If one had to make criticisms of High Noon, one might point out the rather intrusive use of Dimitri Tiomkin’s theme song in the scene between Kane and Helen, and the fact that although Kane refers to Frank Miller as crazy, he actually seems entirely rational in his single-minded pursuit of vengeance. Making Grace Kelly’s Amy an Eastern Quaker in order to provide a conflict with Kane’s Western ethics may seem rather unsubtle but, in the context of an 85-minute film, it’s an acceptable form of character shorthand. But these are fairly minor gripes – hell, even Gary Cooper is good in High Noon. This may seem a somewhat heretical thing to say about one of the Western greats but the fact is that while I can appreciate Cooper’s status as a Western icon, I’ve never thought much of his Westerns as Westerns. The Virginian (1929) is certainly of historical interest, but films like The Plainsman (1936), North West Mounted Police (1940) and Unconquered (1947) mainly serve to demonstrate that Cecil B. De Mille should have stuck to bashing the Bible. William Wyler’s The Westerner (1940) certainly has its moments (though the majority of them belong to Walter Brennan’s Judge Roy Bean), but I find it almost impossible to watch Cooper’s post-war Western performances without an acute sense of embarrassment, as Old Slowpoke mumbles and shuffles his way through a series of often unsuitable roles, all requiring a vigour which, due to a combination of age and ill-health, was by then quite clearly beyond him. In Marshal Will Kane, however, Cooper finally found a character which fitted the role to the man, rather than forcing the man into the role, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Next up in the shooting gallery, both inevitably and fittingly, was Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo (1959), frequently cited as “a conservative riposte” or even “the right wing answer” to High Noon – a viewpoint which, as Robin Wood has remarked, presupposes that the latter was definitely of the left (or, at any rate, liberal) in intent, a suggestion not immediately obvious from the film itself. Marshal Kane, for instance, is not a representative of the people: he is a figure of authority, whose special skills set him apart from the common herd. The good folk of Hadleyville are revealed to be a cowardly bunch of hypocrites, unwilling and incapable of acting together for the common good. Indeed, Wood concludes that the film not only “appears quite untainted by socialism” but that, in one respect, “it is clearly right wing, namely the issue of capital punishment: the whole plot (and Will Kane’s dilemma) hinges on the fact that the jury failed to hang Frank Miller.”

In fact, the only satisfying way of seeing High Noon as a political allegory is as a dramatisation of the personal position of scriptwriter Carl Foreman, who was being investigated by HUAC during the course of writing the film, and who found himself identifying more and more with Kane, as former friends disowned him and his avowedly liberal producer Stanley Kramer moved (successfully) to have him taken off the picture. (Nor should it be forgotten that, in the Foreman-as-Kane scenario, it was John Wayne and his cronies in the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals who played the part of Frank Miller and his gang.)

Hawks’ objections to High Noon seem founded more on his own notions of proper professional conduct than on any political reaction (indeed, the idea of Hawks as a political polemicist will seem ridiculous to anyone even vaguely familiar with his career). In short, he objected to the fact that Kane is reduced to asking the townspeople for help, something he felt a real professional would never do. This, on the face of it, is a rather odd notion: in the historical West, as opposed to Hollywood’s version, no one would have though it out-of-place for a lawman, faced with a similar situation, to attempt to recruit a posse. In Hollywood, however, the rules of the genre dictate that a lawman only relies on a posse if he is a secondary character; if he is the hero, he must, of course, face down the baddies all on his lonesome. Hawks’ rather woolly thinking on this point is further illustrated by the fact that while John T. Chance in Rio Bravo may reject help from non-professionals, the fact is that he does have four other characters ready to back him up – unlike Kane (at least until Amy does what a Western hero’s wife has gotta do), he is not a man alone.

Well, so much for that, what of the film itself? At the risk of relieving myself on certain people’s cherished cabbage-patch, the fact is I found Rio Bravo to be an excruciating experience, barely deserving the description of a Western, never mind its unwarranted reputation as one of the great Westerns. My objections, in no particular order, are as follows. Firstly, even by the standards of a “town Western”, this is a film which demonstrates no interest whatsoever in either the West as an historical entity or in the Western as a genre; Hawks’ sole interest is in his characters, none of whom I believe in, and all of whom spend the majority of what is a chronically overlong film engaged in a never-ending round of mutual self-congratulation, expressed in the most bogus and cringe-inducing dialogue you’re ever likely to hear. Much (far too much) has been made of the fact that the opening sequence is largely silent – if only the rest of the film had followed this example; in fact it’s about the talkingest “Western” I’ve ever had the misfortune to listen to.

Everything, absolutely everything, in Rio Bravo is subordinate to Hawks’ fixation with his main characters. The town itself may as well be uninhabited. The baddies are not characters, merely ciphers; Joe Burdette (Claude Akins) is nothing more than a plot device with a shit-eating grin who becomes irrelevant as soon as he’s locked up for his (entirely unmotivated) killing. Nathan Burdette (John Russell) is given the bare minimum of screen time and absolutely nothing by way of character development. Even the showdown at the end is more concerned with the squabbling and bickering between Wayne and Walter Brennan than in providing a dramatically satisfying settling of accounts (and while we’re at it, if Stumpy can actually throw the dynamite all the way to the Burdettes’ stronghold, what’s the point in having Chance shoot the sticks in mid-air? It’s just mindless bang-bang, spectacle for the sake of spectacle). Robin Wood has praised “the strikingly naturalistic background” of the saloon in the opening sequence, but such attention to detail does not stretch to the costuming of the minor characters, all of whom (and in particular the baddie who trips up Chance in the hotel) look like they’ve come straight from the discount section of the Western Costume Company.

And what of the main characters? John T. Chance strikes me as the first instance of John Wayne playing ‘John Wayne’, that bragging, swaggering, and lazy self-caricature that characterised most of the actor’s later output. Dean Martin (surely one of the most unlikely of Western stars) gives a good performance as Dude, and Walter Brennan does his loveable old coot turn as only he could. Angie Dickinson as Feathers somehow manages to retain her dignity despite being required to deliver some of the most god-awful dialogue ever written, while Ricky Nelson as ‘Colorado’ gives new meaning to the term ‘lightweight’. But, just to be clear, the problems I have with Rio Bravo lie not in the performances (despite reservations about that of Wayne) but in the characters themselves, their interaction, and the situations in which they’re placed.

In fact, I don’t mind confessing that I found watching Rio Bravo again such a dispiriting experience that I even began to question Hawks’ reputation as a director, and certainly as a director of Westerns. So I went back and took a look at Red River (1948) in an attempt to restore my faith. Well, it worked – up to a point. There’s no doubt that it’s superior to Rio Bravo in almost all respects, even if it does go horribly wrong in the last quarter or so. For a start, it’s a Western with something to say about the men who inhabited the West, and John Wayne gives a real performance, rather than something verging on self-parody. Chance’s relationship with Stumpy clearly has its beginnings in that between Wayne’s Dunson and Brennan’s Groot, but because the film is so much darker in tone, their squabbling and bickering has a real weight to it, as opposed to being little more than a tiresome comedy routine.

The rot, however, sets in with the first appearance of Joanne Dru’s Tess Millay, another example of what we have been conditioned to call the Hawksian heroine. Unbelievably, Hawks has Tess and Montgomery Clift’s Matt Garth meet up in the middle of an all-out Indian attack on a wagon train. There’s Monty, doing his best to save the day, when all of a sudden Tess starts spouting that excruciating, cod-cool guff that got handed to every Hawksian heroine after To Have and Have Not (1944). And so we find Hawks placing what Billy Wilder called a “meet-cute” right slap-in-the-middle of an action sequence, thereby displaying the first sign of either his disinterest in, or contempt for, the Western as a form, an attitude which, I would contend, reaches its ultimate expression in Rio Bravo. As for Red River, the whole film, down to its ludicrous cop-out ending, goes right off the trail from that point on.

Now, of course I’m aware that all directors have a tendency to repeat themselves over time, and that in Hawks’ day, no director could have imagined that his entire oeuvre would be subjected to the sort of scrutiny possible today, but nonetheless one has to ask to what extent such repetition constitutes what the auteur crowd would call “a consistent vision”, as opposed to what the less charitably-inclined might term mere laziness or even creative bankruptcy. Hawks, in effect, reproduced the same heroine over and over again, seemingly oblivious to the fact that what worked, dialogue-wise, in 1940s’ contemporary thrillers might seem wildly out-of-place in a different setting, in this case the Western. Of course, some may say that, after all, Rio Bravo is only an entertainment, and that there is much to enjoy in Feathers’ verbal taunting of the otherwise impregnable John T. Hey, it’s only a movie, man, so chill out. But if one can’t believe in a film’s characters as human beings with some connection, however basic, to a recognisable human reality, then one is already on the path to the sort of films which dominate in mainstream Hollywood today, peopled by characters who are little more than empty ciphers, signifying nothing. Or to put it another way, and to bring it back to Hawks, has anyone ever met a woman in real life who talks and acts like a Hawksian heroine? Of course not; Feathers and all her forebears are fantasy figures, and it’s doubtful, at the very least, that real art (as opposed to real entertainment) can emerge via characters who themselves are patently unreal.

The more one learns about Hawks’ films – or at any rate, the two under discussion here – the more one comes to question not only the whole auteur persona created around him, but also his judgment. Did Hawks seriously believe that Red River would have worked (in so far as it does) had he been able to follow his original inclination to cast Gary Cooper as Dunson and Cary Grant as gunman Cherry Valance? Just stop and think about that for a moment. And let’s not forget those awful songs in Rio Bravo, which even its staunchest defenders find difficult to justify. Would it make any difference to the cultists – who like to maintain that the sequence in question is another example of the bonding process essential to the Hawksian principle of group loyalty – to know that the only reason the damn things are in the film is because Jack Warner told Hawks that both Dean Martin’s and Ricky Nelson’s contracts called for them to warble at least once before the end credits? Or to point out what looks suspiciously like an early example of product placement with the inclusion of the prominently-named Hotel Alamo and the ‘No Quarter’ degüello from the famous siege, both of which just happened to appear in a John Wayne film released the year before the Duke attempted to convince all good Americans that it was their patriotic duty to see him wearing a coonskin hat in The Alamo? Well, probably not, but it should.

So there you have it. High Noon, whatever the claims made for it as political allegory, attempts to tell a story about real people in as realistic a way as possible, given the demands imposed by its narrative structure. Rio Bravo is a film peopled with unreal characters, with unreal names, acting implausibly in an unreal situation. As Old Slowpoke himself apparently put it (according to an annoyingly unattributed quote on the IMDb), Hawks’ film was “so phony, nobody believes in it”. Helen Ramírez or Feathers, the choice is yours. But, to quote another film in the IFI season, “Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining.”

Much as I might like to delve in some detail into the other films included in the season, the fact is this column has to reach Sedalia at some point in time, and as I reckon we’ve been on the trail quite long enough, I’ll confine myself to a few brief remarks on the remainder, namely, Alex Cox’s Walker (1987), a non-Western, entertaining in an off-the-wall, Monty Python-kind-of-way, mainly thanks to Ed Harris’ hilariously unhinged central performance. Then, due to a programme clash, I was faced with a choice between The Searchers (1956) and Damiano Damiani’s A Bullet for the General (Quien sabe?, 1966), the latter shown as an example of the political Spaghetti Westerns of the mid- to late-1960s, and followed by a discussion between Declan Clarke and author, Austin Fisher. Much as I admire Damiani’s film (despite his insistence that it is not a Western), and much as I instinctively dislike John Ford, I went with The Searchers, not least because it was being shown in a new DCP print on the big screen in Cinema 1, whereas Bullet was being projected from DVD on a small screen in Cinema 3. Well, love Ford or hate him, The Searchers is one of the great films, one which just seems to get better and more rewarding with each viewing. Monumental.

The 1964 Czech film Lemonade Joe (Limonádový Joe aneb Koňská Opera), directed by Oldřich Lipský, is a surprisingly gentle, if totally deranged, satire on Westerns and capitalism that might best be described as a live-action cartoon. At 99 minutes, it proved to be about twenty minutes too long, but was certainly an experience one is unlikely to forget in a hurry. The closing day’s films were Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), which remains as impressive as ever, and Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954), another alleged classic that I’ve never been able to stomach. Before and in between the latter films, I had a brief chat with Declan Clarke, who kindly explained the reasoning behind his choice of films, and with Austin Fisher, whose claim to be lecturing on film to an entire class, none of whom had ever seen a Western, I found even more alarming and depressing than the IFI’s assertion that this had been their first ever Western season. With ticket sales of over 600 for the five-day event considered quite satisfactory, it is to be hoped that the powers-that-be will once more take the metaphorical bit between their teeth and ride like the wind! [A review of Austin Fisher’s Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western: Politics, Violence and Popular Italian Cinema, published this year by I.B. Tauris, will appear in this column in due course.]

40^th. Anniversary Screening of A Fistful of Dynamite

Irish Film Institute, 1 November 2011

Since its initial proposal in September of last year, it was with a distinct feeling of relief that I strode manfully towards my scheduled showdown with Sir Christopher Frayling, ahead of his appearance that evening to introduce the 40th. anniversary screening of Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dynamite (Giù la testa, 1971) at the IFI. The time, of course, high noon; the place, the front gate of Trinity College (because, as Christopher likes to quip, Trinity Is Still My Name). But I digress; the event, though confirmed since February, had only recently – and I do mean recently – been guaranteed by the arrival of a new Digibeta transfer of the restored version of Dynamite. Prior to that, I had twice been dragged out of bed at some unearthly hour in order to view the two 35mm prints supplied by the British distributor, Park Circus.

The first, most surprisingly, was the original American print, complete with the original ghastly title of Duck, You Sucker. What this was doing in Park Circus’ vaults was anyone’s guess. In one respect, the print was in excellent condition: no scratches, no breaks at the joins; on the other hand, having presumably sat undisturbed in the same rusty can since 1971, the whole film had turned a horrible orange colour. Clearly, this would not do. And so onto the British print, under the Dynamite title, which I strongly suspected would be the same beat-up copy I’d seen in London back in the Eighties. And so it proved to be – though in even worse condition than I remembered. If one were a connoisseur of scratches, this was the print to choose. This one had it all – vertical scratches, horizontal scratches, thin ones, thick ones, green ones, you name it. Even the scratches had scratches. The colour, at least, was an improvement on the U.S. print but it was clearly a non-starter unless the IFI chose to bill the evening as a genuine, retro Seventies’ fleapit experience.

Frantic negotiations ensued between the IFI and Park Circus, eventually leading to an offer to strike the afore-mentioned Digibeta print, for a tidy sum guaranteed to ensure the whole event ended up in the red even before it had started. At which point, Angela Tangianu, director of the Italian Institute of Culture in Dublin, weighed in with a fistful of euro which more or less covered the cost of the transfer. Back in the black again, just about. Now, with only five days to go, it was a matter of publicising the damn thing in order to get as many bums on seats as possible. Trouble was, the Leone show was scheduled for the day after the end of the annual Horrorthon film festival, run by my good friend, the legendary Ed King, and unfortunately, the type of crowd that might turn up for a Leone-Frayling event was the not the sort who were currently rushing the box-office for their yearly dose of gore, guts, and things that go bump in the night (before cutting people to pieces with a chainsaw). And anyone of a squeamish disposition was likely to steer well clear of the IFI until Ed’s army of the living dead had removed themselves from the vicinity.

Nonetheless (and for reasons I’ve never quite understood), the show must go on, so on it went. Christopher duly reined in early to do a sound and image check, John Boorman rode in from the wilds of Wicklow, as did special-effects guru, Gerry Johnston. And off we went! Kevin Coyne of the IFI, who had to wade through enormous heaps of bullshit in order to make it all happen, stood up and thanked those who needed to be thanked, and then introduced me (or at any rate, “John Exshaw of Retro Cinema”, which I guess was near enough). I stood up and babbled something incoherent before handing over to Christopher. And Christopher launched into his specially-prepared talk as only he can, leaving the 106 paying customers hanging on his every word. He then hosted a discussion on Leone and the film with John and Gerry, the former providing his customary wry but illuminating comments, the latter recalling how he was forced to strip to the waist in Toner’s Pub to demonstrate on his own person the harmless effects of a bullet squib, in order to provide reassurance for an actor of a decidedly yellow disposition.

And then, the house lights dimmed, Rod Steiger started pissing on an ants’ nest and the Irish première of the restored version of Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dynamite was finally under way. At which long-dreamed-for moment, I found myself being shunted out of the cinema in order to have dinner with Christopher, Gerry, Angela, Kevin, and IFI programmer, Pete Walsh (John Boorman, no doubt wisely, opted to ride like the wind back to Wicklow). As it suddenly dawned on me that, having finally got the afore-mentioned première up there on the big screen where it belonged, I wasn’t actually going to see it, I’m afraid something inside me just snapped. I’m told it wasn’t a pretty sight, and that Pete is still receiving anti-tetanus injections for the bite in his thigh. I’m told my language would’ve made even Tuco blush – or at least break out in applause. I’m told all these things because I have absolutely no recollection of them myself, and that, so I’m told, is because at the point where I tried to climb into the projection booth in order to strangle the projectionist, Kevin hit me from behind with the U.S. print of Leone’s film, still in its tin. Guess nobody warned me to duck, you sucker!

Christopher Lee at T.C.D.

9 November 2011

In early November, it seemed as if it was virtually impossible to move around Dublin without bumping into at least two varieties of Sir Christophers, neither of whom require any introduction to readers of Cinema Retro. On the ninth of the month, and some 140 years after Bram Stoker held the Presidency of the University Philosophical Society of Trinity College, Dublin, Sir Christopher Lee, the most renowned living interpreter of the Irish author’s most famous character arrived in the same Graduates’ Memorial Building to be presented with the Bram Stoker Gold Medal of Honorary Patronage. The 89-year-old actor, who recently reprised his role of Saruman for Peter Jackson’s forthcoming version of The Hobbit, appeared in good form and, after giving a scholarly discourse on the origins of the name Dracula, was soon providing detailed and entertaining answers to questions posed first by the current President of The Phil, Eoin O’Liatháin, and then by members of the 200-strong audience.

(Photo copyright John Exshaw)

While those expecting Lee to hold forth on the Socratic Method or Kant’s Categorical Imperative may have been disappointed by the irredeemably low-brow nature of the questions, those expecting anecdotes from Lee’s still flourishing career were amply rewarded. Lee even found time to recount an episode from his war service with the Gurkhas in Italy before mentioning, not entirely convincingly, “But I’m not allowed to talk about that . . .” Lee was also presented with a copy of the Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James (Oxford University Press), by the book’s editor, and current Head of Trinity’s Department of English, Dr. Darryl Jones, which prompted a recollection of Lee’s own meeting with James, during a scholarship interview for Eton in the 1930s. Not long after, Lee, accompanied by his wife, Lady Gitte, disappeared, if not in a cloud of smoke then at least in a puff of exhaust fumes as a black limousine whisked him away to the airport.