Monday, September 18, 2017

Late Summer Western #15 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid **** (1969)

Watch enough movies you start to learn things about yourself.  Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is one of those, I prefer it to the other great Western of its time The Wild Bunch.  Peckinpah's film is about a bunch of old angry dudes who are cruel and hopeless. At least Scorsese's psychopath gangsters had a sense of humor.  Butch and Sundance, as played by Newman and Redford, take life with a grain of salt, smirking and wisecracking through life with a peculiar courage, but courage nonetheless.  They're outlaws because they got nothing better to do. They know the Old West is fading so they leave and give it a go in Bolivia. An existentialist tale for the weary; they're irreverence blended with bathos leaves a more lasting impression than slow motion violence. All to a Burt Bacharach score!  

Late Summer Western #14: Little Big Man **** (1970)

Little Big Man was based on the picaresque novel of the same title by Thomas Berger. The story is the life and times of Jack Krabb, a white man who lived among both Native American and White cultures. The film takes aim at the mythology Hollywood has championed in Westerns, namely: the triumphant narrative of winning the west. 

Little Big Man is American history as tragic farce.

Dustin Hoffman begins the films buried in makeup as a 121 year old lone survivor of the Battle at Little Bighorn. His story begins when Jack and his sister are taken in by Cheyenne Tribe after surviving a massacre.  Later Jack gets captured by the U.S. Cavalry and obverses religious hypocrisy, con artists, and the cruel nature of business. Back with the Cheyenne Tribe he witnesses a massacre committed by Custer's troops and tries to make it as a frontiersman.

Custer as played by Richard Mulligan is a complete buffoon, holding on to command only by his inane charisma. Obviously inspired by the Vietnam War, Little Big Man is one of the great anti-establishment films of its time.  

Arthur Penn's underrated direction balances a unique tone, hitting the line somewhere between absurdity and tragedy.

Hoffman pulls off the naivete and pathos of his character in several different vignettes; a film worthy of the current political climate.

Monday, September 4, 2017

Late Summer Western #13 High Plains Drifter *** (1973)

Clint Eastwood's 1973 Western High Plains Drifter bordered on being a straight up exploitation picture that reportedly offended John Wayne, a sordid morality tale on revenge and human nature. Eastwood plays "The Stranger," a loner who comes into Lago and within 20 minutes commits four felonies . . . and then the city fathers decide to give him carte blanche in running the town (a surprisingly prescient premise). He appoints a dwarf named Mordecai played by Billy Curtis as Sheriff and Mayor. The Stranger learns the town hides a terrible secret from its past and that three dangerous outlaws are approaching. So he enacts harsh justice on "Lago," exposing the town as a place of sinners and hypocrites.  Is he the Old Testament God? Or some avenging angel? High Plains Drifter is Sodom and Gomorrah set in the Old West; a viscous allegory that borders on dark comedy. Eastwood revels in his menacing performance. A cruel, cruel, Western.