Film review: The Bronze Buckaroo (1939)

An all-black cast in a singing cowboy movie?  From the 30s?  Yes please!  And The Bronze Buckaroo did not disappoint.  The titular hero is Bob Blake,

whose outfit looks like it was the influence for Clevon Little's Gucci outfit in Blazing Saddles.  He gets a letter requesting help from his friend Joe, and sets off with his trusty crew to the ranch where Joe and his sister live(d) with their father.  I say titular hero, because the real stars of the film are Dusty,

who is a long-time member of Bob's crew, and Slim (on the left below),

who works on the ranch, and whose first act on meeting Bob and co. is to trick Dusty (the others aren't fooled) with ventriloquism into buying a "talking" mule for 12 dollars.  And intermittently through the film, these two have comedy interludes, including a particularly good card game where each is trying to cheat the other (Slim with a good deal more success).  Turns out Joe's sister is the only one of the family left: the father was found shot in the back out on the ranch and Joe has vanished weeks ago while out investigating.  Suspicion naturally falls on their crooked rich neighbor, and it eventually emerges that there is gold on the ranch and the neighbor has been trying to get the deed by hook or by crook (although it was his thuggish (and portly) head henchman (whom Bob earlier knocks out in a bar fight after he has rather surreally attacked Dusty and Slim by the method of forcing them to smoke 4 cigars at once and drink shot after shot) who killed the father before he could sign the deed).  (The sister is of course pretty,

and she and Bob are seen riding off together at the end.)  There are several singing interludes, and the songs are catchy and the singing great, with a little bit of soft-shoeing thrown in.  And it all winds up in a big shootout out in the desert in rock formations that Jami swore were featured in Tarantula, and Jami should know her deserts, having grown up in Arizona.  I have one question though: turns out Joe wrote the letter while imprisoned by the neighbor (and threw it out into the street, where a kindly old gent found it and mailed it).  So why didn't he say "Help!  I am being held prisoner at ____" instead of the actual vague language of "Could you come and help out?"  Would've saved a lot of time investigating.  (Oh, and in case you were wondering, Dusty gets his revenge on Slim and gets his money back and gets to keep the mule.  All because of a pamphlet on how to learn ventriloquism in ten easy steps...)

Film review: The Count of Monte Cristo (1934)

I've made it only about two thirds of the way through the book, but this seemed pretty faithful to me.  Robert Donat (who stars in probably my favorite Hitchcock of all time, The 39 Steps, as well as the excellent The Ghost Goes West) is excellent as Edmond Dantes, the innocent sailor who gets thrown in prison for unwittingly delivering a letter from Napoleon, and vows revenge on the three men (a corrupt fellow-sailor, a corrupt judge (whose main reason for putting him in prison is that he can identify the judge's father as a Bonapartist) and the man who wants Dantes' betrothed for himself) as he suffers in France's equivalent of Alcatraz for decades.

Really, enough plot is packed into the novel for three full-length films, so it's understandably condensed (and devices like a switch of point-of-view are removed, which I don't think hurts (there's a reason I gave up on the book)) and there's quite a lot of expository talk, but it's undeniably gripping, packed with good characters and cliffhangers.  Pirates!  Treasure! Duels!  Financial ruin!  Devilry revealed in theatrical tableaux! A good-old-fashioned epic, which flies by, despite being nearly 2 hours long.  The good end happily, the bad unhappily - that is what fiction means. 

Our swimming routine

First, we walk (through scenic state parks, ideally) and arrive at a launching spot.  I carry a partially inflated inner tube along with me that I can add the last few puffs to at the shore.

The key part of equipment is this super nifty totally waterproof backpack.  It's more-or-less empty on the way, but when we get to the lake...

...we take off our shoes...

...and our shirts...

Here's the top that rolls up to seal it watertight...

...like so.

Then we launch!

Then we swim for around an hour-ish, until we arrive at a place to get out:

What is with the stone-stacking that everyone seems to be hooked on?

Let the air out...

...pack it in the backpack

...add the towel

And we're ready for the trip back to the car!

Film review: Man of the West (1958)

According to the somewhere that I read it, Francois Truffaut remarked that the French care about psychology or character studies while Americans care about plot (which certainly explains Simenon).  According to somewhere Jami read it, Jean-Luc Godard said that this was the best Western and Gary Cooper's finest hour.  The former explains the latter, in my view, because I was fairly unmoved by it but it certainly is some kind of psychodrama.  It's the last Western directed by Anthony Mann, also responsible for the first Western Noir we watched, The Naked Spur, and it has a lot in common with it (although, to be frank, I prefer that one).  An aging Hollywood icon plays a flawed man who finds redemption in part by saving a much younger woman (played by an up-and-coming much younger actress).  In this case the younger woman is Julie London, and actually she falls for him, rather than the reverse, as in Spur.  In both the antagonist is played by another stalwart character actor, and in this case it's Lee J. Cobb, looking nothing like how I'm used to him

(e.g. 12 Angry Men or On the Waterfront), and looking surprisingly at home well away from New York City.  The film (which is in sumptuous technicolor, and looks much more big budget than any of the other Western Noirs) begins lightheartedly enough, with Cooper arriving in town, dropping off his horse at a stable, and nervously (it's his first time) boarding a train for Fort Worth, where he is to hire a teacher for the newly-opened school in his small town.  As he reveals to the card sharp who strikes up a conversation with him, he has gathered together everyone's money in the town to pay her a year's salary up front to persuade her to move to the sticks.  With eyes on the money, the card sharp (a Sam Beasley) is trying to persuade Link that he doesn't need to go to Fort Worth to get a teacher, because his friend Billie Ellis (Julie London) who has just moved on from being a barroom singer in the town they've all just left, is trained as a teacher, when the train stops to fill up on wood, and all the male passengers are recruited to speed this up.  As this is happening, the train is attacked by horse-riding robbers, but the guard manages to get the train started and get up on it with a rifle, and shoots one of the robbers in the back.  In the end, all the robbers get away with is Link's bag, because the one that gets shot was on the train and also heard about the money.  Link and Sam and Billie are stranded and set out to find shelter.  Link leads them to a deserted-looking farm in the middle of nowhere where he says he used to live.  Turns out he used to live there because he used to be part of the criminal gang that still uses it as a base, and it's also the gang that includes the feckless train robbers.  He is reunited with Lee J. Cobb's Dock Tobin, whose name is famous in those parts but who appears to have fallen on hard times.  He only has about 6 men, one of whom is pretty simple, another of whom is a mute, and another of whom is dying in the next room of the wound in the back.  The next stretch of the film is where the psychodrama comes in.  Dock's young hoodlums are suspicious of Link and want to kill all three of the newcomers, while Dock is almost desperate to believe that his favorite protege has returned to the fold.  (It's a bit awkward: although they've made Cobb up to look old, he's supposed to be significantly older than Cooper, who by this stage was himself in his late 50s and looking older.)  It's reminiscent of yesterday's Day of the Outlaw, except that Dock is less compos mentis than Burl Ives's character and less inclined to rein in his young thugs (the nastiest of which is played by a very young Jack Lord, nothing like his Hawaii 5-0 character).  They hold Link at knifepoint and get Billie to start stripping

until Link persuades Dock that they need to get ready for the big job Dock has been dreaming about for years and is now prepared to try with Link returned.  After a night spent huddled with Billie in the shed, Link wakes to find that another old companion of Dock's, Claude Tobin, has returned from a scouting mission.  He too knew Link back when and is deeply suspicious of Link's claims, as well as being fiercely protective of his relative.  He also brings the news that Link was recognized on the train by a lawman who remembers his sordid past, so now the whole gang is being sought by the law.  Nonetheless, Dock is dead set on robbing the bank in a town called Lassoo, where, he claims, mines from all round deposit their gold.  On the way there, they stop for a break and amuse themselves by fighting, whereupon Link gets his revenge on Jack Lord

(by stripping him, bizarrely enough) whereupon the humiliated hoodlum tries to shoot Link but hits Beasley, who throws himself in front of Link.  Beasley is as surprised at this selfless act as anyone, but says, in a tragi-comic speech, that he'd done a quick calculation and worked out that he would be almost certain to be killed next if Link died, and gives the odds he worked out just before he dies in Link's arms.  Jack Lord, meanwhile is offed by Dock, and they press on.
The best part of the movie, for my money, is the raid on the bank in Lassoo.  It reveals how truly past it Dock is, and manages to be a great final shootout and a commentary on the squalidness of typical gunfighter violence.  Julie London survives, but there's every indication that she was taken advantage of by the henchmen while Link went ahead to the bank.  And once again, there's a (largely) happy ending, although Billie knows that she can't have Link, because he's got a wife and kids back in his hometown.  I have to say, though this film is much praised, it's probably my least fave of the Western Noirs, and Cooper's acting doesn't have the depth I was led to expect.  It's no High Noon, for example.  (Oh, by the way, the title comes from the fact that every time Link is asked where he comes from, he says "a town west of here" whose name he variously gives as Sawmill or New Hope.)

Film review: Day of the Outlaw (1959)

So far we're 4 for 4 in the Western Noirs, because this one was also excellent.  It stars Robert Ryan, last seen as the villain in The Naked Spur, but here much more like his On Dangerous Ground character of stoic hard man.  This one is the noir-est yet, and the most modern of them all.  The down-at-heel town and snowy setting (so unlike the usual studio sets) reminded me of McCabe and Mrs. Miller.  When it begins, Ryan's Blaise Starrett comes off as a heavy, as he's coming into town fixing to pick a (possibly deadly) fight with the farmer Hal Crane, who has bought a huge supply of barbed wire to fence in his farm, thereby preventing Starrett's cattle from roaming free.  (This homesteaders-vs.-ranchers theme seems to be a very common one.)  His sidekick comments that maybe Crane's hot young wife is the ulterior motive for wanting to kill Crane, but it's only after Starrett and said Mrs. Crane (Tina Louise, unrecognizable as Ginger from Gilligan's Island - and as proof, Jami, who was raised on GI, didn't recognize her) are brought together for coffee at the general store that we find out that they had been lovers but Mrs. Crane has decided that she can't live with the duplicity and will stay faithful to her dull husband.  Then, later, Starrett confronts Crane and a gaggle of his fellow homesteaders as Starrett stocks up on kerosene to burn Crane's cart load of wire and Crane insists he leave it.  Things come to such a head the next morning that Crane and two others are about to get into a gunfight with Starrett (he's stipulated that they draw when a bottle rolled along the bar smashes, and it's just reaching the end of the bar) when... the real film begins.  The bottle is stopped by Burl Ives (probably most famous for being a voice behind the Frosty the Snowman animated specials, but should be famous for his amazing eyebrows) as Bruhn, a renegade ex-Union officer who is now leading his ragtag band of outlaws on the lam with $40,000 of stolen money. 

They're being chased by the cavalry, but this town is the end of the trail.  Bruhn's men start by confiscating all the guns and then start salivating over the women of the town.  (Actually, there are only three - Mrs. Crane, the wife of the saloon owner, and the daughter of the General Store owner, a feisty late-teen-early-twenties girl called Ernine (who causes all sorts of problems).)  Two of Bruhn's men are particularly unsavory: a giggling psychopath called Pace, and a deep-voiced brute called Tex.  Just what they would do to the women if allowed is strongly hinted at, and it's genuinely disturbing.  Bruhn reins them in, and even worse, forbids them any alcohol, because he only wants to rest overnight and get a bullet dug out of his chest, before moving on, and he knows that if that lot ever get hold of a drink they'll go berserk.  Immediately, the Starrett-Crane feud is forgotten, and it turns into a Petrified Forest/Key Largo kind of deal.  The first challenge is to dig the bullet out of Bruhn.  This task is foisted on the town vet (it takes place in a room with a calf sitting in the corner) who is terrified.  In fact, he asks Starrett if he should make sure Bruhn doesn't make it, to which Starrett responds in no uncertain terms that Bruhn is the only thing stopping his men wiping the town off the map.  Bruhn does survive the surgery (after revealing a "Mormon massacre" in his past that might explain the end of his military career) but the vet doesn't like his chances.  Meanwhile, the last of Bruhn's recruits, a fresh-faced young fellow called Gene (played by the son of Ozzie and Harriet - lots of sitcom connections in this one!) falls for Ernine, and protects her little brother when Bruhn takes him hostage to keep the townsfolk in line.  There's an attempt to get the women out of town that is foiled,

and results in Starrett getting a beating (but not before he beats up Tex) and then a nightmarish "party" where the women are manhandled

as they get whirled about to a frantic piano until finally Starrett convinces Bruhn that, although it's blizzarding up where they are, there's no snow on the plains and the cavalry are fast-approaching, and that he has to get going up into the mountains.  "There's a way through" he tells him, and to prove it, he will lead them.  There isn't, of course, and he intends to lead all of them to their doom, himself included, until Ernine lets that slip to Gene,

who blabs to Bruhn.  At this point Starrett reveals to Bruhn that he's not going to recover from that bullet, and Bruhn decides to help save the town from his own men, and they head off into the snow.  This last section of the movie is genuinely gripping, and appears to be filmed in real blizzard conditions, with the horses up to their stomachs in the snow. 

Bruhn lasts long enough to get Gene off the party so he can trudge back to town (and Ernine) before keeling over, whereupon the savages cut loose.  Will Starrett make it?  Will there be a final shootout?  Let me just say that the two people you want most to get theirs do indeed get theirs, but in surprising fashion.  Think Jack London.  All in all, a gripping, surprisingly brutal little number - maybe my favorite Western Noir yet, although I've thought that after each one...

Film review: The Walking Hills (1949)

So far these Western Noirs have been great, and this one's no exception.  A taught little number, at only 1 hour 18 minutes, it wastes no time getting going and hardly stops for breath.  We see a man in a border town being followed by another man, who is egged on by an older man.  They note in particular that the first man lingered in front of a diner and locked eyes with a waitress in there. We later discover that the old man is the father of a man killed by the first man, and the second man is a private eye (of dubious morals) hired by the old man to track down the killer.  But we don't know that until later.  The killer (William Bishop) who goes by various names but is currently known as Shep, crosses over the border and goes into a saloon, where a black man is strumming a guitar to the empty room.  The singer is Josh White (known as Josh in the film) and we get to see a fair number of his songs.  In fact, that's one time the movie takes time to stop and look around, as it were.  It's an effective device: somehow it makes you care more about the characters that the camera lingers on as you hear him singing.  Anyway, it turns out that everyone is playing poker in the next room.  The main parties to this game are Jim (played by the only cast member I'd heard of before, Randolph Scott (now most famous for his relationship with Cary Grant), about 50 at the time), Chalk (so named, presumably, because he is very blond),

grizzled old prospector Willy, and young cowboy Johnny.  Shep joins the game, and then the detective (who, it turns out, is called Frazee (stress on the second syllable)) walks in and also joins.  Shep asks if he knows him and Frazee responds that maybe he does if he was in Denver.  (This is where the man was killed, we find out in flashback later.)  As they are in Mexico, there's an uneasy truce, it seems, and they are quickly distracted as Willy recounts the story of a wagon train of gold that disappeared about a century ago in "The Walking Hills" - giant sand dunes nearby that constantly shift because of windstorms.  Then Johnny recounts that he was riding through there very recently and his horse stumbled on a funny skinny-style wagon-wheel that was sticking out of the sand.  Significant glances all round.  Very quickly they decide that that must be the wagon train and make a plan to go look for the treasure.  Frazee is more keen than anyone: it seems that his lust for this gold trumps his desire for any reward for shopping Shep (and taking the risk that Shep will divulge the story of the gold).  And off they set.  A complication is that Jim has a mare about to foal and he has his native ranchhand Cleve bring her along.  And then when they find what they think is the right location and set up to dig, they spot someone approaching from the distance.  Turns out it's the waitress that Shep was looking at (Ella Raines),

and she was originally a stunt rider in a rodeo, which is where she met Shep.  She and Shep were head over heels in love and she was expecting him in Denver and he never showed.  She also has history with Jim, whom she was with prior to falling for Shep

(whom she knows as Davey.  Yes, it's a little convoluted, but you can handle it).  In true Treasure of the Sierra Madre fashion, tempers flare.  And Frazee is caught signalling to someone in the nearby mountains with a mirror.  What's going on?  Will they find the gold?  And, uh oh, a massive sand storm is coming in, and the old cook recounts how he saw a car after being in one of those and the glass was milky white and the paint was stripped off down to the shiny metal.
Very entertaining.  However, again, not really a noir.  It had plenty of opportunity for a nihilistic ending, but (apart from three of the characters) it's a pretty happy denouement.  And Randolph Scott gets to kick ass pretty well for an older guy.

Film review: Blood on the Moon (1948)

This is an excellent little flick, although not especially noir (it's also in the "Western Noir" collections).  I imagine it got so classified (a) because of the title (which is pretty much irrelevant), (b) because it has Robert Mitchum, and (c) because of the cinematographer, who also worked on the pretty-much-perfect Mitchum film noir Out of the Past, and who favors a lot of inky shadows.  In fact, sometimes it's hard to see what's going on. 

Mitchum plays a proto-version of an Eastwood Man With No Name drifter type (who, in fact, says several times that he will drift, as in move on), and has a great entrance, backlit at night in the pouring rain.  He sets up camp but is promptly overrun by cattle, who drive off his horse and trample his fire and boots, which he'd just removed to empty the water out of.  Their driver appears, and after challenging him brusquely, takes him to his camp, where we meet the leader of one of the two factions of the film, Cattle rancher Tom Tully.  He explains his situation: he used to keep his cattle on the Indian reservation, and sell his beef to the Indians, but a new government go-between (the weasly Jake Pindalest) has just informed him that his beef is no longer any good, and furthermore he has to get his cattle off the reservation by a certain date.  But when he tried to move them to nearby grazing lands that he used to use before the reservation, he finds that they have been settled by homesteaders, who are being organized by the other main faction, Tate Riling (played, in an early role, by Robert Preston, who would go on to fame as the titular Music Man).  What's worse, Riling has been recruiting hired guns, which explains why they were so wary of Mitchum's Jim Garry.  Tully tries to recruit Garry, but he says he'll drift instead.  But he does agree to deliver a message to Tully's daughters on the way into town.  When Garry tries to cross the river, somebody shoots at him.  He sneaks round behind them and discovers that it's a young woman (played by Barbara Bel Geddes, who would go on to play the matriarch "Miss Ellie" in Dallas, and is quite recognizable). 

To teach her a lesson, he shoots her boot heel off - oddly, something that happened in yesterday's film The Naked Spur.  Was this a thing?  When he arrives at the Tully place, of course he finds out that she's one of the daughters, but she arrives after he's given the note to the other one.  Then he goes into town, and after some shenanigans where a hired gun, who thinks Garry works for Tully, tries to pose as Riling, little knowing that Garry knows Riling, Garry and Riling are re-united, and Riling explains why he summoned Garry.

Turns out, the whole "organizing the downtrodden homesteaders to protect their rights" thing is a sham: he and Pindalest have cooked up a deal where Pindalest drives Tully off the reservation and Riling stops him leaving, so that he will have to offload his cattle for a song (to avoid forfeiting them for nothing) at which point Riling will sell them to the government for the usual price, and Riling and Pindalest (and Garry, if he helps) will make out handsomely.  (No kidding: Tiling offers Garry $10 grand to help -  that would be small fortune in those days.)  Garry doesn't like the idea, but he's desperate: he tried ranching but all his cattle died of a fever.  What's more, Tiling has been seducing the non-shooting Tully daughter, and she passes on the note that Garry delivered, which says where Tully will be crossing the river (to get his cattle off the reservation).  Garry sees her do it, though.  And what's more, when Tiling and his men show up there, Tully has faked them out.  It's not clear whether he expected Garry to read the note or if he knows his daughter is leaking info, but Riling's men eventually manage to stampede Tully's cattle back on to the reservation.  But (if you're still with me), Garry decides that he can't take Riling's evil any more and, after a fight with Riling, switches sides.  There are more twists and turns - it's a very tightly plotted film, which is part of what I like about it.  Oh, and it also has Walter Brennan, he of the archetypal old-geezer-in-a-Western voice, so what are you waiting for?  Check it out!

Film review: The Naked Spur (1953)

The Criterion Channel has just unveiled a collection called "Western Noir" consisting of post-war Westerns influenced by Film Noir (duh).  This is one of several collaborations between Jimmy Stewart and the director Anthony Mann.  I liked it - it throws you into the action without explanation and just runs with it, no flashbacks or anything like that.  The film begins with a closeup of Stewart's spurs (which will feature at the climax) as he rides up to old (the actor was just 50 at the time!) grizzled prospector Jesse Tate and holds him at gunpoint. 

After he finds out Jesse is harmless, Stewart's character, Howard Kemp, offers him $20 to help him track down the man he is seeking, who is in the area.  The area is the Colorado Rockies (this film has some amazing scenery) and Kemp has been tracking the man, Ben Vandergroat (the granite-featured Robert Ryan, last seen in On Dangerous Ground, but here playing a total heel, who spends far too much time laughing at his own jokes) since Kansas.  Howard lets Jesse believe he's a law man, and shows him a wanted poster with the bottom ripped off, but this doesn't fool a dishonorably discharged Union soldier they run into

(Roy Anderson, played by Ralph Meeker, probably best known for playing the oafish Mike Hammer in the amazing atomic-age noir Kiss Me Deadly, and equally unpleasant here, albeit all-but-unrecognizable, perhaps because of his mustache) who cottons immediately that Howard is a bounty hunter and there's money to be made.  Indeed, after Roy and Jesse help Howard capture Ben, who, it turns out, is accompanied by the daughter of a partner-in-crime who died on the job (Janet Leigh, dressed in men's clothing and with a very anachronistic haircut),

Ben reveals the complete wanted poster, and it turns out he's worth $5,000.  So all five characters (who, apart from some nameless Indians, comprise the entire cast) set out for Kansas, with Ben plotting to set the other three men off against each other and Roy and later Howard lusting after Janet Leigh.  The Indians show up fairly soon because they've been chasing Roy (who, apparently, got up to shenanigans with the chief's daughter - there's a reason his discharge papers have "immorality" on them).  Howard and Jesse would be happy to let them go by and chase Roy, but Roy conspires to have our party fight the Indians, and Howard gets shot in the leg.  After that it's a slow boil to a shocking conclusion.  Nobody comes out looking good, although Howard (who used to know Ben, even playing cars with him on occasion) has an excuse because while he was off fighting in the war, his betrothed sold his farm and ran off with another man, and Howard wants the reward to buy back his property.  Will anybody get out alive?  Well not all of them will, I'll tell you that for nothing.  And watch for those spurs!