Here are two more selections from Tarantino’s movie marathon. He included them because they’re the kind of fare the lead character from his new film (Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton) might’ve appeared in. They’re both Westerns (obv.), and they’re on TV (in the UK) again as a double-bill later today.
In today’s roundup:
(1965)
Arizona Raiders begins with a double prologue that fills us in on the history of Quantrell, a bloodthirsty commander for the losing side in the American Civil War, who now runs rampant with his gang of former soldiers. In what would be a kind of prologue if it wasn’t for the two other prologues, the good guys, led by Captain Andrew (Buster “Flash Gordon” Crabbe, who starred in an unrelated film with the same title three decades earlier), finally catch up with Quantrell’s gang, who scatter, though some are captured and some are killed — including Quantrell himself. All that time telling us his life story, and the guy’s barely in it…
But that’s not the end for his gang, as an already mutinous lieutenant re-establishes it and begins rampaging again. A few years later, they’re terrorising Arizona, and Andrew is tapped to establish the Arizona Rangers — like the Texas Rangers, but in Arizona (clever, that) — and stop the gang. His bright idea is to break out two of the gang members he captured in the raid, Clint (Audie Murphy) and Willie (Ben Cooper), and send them undercover. The prison break works fine, but the guys aren’t convinced about whose side they should be on, even though Clint’s adoring younger brother is a fully signed-up Arizona Ranger and helping them on the mission.
I guess this is the kind of programmer they used to make piles of back in the day — the sort of good old fashioned Western where outlaws who’ve been living rough for months wear neatly-pressed shirts and boast clean-shaven features. At least its morality is more complicated than the old “white hats good, black hats bad” style, with anti-hero(es) for the lead role(s) — Clint and Willie aren’t just former criminals, you’re not sure they won’t just go back to their old ways once they meet up with their former gang. It gets really quite brutal in places too, with more bloody violence than you might expect from a Hollywood feature of its time.
Initially I thought this was only interesting for the context it provides to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, especially during the unusual opening 20 minutes. But it steadily improves as it goes on, developing into a pretty entertaining adventure, which includes a tense shoot-out halfway through and some surprising developments in the second half. Plus, with the dubious morality of its heroes and some relatively graphic violence, it’s perhaps a surprising for a classic-era Hollywood Western, too.
* This hasn’t been classified by the BBFC since its original release in 1965, when it was cut to just 89 minutes and given an A. You can rent it from Amazon (in HD too), where they say it’s rated 12. ^
(1958)
Phil Karlson | 90 mins | TV | 2.55:1 | USA / English
I found that much of Quentin Tarantino’s Swinging Sixties Movie Marathon was, to be kind, a mixed bag. I’d never even heard of most of the movies (the two I had will be in the next roundup), and it seemed like that was for good reason: watching them was interesting in one way or another, but I didn’t always particularly enjoy them. Proof in point: in the six reviews I’ve posted so far, I’ve given four poor two-star ratings and two middling three-star ratings. Gunman’s Walk is a definite exception, however: I’d never heard of this one either, but it’s a great Western, easily my favourite film of the marathon (so far), and I feel like it generally deserves to be better remembered than it is (and better treated — for example, the only Blu-ray release is in Germany).
At its most basic, it’s the story of a powerful rancher, Lee Hackett (Van Heflin), and his two grown sons, Ed (Tab Hunter) and Davy (James Darren), and the tribulations they face after Davy falls for a half-Sioux girl (Kathryn Grant) and Ed kills her brother, he says by accident, but witnesses say not. More than that, though, it touches on a handful of thematic points. It’s set at a time when the West was becoming less Wild: with towns and communities established, civilisation has truly arrived, and it risks leaving behind the frontiersmen who conquered the West — men like Lee Hackett. Tied to that is the way Lee has tried to raise his sons, in his own image, and almost more as underlings than children — he encourages them to call him “Lee”, for instance, and insists they obey rules like always wearing a gun.
I won’t spoil the twists and turns of the plot, but it’s a great narrative, powered by some superb performances. Heflin gets the biggest arc, with a multi-faceted role that takes a confident, commanding man through his paces to expose who he really he is, and how he really feels about his effect on the world. There develops an inner conflict within Lee, and the story and Heflin’s performance navigate its expression in various ways, both positive and negative. It seems like he’s an upstanding father at first, but then we see how this upbringing has twisted one of his sons, and when he’s confronted with problems we see the real man underneath — the man who thinks he’s above the law, and will do anything to get his own way. He likely doesn’t think of himself as having such negative qualities, but they’re clearly part of his character, and his sons — one of them, at least — has picked up on that and adopted it more overtly. At the end, when Lee realises that he’s ultimately responsible for creating this monster (albeit unintentionally), he then seems to realise his own flaws too.
Hunter and Darren’s characters are a bit more straightforward — the good son and the bad son — but they embody those roles well, with Darren a likeable nice guy and Hunter a boo-able wayward son. That’s a bit of an unfair simplification, actually, both of the story and character arcs and of Hunter’s performance. At the start Ed is merely not a very nice chap, bullying and sullen, whereas over the course of the movie he develops into a cold-blooded murderer. At no point are we on his side, but his degeneration affects characters we do like.
These days we’d say Gunman’s Walk is about toxic masculinity, in particular how it’s perpetuated, even if unintentionally. Lee has set very macho examples for his boys; although, while his ways are certainly becoming outdated, they’re not wholly dishonourable. Unfortunately, Ed has taken the wrong lessons from his father, and consequently developed values that are not only out of time but also twisted out of shape. He believes they’re How A Real Man Should Behave, even as we can clearly see how nasty they are. Davy stands in counterpoint: he was raised by the same father but has turned out alright, although that’s clearly by rejecting some of his father’s instructions. So both kids are formed in reaction to their father, for good or ill — literally for good and ill, respectively.
Talking with Tarantino, Kim Morgan says the film is more progressive than you’d expect from a ‘50s Western, specifically with regards to how it presents quite an anti-violence stance. I think that’s a fair assessment, and the film seems ever so timely, over 60 years later, with talk of prohibiting the carrying of firearms in town, etc. Apparently this was a genuine social issue back in the late 19th century too, which really shows how slowly the USA changes its attitudes. But a similar point can be made about the film’s treatment of Native American characters. After that killing of the brother, its his two Native American friends who were the witnesses to Ed’s actions. They’re the ones telling the truth, and, in fairness, the judge weighs their evidence equally against Ed’s… although as there’s two of them and one of him, and he takes that as being unsolvably balanced, I guess maybe not wholly equal. (Then again, the two guys are friends, so of course they’d support each other’s accounts.) But as soon as another white witness steps forward, well, that settles it. So even as they’re not specifically ill-treated, the system is still stacked against them. Elsewhere, characters use derogatory insults (“half breed”), but those issuing the insults are clearly pitched as bad guys, while Davy, the good son, wants to marry someone who places herself clearly on the Natives’ side. OK, so they’re still minor supporting characters, and the girl is half white and looks it (of course she does — it’s a ’50s Western, everyone’s white really), but, for the time it was made, it’s pretty advanced.
For whatever reason, Gunman’s Walk has become rather lost to time. I think it really merits a rediscovery, though: so many of its themes are exceptionally timely right now; but even aside from that, it’s just a damn good tale.
Gunman’s Walk placed 14th on my list of The 15 Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2019.
Arizona Raiders and Gunman’s Walk are both on Movies4Men today from 5:10pm.
100Films.co.uk 