Three Films Make A Post: The gun that became the law of the land !

Pickpocket (1959): The arthouse crowd loves to recommend this short crime drama with a prologue scroll explaining it isn’t a crime drama as a comparatively easy in to the world of French director Robert Bresson’s “minimalist, “austere”, “hypnotic” etc style. So I thought to myself, why not try it, for I do find quite a bit in at least a third of the films recommended thusly. It’s certainly easy to see the artfulness of the filmmaking, the intensity and elegance the film comes by exactly because Bresson is so aesthetically focussed. I’m much less sure about the rest of the style: emotionally and intellectually, this does very little for me. Bresson’s moral viewpoint seems completely disinterested in complexity, so is frankly rather boring for my tastes; I also find it hard to emotionally connect to a central character who mostly spouts half-cooked mock-existentialism about the superman. Add to this Bresson’s habit of casting non-actors in the main role to get “authentic” camera performances (or as I call it “the jitters” and monotonous line reading) which is something I absolutely loathe, and I think I’ll pass on Bresson’s films for the next decade or so.

The Mourning Forest aka Mogari no mori (2007): This also arthouse crowd approved tale of what I assume to be a care-giver (Machiko Ono) at some sort of retirement home (the film doesn’t do exposition) getting stranded in a forest for several days with one of their patients (Shigeki Uda) and working through their respective griefs, as directed by Naomi Kawase on the other hand, does quite a lot for me. It does appear rather loose and unfocussed at the beginning, but that’s really Kawase opening up the world of her characters for the audience without comment, opening up an approach to her grieving people’s endless complexities that may make things difficult, and not always obvious, but which also makes it possible to understand much more about them once one has tuned into things in the right way.

Colt .45 (1950): This Edwin L. Marin western with Randolph Scott as a salesmen for new-fangled colts finding himself set against the evil and somewhat perverse Zachary Scott (no relation) is a bit rough around the edges. There are certainly some great moments and ideas in here, but Marin isn’t quite the director to make the most of them.

So expect Scott teaming up with the local native American tribe in a nicely progressive turn, but also expect their portrayal to be even more awkward than typical of the era, and whose problems only start with their Chief being played by Chief Thundercloud, who was no chief of any tribe, and most probably not a Native American. There are huge (these things look as phallic as all get out, so I use the word on purpose) suggestions of the colts’ psychosexual influence particularly on our villain but they never quite gel in the end. Also worth mentioning are a pretty juicy part for Ruth Roman as the wife of a secondary villain (Lloyd Bridges in his young and buff phase) turning to Randolph rather quickly; a corrupt sheriff and other elements that make this unmissable on paper.

In practice, it’s just not that good of a movie (though not a bad one, either).

In short: The Nevadan (1950)

The Old West. Tom Tanner (Forrest Tucker) has stolen a nice amount of gold - first from a bank, and afterwards from his partner (which will not be important later on). Though he is caught, the Law is unable to find out where Tanner hid the loot.

While a marshal is transporting the bandit through Nevada, Tanner manages to escape, clearly bound for his ill gotten gains. On the way, he meets the seeming greenhorn - as demonstrated by his wearing of city clothes - Andrew Barclay (Randolph Scott). At first, Tanner steals Barclay's clothes and takes him as a sort of hostage, but soon enough, the greenhorn turns out to be quite handy with guns and horses and helps Tanner escape the interest of the men of Edward Galt (George Macready) - rancher, entrepreneur, greedy bastard - who wants Tanner's gold, too.

Clearly, there will be various changes of allegiance between Tanner, Barclay and Galt during the course of the film, and Barclay will turn out to be exactly who you'd expect from a character played by Randolph Scott. There's also a sub-plot concerning Galt's daughter Karen (Dorothy Malone), who has somehow managed not to realize that her dad is the evilest man alive and promptly falls for his enemy Barclay. If you smell a three-directional shoot-out for the film's finale, have a cookie.

Gordon Douglas's The Nevadan is situated at an interesting point in the history of the US low and mid budget western, created just before the real start of the wave of darker, more psychologically oriented films that were soon to come. The Nevadan is still beholden to the easier structures and morals of the films of the 40s, yet also shows its genre's developing interest in more complex characterization and a deeper exploration of themes the American western in general (I know, there are exceptions) had been circling around yet avoiding to confront head on for decades.

On paper, The Nevadan's plot already features exactly the sort of elements directors like Budd Boetticher or Andre de Toth would use to turn the genre's interest inward: there's the relationship between Barclay and Tanner that would be an ideal set-up to explore the similarity between the lawman and the bandit; the family relationship of the Galts, where the daughter turns out not to know her father at all, and the father uses her as an excuse to indulge in his worst impulses; Galt's brother pair of henchmen as another example of skewed and unhealthy family dynamics. In practice, The Nevadan does unfortunately shy away from doing more with these elements than just pointing them out, shrugging, and showing us a scene of people riding through the pretty landscape instead.

Though that comes as a bit of a disappointment for someone like me who is always hoping for the kind of western that made him fall in love with the 50s variant of the genre, The Nevadan is a pretty worthwhile example of the straight American no-nonsense western. There is after all quite a bit to like about the film: the acting is fine, if a bit too beholden to embodying standard archetypes instead of human beings (and everybody's cast exactly to his or her usual type, which is always a double-edged sword), the plot is merrily paced, and Gordon Douglas's direction shows the director (who'd later make one of my very favourite giant monster movies with Them!) as a man who knows how to shoot straight without shooting bland, and has a real hand for staging action scenes - the film's finale is even a bit exciting.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,western,gordon douglas,randolph scott,dorothy malone,forrest tucker,george macready,in short

Murders In The Zoo (1933)

"Millionaire sportsman" Eric Gorman (Lionel Atwill) is on an expedition to acquire new animals for a US zoo he is supporting. While he's in the frightening wilds of "the Orient", he also takes care of an admirer of his wife Evelyn (Kathleen Burke). Sewing his mouth shut and feeding the would-be adulterer to the tigers is a perfectly gentlemanly reaction, I'm sure.

Ironically, Gorman's victim is not the man he should have taken care of. His actual enemy when it comes to keeping his wife down is his friend Roger Hewitt (John Lodge). Roger finally succeeds in convincing Evelyn to divorce her husband and marry him. The fact that Gorman is a murderous maniac who needs Evelyn to be frightened to have sex makes Evelyn's wish to flee rather understandable.

Alas, her husband soon gets wind of the plan and kills Roger during a dinner on zoo grounds with a neat little gadget that simulates the bite pattern of a Green Mamba, a type of snake Gorman has gifted to the zoo, purportedly so that the resident toxicologist Jack Woodford (Randolph Scott, looking not leathery at all) and his assistant/fiancé/zoo director daughter Jerry (Gail Patrick) can try and develop an anti-venom for its venom.

In truth, Gorman just thinks that Woodford would make for a wonderful scapegoat. Poor Roger won't stay the millionaire's only murder victim on zoo grounds, as Gorman has way too much fun with his new murderous hobby.

Theoretically, the rest of the film concerns Woodfords and Jerry's attempts to clear their names, in practice, we mostly have to witness the annoying comic relief of one Charlie Ruggles.

Yes, Murders In The Zoo belongs to the exclusive club of films single-handedly ruined by one comic relief actor, playing a character who has nothing whatsoever to do with anything happening in the film yet still pops out again and again without any care for silly little things like tension or sanity. Just think! He works in a zoo, but he's afraid of animals! Yes, I too could hardly contain myself, either.

There are some surprisingly well-done moments to be found when Ruggles is not on screen (probably half of the film, the "comical" escapades however feel much longer), but I never had the feeling that anyone responsible for the film had any clue what worked and what didn't work about it. Murders In The Zoo feels a bit like a movie made by our old friends the monkeys chained to typewriters in that there are small islands of quality among the intolerable gibberish.

It's not difficult to imagine a film that actually makes use of the gusto with which Atwill goes into his role, or of the uncomfortable feeling all his interactions with his wife Evelyn leave the viewer with. What exactly is going on in their bedroom?

The only completely satisfying sequences of the film are the scenes where Evelyn realizes what her husband has done to Roger and (with Kathleen Burke suddenly going from "pretty" to "damn impressive actress") starts to do something about it. This short detour into the world of pro-active and believably written women then ends with Evelyn essentially letting herself being killed by her husband. In other words, it completely goes to waste in the most clueless way imaginable, as is only fitting for the messy state the rest of the film is in.

After that, the film just peters out somehow. The mystery part gets some sort of end, but since the film is still more interested in Ruggles being unfunny than in its purported romantic leads or its plot, it's all very anti-climactic and doesn't seem worth the effort of talking about it or - to be completely honest - watching it.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,mystery,lionel atwill,randolph scott,kathleen burke,reviews

Bride of Three Films Make A Post

House of Bugs (2005): Part of a series of short movies based on horror manga by the glorious Kazuo Umezu. This one was directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (whose tone is usually quite the opposite of Umezu's) and tells the story of a broken marriage that climaxes in a metaphorical or not so metaphorical bug transformation by way of Kafka and Rashomon. It is very much a Kurosawa film with his typical subtle aesthetic and the director's usual themes (alienation, the inability to empathize, broken families etc) and therefore quite excellent.

The Bounty Hunter (1954): The story of an infamous bounty hunter played by Randolph Scott coming to a small town to catch three robbers about whom he knows next to nothing and making the whole town more than a little nervous in the process feels a little slight, even though it has its share of darker flourishes. The plot just works out a little too pat, making this most certainly not the best cooperation between director Andre de Toth and actor Randolph Scott. Not that it would be a bad Western, it's just that de Toth and Scott seem to be coasting on their talents instead of straining them.

Dead & Breakfast (2004): A bunch of dweebs on the way to a wedding strand somewhere in Texas. "Comedy" ensues, until the locals get possessed by demons and zombified, which leads to the sort of gory "comedy" that would very much like to see itself standing in the tradition of early Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi, just with the minor drawback that it is about as funny as Bela Lugosi meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. At least I have a new example now when trying to explain the phrase "painfully unfunny". Oh, and the people who compare this to Shaun of the Dead will be taken care of soon, a dark and ancient power promised me.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,japanese movies,horror,comedy,western,in short,randolph scott,andre de toth,kazuo umezu,kiyoshi kurosawa

A Lawless Street (1955)

Calem Ware (Randolph Scott) is the marshal of Medicine Bend, a frontier town just a few steps away from becoming part of actual civilization. As it is now, with the Oregon still a territory instead of a state, and justice still decided by the drawing of a gun, Calem is the only one who truly stands between the town and barbarism.

The aging gunman knows this very well, as he knows that one day one of the outlaws who regularly come to town to better the living legend he has become will kill him. Perhaps it will be someone who is just faster with his gun than the marshal, or it will be Calem's own guilt for all the people he had to kill in the course of his life that will defeat him.

Calem would have to be less tense - and certainly less lonely - if more of the people he is trying to protect would be of help to him, but those who don't hide behind him when trouble arises, are passing the time making bets on his death.

Things come to a climax when Calem learns that some of the good people in town seem to be paying the gunmen who are trying to kill him, for a town without law would be a lot more profitable for them.

At the same time when his estranged wife, the dreadfully untalented showgirl Tally Dickensen (Angela Lansbury) who is still in love with her husband yet can't cope with Calem's dangerous lifestyle or the things that lifestyle does to him, comes to town, the marshal's enemies acquire the services of his old enemy Harley Baskem (Michael Pate). For once, there is someone in town who is just as dangerous as Calem Ware.

When one thinks of great American Western directors, one usually does not think of Joseph H. Lewis. Lewis wasn't a bad director at all, but most of his films are a small yet decisive bit shy of excellence. A Lawless Street is probably as close as Lewis ever came to making a true classic.

Lewis, whose direction style is often a bit pedestrian, here finds a nice and dynamic way to present the film, with some very tensely filmed scenes early on and a lot of intelligently framed shots. Mostly, Lewis is doing his best to emphasize the work of his actors and the strong script.

Seeing how strong most of the actors acquit themselves, this is a excellent decision. Scott gives one of the best performances in a career full of great ones, as always a performance defined at once by humor, a sparseness (not lack, mind you) and nuance of emotion and knowledge of the importance of small gestures that is so typical for him. The bad guys of the film, Michael Pate as Calem's nemesis and Warner Anderson and John Emery as the not so morally upright pillars of community who want the Marshal gone are given a little less to do by the script than Scott, but are doing some impressive acting anyway. The only sore spot in the ensemble is Angela Lansbury, terribly miscast and prone to a shrill melodramatic tone completely at odds with everyone else in the film.

Kenneth Gamet's script is quite successful at talking about the old theme of barbarism versus civilization, while keeping everything character-based and a lot more honest about its characters' inner life than many American western manage to be. Really, how many films of the era or the country do you know in which a marshal and his estranged showgirl wife are discussing divorce? Or in which adultery (by the wife, no less) is something a marriage can survive without anyone committing suicide?

Despite the script's copious strengths, it is the same script that lets the film down in the end. A Lawless Street's conclusion is incredibly hastily handled, quite anticlimactic, of course cursed with a less than believable total Happy End, and very much at odds with the thoughtful consideration it gave its themes until then. It's as if someone had suddenly decided that the careful riffing on (the hateful) High Noon, the nuanced characterization and the comparative subtlety with which the film considered its themes just wasn't good enough anymore and instead opted for his old friend, the sledgehammer.

Which is of course an excellent way to demonstrate the difference between a classic and a near classic. Poor Joseph H. Lewis (unless it was his fault).

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,western,randolph scott,reviews

Coroner Creek (1948)

A stagecoach is robbed by a group of renegade Apaches led by a mysterious white man (George Macready) who does not like witnesses a single bit. So he not only kills all the passengers, but later his gang as well.

Chris Denning (Randolph Scott), a man whose past we know nothing of and whose motives we'll learn just at the end of the movie, tries hard to track down the killer. His only clues are a spotty description and some assumptions about the habits of his prey which turn out to be exactly on the mark.

That's more than enough to keep someone with enough hatred going. After months, Denning finally finds his man. He now goes under the name of Younger Miles and has bought himself quite a position in the fine community of Coroner Creek as the owner of the biggest ranch in the area. Miles has also bought himself a trophy wife in Abbie (Barbara Reed) who is so unlucky in their marriage she has become an alcoholic and his own sheriff (Edgar Buchanan) - incidentally also Abbie's father.

Denning's not the man to just walk up to Miles and shoot him. The hatred has opened a rich vein of cruelty in a basically decent, even nice, man and he decides to first make Miles lose control before he seeks a direct confrontation. He finds a fine way to go about this without even looking for it - Della Harms (Sally Eilers), the owner of the other big ranch in Coroner Creek, and Miles are fighting a low-level war for control which Della is losing. Not surprising, since the female farm owner isn't a schemer without a conscience but a group of gunfighters like Miles.

She desperately needs a new foreman for her farm and Denning is just the man to do the job.

The path to Denning's vengeance is of course paved with the corpses of a lot of other people. Not even the love of hotel owner Kate Hardison (Margeruite Chapman, a competent, intelligent woman in a Western!) can convince Denning to just let the past and whatever Miles has done to him rest.

 

Coroner Creek is an excellent B-Western whose only real weakness lies in the direction of Ray Enright. It's not that Enright was a bad or sloppy director, he just was more of a craftsman than an artist and has to live with the comparison with someone like Budd Boetticher whose string of darkened films with Randolph Scott are some of the best the genre has to offer.

But I am a little unfair here - Enright might not have been visually inventive, yet it's obvious that he knew a good script and a good actor when he saw them and more or less kept out of their ways to let them do their thing.

And that they did. I shouldn't have to say much about Randolph Scott, seeing that the man was one of the most perfect Western actors on the face of the planet. His portrayal of Chris Denning is note perfect - he is at once a man capable of great compassion yet also capable of despicable cruelty. Scott is rather frightening in some scenes - the scene in which he breaks the trigger finger of one of Miles' goons who earlier did the same to him and the one in which he uses another one of them as a human shield against his boss (who of course shoots anyway) are moments you won't forget soon, if only for the intensity in Scott's gaze.

The rest of the actors does their job equally well putting to rest the bizarre notion of "Western equals bad acting" some people are still supposed to have. Macready's sociopath now gunning for social approval and Marguerite Chapman's woman who can take care of business (the film does not disapprove of this!) do especially fine work.

As the plot description already made clear, this is a rather less naive Western than some might be used to and quite progressive in its notion that vengeance and violence are not necessarily a good answer to violence, a film clearsighted enough to be interested in the effect justified hatred has on the person doing the hating. On the other hand, Kenneth Gamet's script isn't so cynical as to deny the existence of positive human traits as some Spaghetti Westerns would later do.

There is just the last fifteen seconds of the movie for the modern viewer to cope with, a so obvious "make the world all right again for the censor" ending that I can't help but imagine everybody behind the camera smirking cynically, rather like Clint Eastwood in Leone's Dollar trilogy.

If you are at all interested in the American Western in its (often more interesting) B-movie version, this is nearly as good a movie to start with as the films of Andre de Toth or Budd Boetticher.

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,western,randolph scott,george macready,reviews,ray enright