How the West Won Me Over.

Outside of really enjoying Clint Eastwood westerns, I never had much interest in western movies. Especially the older ones. From the outside the medium seemed over simplified and glossed over to portray the growth of the west as a glorified righteous one. Guys singing songs on their way to capture and shoot the gun from out of the hand of the bad guy. Not to mention if you didn't know who this guy is... he's the one wearing black... ALL black. Guys like Roy Rogers ( God love him though... for all that great roast beef) Gene Autry, Hop-along Cassidy. Guys that would sooner kiss their horse than kiss a girl. I bring this up for the reason. Recently I entrenched myself in some old classic western films as research on something I'm working on. Part of me really dreaded the thought of sitting watching a bunch of crappy early Hollywood talky pictures. Well that's a lie... most of me dreaded it. I'll give you run down of what I rented:

Hop-along Cassidy Enters
The Man from the Alamo
High Noon
True Grit
The Wild Bunch
High Plains Drifter

What I tried to do was two things. The first was to cover a wide scope of western types and ones that were relative to the progression of film making in Hollywood. I wanted the glossy "let me sing you a song, no one gets hurt" type of western to the "we're gonna shoot someone in the face and were gonna show the audience" type of western. Now being familiar with some westerns, I lean more towards people getting shot in the face. Now... you may ask yourself, "What type of person really enjoys watching people get shot in the face in a movie?" Well I say to that... "If you want that type of lilly livered crap, I'm sure there's a blog out there discussing it. We are men here. Those of us who are women reading this blog... they're real men too." But we must digress to stay on track. The first movie I sat down to watch was "The Man From The Alamo". The movie stars Glenn Ford as a man who leaves his friends and comrades at the Alamo (lucky for him, not too long before they all die... hope I didn't give anything away there) to fight the Mexicans so that he can defend his family and those of his five friends he was fighting with from raiders. Though the movie was watchable and Glenn Fords performance was likable, the movie suffered from that glossy tendency Hollywood would lather onto it's films back then. Now I won't give away anything about the actual plot turns in the film as well as any of the other films I'll be talking about here, but I will discuss the good, the bad and the... well you fill in the rest.

For this film there is a lot more bad than good. Glenn Ford spends most of the picture accused of being a deserter and publicly trounced when possible. Now lets just be clear, Glenn Ford and his character are no doormat and can certainly kick any ones ass or clear his name anytime he feels he's ready. He just doesn't want to... until the end of course. This a world where the complexities of being wrongfully confused, compounded with being mistaken for taking up with the same men who killed your wife and kid can be explained as quickly as it takes you to get your monologue out your mouth. Never mind the character said almost the same thing in an explanation a half hour earlier. Also forget that guns have recoil and leave pretty big holes in people. Don't pay any attention to that jerking your gun forward as you shoot gives you great accuracy. Don't forget that Mexicans are really boys from the Mid-West in black face and have really bad accents. One of the things I loved about this movie is Glenn Ford's presence as a actor. He's a man's man type. He talks softly but when he does speak, he has something to say... and you better be listening. There aren't that many actors out there that command that type attention on screen. Another thing I really liked was a character trait he had, which again is tied into the male arch type of that era, was that it didn't matter what people got wrong about him he just wanted to avenge his family's death. His character could spend the rest of his life suffering for peoples misunderstanding of the type of man he was but he didn't need to be changing anyone's mind or proving his innocence. That wasn't important. People are going to believe what they want to and he was content with their perception. I think that is a refreshing take on "what a man should be" even though we are talking about a movie made in 1953. I think in most cases men in the movies and the men that write them would be tempted to portray their lead as a great guy but to hell if he's gonna let someone call him a coward, a deserter, or a murderer. So far not a terrible way to start a western marathon. It still hadn't made feel differently about my biases.

The next movie I popped in was "Hop-along Cassidy Enters". Ugh. Talk about taking a step backwards. This movie is a pure example of playing it safe. Where men want to puff out their chest and call for a fight for no reason one minute and the next, as if suffering from bi-polar disorder are apologizing the next. William Boyd/Hop-along Cassidy may be a fun character, and there are things to like, but he's reeks of squeaky clean cowboy crap like no other. Things you need to know: Hop-along is always right, he wants to shoot you for mouthin' off but shrugs it off but it better be followed with a sorry, and if you are going to get shot or die in his movie then you must do so off screen. Some of this is due to time period. They didn't have the tech to show people getting holes blasted in them, but one gets the impression (no it's not a subtle one) that they don't want to. They want you to believe this is how the west really was. Bad guy in black. Check. Shoot gun from hand. Check. Nobody really gets hurt. Check. Finally. The most important thing to remember. Your male relationships are more important than the possibility of getting laid by a woman. By today's standards we'd call that western Brokeback Mountain (zing). The psychological underpinnings of that message would suggest that there was some real latent homosexuality issues going on with the people involved with this movie. If you read a little up on William Boyd, you'll find that he was adamant on his character not being romantically linked to any of the female leads. Talk about Things that make you go Hmmmmmmmm. This movie did not help my western bias let alone like it as a movie.
Note: William Boyd was a favorite of my dad's growing up. The thing he remembered best about William Boyd was that he handled a gun more realistic than his contemporaries. He said "When Boyd fired the gun it had recoil". Well looky there. You've got to go back to 1935 to get a guy using a gun all proper like.

At this point I dreaded the thought of third movie. So I took a break. Hense this will conclude part one of a two part series called: I'm talking to myself aren't I?