetticher called it "mediocre." He directed it as a favour to Scott who had one more film on his contract with Warner Brothers. The main character, Scott of course, lacks the troubled backstory that most of the main characters in the other films in the so-called Ranown cycle have. And the antagonist also lacks the charm of Randy's adversaries in the other films. The film's lacklustre story is perhaps evidenced by the lack of screen shots available on Google. This lack is lamentable because the film does contain some lovely panoramas and the most colourful stagecoach I have seen in a western. The actors are amiable, and the story trots along at a brisk pace. If this is a lesser collaboration between Scott and Boetticher, it is not without interest. Give it a try.

True History of the Kelly Gang (2019), directed by Justin Kurzel. This film throws everything, including the kitchen sink, at us, from the opening overhead shot to the final shoot-out that outdoes Bonnie and Clyde by a long shot. The film is certainly not without interest, but I confess I found it somewhat less than fully engaging. We are to see the infamous outlaw as a product of poverty and abuse and strange affection when he was a boy. He has mentors whose motives are suspect, to say the least. He has a mother who drums into him his "destiny" as a child of Ireland. The Irish connection ticks the box of colonialism and colonial exploitation, but we have precious little awareness of the people who did indeed inhabit this terra nullius. Ned never does understand who he is or what he wants. The cross-dressing reminded me of another Arthur Penn movie, The Missouri Breaks, although here the cross-dressing does not have the delirious nuttiness that it has in Penn's film. And so what to conclude? When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

The Power of the Dog (2021), directed by Jane Campion. This film has received much notice recently, and for good reason. The cinematography is superb, the acting fine, the pacing slow and burning, and the story clever and timely. Let’s take the story, for a moment. This is a western with nary a pistol nor a rifle. No fisticuffs here, no barroom brawl, and no racing hither and thither on horseback. Native people do appear, importantly but not prominently. Near the beginning of the film, we have a brief but magnificent cattle drive. Instead of branding of cattle, we have castrating of bulls. This last detail is telling. This western is interested in exploring life on a fairly isolated ranch in Montana in 1925. The memory, and saddle, of an old hand, Bronco Henry, and the presence of motor cars points both back to the old romanticized west and forward to the new west beginning to emerge. We are on the cusp of things both crepuscular and dawning. As the plentiful commentary on the film points out, this western explores and critiques the traditional masculinity of the western genre, and it does so with subtlety and intelligence. Also, as some have noted, this is a western in the vein of a film such as Meek’s Cutoff (directed by Kelly Reichardt, 2010). Way back in the days of Butch and Sundance and Pike Bishop commentators spoke of revisionary westerns; well, those westerns were hardly revisionary in any deep sense. The Power of the Dog is.