Westerns anyone?

Robber’s Roost (1955), directed by Sidney Salkow. This western has a convoluted plot involving two rival outlaw gangs working for the same ranch owner, a taciturn stranger (George Montgomery and his large hat), a ranch owner in a wheel chair, his sister, and an amiable fellow with a guitar who serenades all and sundry with 1950s style croonery (is there such a word?). The scenery (around Durango, Mexico) is impressive, especially the bulbous rock at the entrance to the titular robber’s roost. The plot, although convoluted, is predictable. The performers are familiar and efficient; they include Montgomery as the hero, Richard Boone and Peter Graves as the two gang leaders, Bruce Bennet as the wheelchair-bound rancher Bull Herrick, Leo Gordon as one of the bad guys, Tony Romano as Happy Jack the singer, William Hopper as would-be love interest of the rancher’s sister, and Sylvia Findley as Helen, Bull’s sister. All in all, this is an amiable 1950s western. It may be preposterous, but what the heck.

 

Dead For a Dollar (2022), directed by Walter Hill. As westerns go and as Walter Hill films go, this one is middling. Hill dedicates the film to Budd Boetticher, and his hero here, bounty hunter Max Borlund (Christoph Walz), has the stoic morality of Randolph Scott in the Boetticher films of the 1950s. Borlund takes a job that sends him to Mexico to bring back a rich man’s wife; she has been abducted by a Black cavalry deserter who wants a lot of money for her safe return. Well, it turns out that things are rather different. The woman, Rachel Kidd (Rachel Brosnahan), has gone willingly and she and her fellow escapee, Elijah Jones (Brandon Scott), hope to get enough money to make it to Cuba. Into the mix we have Sgt Alonzo Poe (Warren Burke) who accompanies Borlund, Joe Cribbens (Willem Defoe) who has a grudge against Borlund, and villainous Mexican land owner, Tiberio Vargas (Benjamin Bratt). The action plays out economically, as we would expect from a Walter Hill movie. The filming gives us the brownish colour we also expect, and we have sweeping southwest landscapes. Things move along efficiently, if predicably. The characters are one dimensional, but amiable. The racial aspect of things is presented in a matter-of-fact manner. In short, aside from the presentation of non-white characters, including Mexicans, in a sympathetic way, there is little that is noteworthy here. It is rather strange to see Willem Defoe in a western, but he does bring an amusement that is missing elsewhere.

 

Revolt at Fort Laramie (1957), directed by Lesley Selander. This little no-nonsense western focuses on life in a western outpost, Fort Laramie, in 1861 just as the Civil War begins. When the war does begin, reactions in the Fort are divided, and the short-lived revolt of the title consists of a group of southern soldiers who plan to desert, take a supply of gold with them, and head to Texas to join southern forces. The revolt is short-lived because notice arrives at the Fort that southern men are allowed to leave their posts if they wish to do so. A group does leave, headed by the Fort commandant, Major Seth Bradner (John Dehner). He leaves behind his daughter, who was before the war broke out, the intended of Captain James Tenslip (Gregg Palmer). Tenslip assumes command of the Fort on the departure of Major Bradner. Anyway, we also have the Sioux chief Red Cloud (Eddie Little Sky) and his band of warriors. In short (and the film is short), Captain Tenslip and his soldiers comes to the rescue of Major Brander and his southerners and everyone is friends again, although they still agree to part ways. Nicely filmed with Utah standing in for Wyoming, Revolt at Fort Laramie is serviceable; it has an earnest message about friends and enemies and getting along for honour’s sake. The cast does not have any notable star power, but it does have a young and uncredited Harry Dean Stanton, looking just a wee bit lost. Also uncredited are familiar faces such as Jack Ingram (aka Hal Ingraham), and Kenne Duncan. Oh, and then there is Don Gordon as the “breed” Jean Salignac who speaks with a terrible, what French?, accent. As 1950s western go, this one is passable.

 

Train Dreams (2025), directed by Clint Bentley. This is a beautifully filmed depiction of life on the frontier in the early to mid-twentieth century. Set in northern Idaho, the story follows woodsman and rail worker Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) as he tries to make sense of a world in which he encounters vicious racism, environmental degradation, and emotional confusion. The film has, essentially, two parts, one in which Robert happens to meet Gladys (Felicity Jones) and the two fall in love. They marry and have a child, Kate. They lead a quiet, but intense and happy life in the wilderness. This life abruptly ends when Robert returns from a work trip to find the area of his house on fire. Not only is his house gone to ash, but there is no trace of Gladys and Kate. The second part of the film follows Robert as he contends with grief and hopes beyond hope to see his wife and child again. The film is a lyrical depiction of Robert’s life, especially his inner life. This taciturn man had a deep well of emotion, and we see this emotion in its various forms registered on his face. We also meet characters who interact with Robert, the garrulous old timer who knows about explosives, Arn Peebles (William H. Macy), the storekeeper Ignatius Jack (Nathaniel Arcand), and the likeable survey woman Claire Thompson (Kerry Condon), among the most notable. The lighting of the film reminded me of Arthur Penn’s The Missouri Breaks (1976), and I also saw bits of Jeremiah Johnson (1972), here and there. And yes, Terence Malik’s work also resonates. I like the film’s interest in connectedness. Claire remarks that a dead tree is as important as a living tree, and this is as good a line as any to point us in the direction of nature, its beauty, its connectedness, and also is delicacy. The human appetite for progress, for building, means more and more trees disappear, more and more damage to the environment takes place. The train itself is a potent image of both progress and destruction, both loneliness (oh that haunting train sound) and community. This is a film that gives us a poetic take on that most intense of American myths: the west. What punctures this myth are the train dreams, dreams that keep reminding us of death, bigotry, separation, and destruction.

 

Shoot the Sun Down (1978), directed by David Leeds. ‘Odd” is perhaps the best way to describe this western, set in 1836 New Mexico territory, still part of Mexico. It opens with a goofy scene that plays like a cartoon, as we follow a lone rider, Rainbow (Christopher Walken), who is followed by three Mexican riders (we can tell by their sombreros). The scene ends in Spaghetti-western manner with Rainbow shooting the three riders who have followed and accosted him. Rainbow uses a Colt Patterson repeater, the first six-shooter. Rainbow is the only character in the film who has a repeating pistol. Anyway, on to other things. Rainbow meets up with Captain (Bo Bundin) and his indentured female known as the Woman (Margot Kidder). He also meets Scalphunter (Geoffrey Lewis) and his minions. Scalphunter steals the show. He manages to be both comic relief and menacing villain. The plot has these people seemingly out for various things: escape from servitude, trade with the Native peoples, travel to Texas, The only honest one is Scalphunter who just wants gold, however he can get it. The plot is a bit of a mess. But the cinematography is notable with beautiful shots of the New Mexico landscape, including White Sands. The musical score alludes to the Spaghetti westerns some of the time, although it also has more raucous sounds and even some lush strings. Like the movie itself, the score is all over the place. We even have visual allusions to Jodorowsky’s El Topo (1970). This is a strange one.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), directed by John Ford. Watching this film at this time is bracing. Our time is a time of cowboy bravado coming out of the United States, with its administration strutting and blustering like drunken cowboys in a saloon brawl, although here the saloon is real places such as Minneapolis, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran. Striding above the mayhem is the lone gunman, today a puffy orange-tinted buffoon, a bloated Buster Scruggs. In the film, this lone gunman, representative of rugged individualism is played by, who else?, John Wayne. The films sets him between Lawyer Stoddard (James Stewart) and the side of law and order, and Liberty Valance and the side of chaos and criminality. The thing is, the world of both the lone gunman and the chaos driven bandit is passing. Yes, it passes, but leaves its legacy to the likes of Stoddard a politician who has succeeded because he has accepted, falsely, the lie that he is the man who shot Liberty Valance. Stoddard does, finally and at the time of Tom Doniphon’s funeral (Doniphon/Wayne shot Liberty to save Stoddard and help the girl he love who is partial to Stoddard). However, Stoddard’s coming clean proves too late, too weak. As Maxwell Scott (Carleton Young), editor of the Shinbone Star, remarks: “when the legend becomes truth, print the legend.” This line, justly famous, resonates now in a time when the lie in politics has become normalized, accepted, and ubiquitous. The cynicism here has been justly earned. The film is remarkable in its acuity. Take just one example out of many: in the schoolroom scene, Stoddard asks the Black man Pompey (Woody Strode), Doniphon’s “boy,” to recite the Declaration of Independence. Pompey begins well, but stumbles at a certain point, and Stoddard helps him out saying, “all me are created equal,” followed by, “that’s all right, Pompey. A lot of people forget about that part.” This film never fails to bring a tear to my eye. This time round it has a power I had not seen before. That cowboy ethos just will not leave America, as the final line of the film states – bluntly. The cactus rose represents both a ray of hope and beauty in a dark world, and also that which has been lost not to return. As the world turns, it is "plus ca change, plus c'est the same old thing": lies and cover-up. No romantic vistas here, no Monument Valley, only a mournful clear-eyed look at the American myth.

Black God, White Devil (1964), directed by Glauber Rocha. This Brazilian western is as bleak a film as you will see. It proceeds in 3 acts, the first dealing with a confrontation between a poor farmer Manuel (Geraldo Del Ray) and the wealthy landlord who cheats him, the second with the poor farmer and his wife Rosa (Yona Magalhaes) on the run and coming across a cult spiritual leader St Sebastiao (Lidio Silva) who attempts to separate husband and wife, and third with the poor farmer and his wife joining the bandit gang under the volatile leader Corisco (Othon Bastos). I guess the black god is St. Sebastiao who comes to his end after he directs Manuel to kill a baby in order to cleanse Rosa of her sins. She reacts by drving the bloodied knife into Sebatiao’s back. As for the white devil, this must be Corisco who is out to avenge the killing of legendary bandit leader Lampiao. We also have an assassin on the trail of both Sebastiao and Corsico; this character will remind you of Clint Eastwood's man with no name. The action takes place in the arid backcountry of Brazil known as sertao. From the opening shots of the earth and the rotting corpse of a horse, we know we are in unwelcoming territory. No one here comes off well: the poor are too easily convinced to follow charlatans, the wealthy are greedy and unscrupulous, the religious leader offers a baseless “island” where children drink milk from streams, the revolutionary leader is nothing other than a violent bandit. As for the filming, the black and white cinematography serves Rocha well. We have scenes that clearly evoke Eisenstein’s Odessa steps sequence from Potemkin, and scenes from Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew. Perhaps the most excruciating scene here invokes Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus. In this scene, Manuel struggles to place a huge rock on his head while on his knees, and then move up a steep road toward the chapel, all the while having Sebastiao prod him with a stick. The film’s action does not have a narrator, although the soundtrack does contain a number of folk ballads that comment on the action, and also serve to accentuate the importance of oral culture. Ultimately, this film suggests we get rid of both gods and devils because both lead us to violence, distrust, misunderstanding, and injustice.

The Furies (1950), directed by Anthony Mann. Intense. This film offers a transition from Mann’s 1940s noir films to his 1950s westerns, and it’s a doozie. It has noir lighting and angles and trapped characters, especially father and daughter, T. C. Jeffords (Walter Huston in his final film) and Vance Jeffords (Barbara Stanwyck). Both Huston and Stanwyck give crackerjack performances. Huston is the bombastic cattle baron and Stanwyck is his clever and manipulative daughter; the two of them have a relationship that is uncomfortably close, as some of the filming makes clear. For Vance, however, this is a love/hate relationship that comes to a boiling point when her father takes up with a gold digger of a woman, Flo Burnett (Judith Anderson). Then we have the friendship between Vance and Mexican squatter Juan Hererra (Gilbert Roland), and the romance between Vance and gambler Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey). Juan’s fate is not pleasant, and Darrow’s wheeling and dealing finally restore the Darrow Strip (a part of Jeffords’s huge ranch) to him. The film has something of King Lear in it. It has melodrama, action, darkness and light (mostly the former). It has an intensity of emotions rare in westerns, but familiar in Mann’s work. The source material is a novel by Niven Busch who also scripted King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (1946). Need I say more? Yes, I need say more. The Furies is a far superior film than Duel in the Sun. It never allows the over-the-top stuff to dominate. From images to lighting to acting to plotting, this is a superior western.

 

Hondo (1953), directed by John Farrow. I saw this film when I was a kid, probably around 9-years-old. The film I saw was in 3-D, and I have clear memories of several scenes from that 3-D experience. This is also the John Wayne film that I most strongly remember from my childhood, and it is a quintessential Wayne film. As Hondo, Wayne, is tall, taciturn, manly, and given to let others do as they think best, even when he knows that what they think best is wrong. His treatment of his dog, Sam, is a case in point. He neither pets nor feeds Sam because he thinks the dog ought to be independent. Well Sam’s independence goes only so far, and Hondo’s attitude is not one I share – at least any more. I probably thought that Hondo was pretty cool letting young Johnny Lowe (Lee Aker) try to pet Sam only to get bitten. Not only does Hondo let Johnny do what he wants, he also tosses him into the pond when he learns that Johnny cannot swim. “A man’s gotta do what he thinks best.” Anyway, the film is short - just 83 minutes – and brisk. The opening scene with Hondo walking across the barren terrain and arriving at the Lowe ranch stayed with me over the years. It seemed to last much longer than it actually does last. Like so many westerns, Hondo has a hero who is a loner, a man of the land, part Native and once married to a Native woman. His independence has its limits. Like the Anthony Mann films with James Stewart, Hondo has a rough edge. Hondo’s rifle is a prize he has won for marksmanship, reminding us of Winchester 73. Like Shane, Hondo is a mysterious stranger arriving at a lonely ranch where he finds he is attracted to a married woman and her son. The cast will be familiar with Geraldine Page, Ward Bond, Michael Pate, Leo Gordon, Paul Fix, Rodolpho Acosta, and James Arness.

 

The Vanishing American (1955), directed by Joe Kane. This is another of those 1950s westerns that set out to present a positive image of the Native American. Like others, such as the more famous Broken Arrow, The Vanishing American casts a white actor as the main Native character. Here, in eyeliner, we have Scott Brady as the Navaho Brandy; it is not entirely clear to me if Brandy is actually Navaho since he was raised by a white man. In any case, he believes he is Navaho (as I write such belief in Native heritage is in the news). If we can get past this casting, we have the delight of seeing Audrey Totter as Marion Warner, a gun-toting courageous and audacious woman who has come from the east to inherit a parcel of land, with water, in an area occupied by Navaho and lorded over by white merchant and criminal Morgan (Forrest Tucker). Despite the film’s interest in Native Americans, Marion steals the show. She sets out to take down Morgan and to help the people she initially thinks of as simply “savages.” Of course, she has the help of Brandy, although she helps him more than he helps her. And of course they fall in love. In this film, these two can end up together, something rare in films back then. Also of interest is Morgan’s abuse of the young Native girl Yashi (Gloria Castillo). Although subdued, this aspect of the film is clear: Morgan likes young girls. Among the cast we have many familiar faces: Gene Lockhart, Jim Davis, Lee Van Cleef, John Dierkes, James Millican, Julian Rivero, Jay Silverheels, Glenn Strange (playing a Native person), and uncredited, Hank Worden, and Frances McDonald. The location shooting in Utah is impressive. The story comes from a Zane Grey novel, although it softens, actually eliminates, the negative view of the U.S. government. This one is well worth revisiting.