Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

Film: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

Stars: James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Richard Jaeckel, Jason Robards, Bob Dylan, Rita Coolidge, Chill Wills, Slim Pickens, Katy Jurado, Harry Dean Stanton

Director: Sam Peckinpah

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Kris Kristofferson: click here to learn more about Mr. Kristofferson (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we mentioned in our intro this month, Kris Kristofferson had actual cowboy bonafides, something few actors this year we've profiled came with.  He was a military brat who grew up in Brownsville, Texas, and his first touch with fame wasn't in acting-it was in music.  According to legend, he got that start by landing a helicopter in Johnny Cash's front yard (the helicopter seems undisputed, whether he had a beer in one hand & some music in the other when he did it is up to who tells the story).  Kristofferson would spend much of the 1970's as a country act that didn't translate into the US mainstream in a major way, though he did have one big hit with "Why Me."  It was as a songwriter that he gained most of his success, writing for Cash ("Sunday Morning Coming Down"), Gladys Knight ("Help Me Make It Through the Night"), & Ray Price ("For the Good Times").  His biggest hit was for his then-girlfriend Janis Joplin (Kristofferson had been dating her when she died).  Kristofferson had written a song that he had recorded, as had Kenny Rogers & Gordon Lightfoot, but while they had done well, none of them had become synonymous with the ballad until it was released posthumously by Joplin, and became her signature tune: "Me and Bobby McGee,"' a song that would eventually make it on the Rolling Stone list of the greatest of all-time.

(Spoilers Ahead) We are going to end up in a movie today that has a lot of music, though oddly none of it was sung by Kristofferson.  This is another tale of Billy the Kid (Kristofferson), a figure that has been seen repeatedly in westerns of the era in various forms, but this is about the end of his life, when he is being hunted down by his former friend and lawman Pat Garrett (Coburn).  Now that Garrett is the sheriff, he intends to arrest him.  He gives Billy an ultimatum-leave the country & head into Mexico, or face the gallows.  Billy chooses to take his chances with the latter, and a chase ensues.  The two eventually come across each other, and Pat fulfills his promise, killing Billy in a bit of trickery, earning himself the reputation of the "man who shot Billy the Kid."

We see in the opening shots of the movie that this comes with its own set of baggage.  The film starts decades after the incidents in the remainder of the film, and shows the eventual murder of Pat Garrett (this is true to real life-Garrett really did kill Billy, and Garrett was also later murdered) in an ambush.  This is something of the message of the film-you can't outrun your fate.  The beauty of Pat Garrett is that it shows a tale not of the evolution of these men, both of whom are hard-headed and stubborn (as a result, the leads are good but not as good as they should be), but instead about the ways the west pleads with them to let it go.  The film is littered with references to not just a lost Old West, but the dying Hollywood western, with figures from the heyday of the western like Slim Pickens, Chill Wills, & Katy Jurado all appearing in small roles, and showing that the west is dying...why add another corpse to it.

The movie's best scene encapsulates this, with Jurado mourning the death of her longtime companion Slim Pickens (both really good in small parts...this is also the best I've ever seen Chill Wills) after he's shot.  The music playing in the back is a mournful ballad...but it's also a rock classic.  The most famous thing to a modern audience about Pat Garrett is that Bob Dylan is in it, and not only did he do songs for the movie, but he composed the score.  The song playing, a song somehow skipped by the Oscars (it was eligible for Best Original Song), is "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," a Dylan staple, which is original to this movie.  Dylan is not a good actor, but he does get a great moment where James Coburn is about to kill a man, and Dylan is in the background reading the names of different canned goods.  The most famous figure in 1970's counterculture, talking about baked beans...it's just an odd touch in a very good late western from Sam Peckinpah.

OVP: The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Film: The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Stars: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Horst Buchholz, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter, James Coburn, Eli Wallach

Director: John Sturges

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Yul Brynner: click here to learn more about Mr. Brynner (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Throughout this year, we're profiling a lot of western stars, obviously, and with that, a lot of westerns.  These are all westerns that I've never seen before, and for the most part, are westerns I'm pretty comfortable saying that I've never seen before.  The films of Anthony Mann & Budd Boetticher are classics, but if we're being honest, they're not classics in the same way that The Searchers or The Wild Bunch are...they aren't universally-seen films by most film fans.  Today, though, we're getting to one of the few classic films of the western genre that I'm kind of looking sideways on, admitting that I have somehow never seen before.  Yul Brynner in 1960 was cast in a movie that, quite frankly, didn't do super well at the domestic box office (it was a smash hit overseas, particularly in the Soviet Union), but in the years that followed has become synonymous with the genre and is arguably the most important (culturally) western that we'll profile all year, and one pretty much everyone who is invested in the genre has seen before.  It is also one of the only westerns to spawn a genuine franchise, with three sequels, a remake, and a TV series all coming out of it, along with an Elmer Bernstein score that counts as one of the most iconic in film history.  Today, we are going to talk about The Magnificent Seven.

(Spoilers Ahead) Based on Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, the movie is about a poor Mexican village that is run by Calvera (Wallach), a ruthless leader of a group of bandits who frequently rob the villagers, who are defenseless, of their food to feed his men, leaving them largely to live by on scraps.  They decide one day to fight back, and look to initially buy guns to defend themselves.  When Chris Adams (Brynner) tells them that men are cheaper than guns (great line), Chris helps them recruit a band of men, seven in total, to defend the city.  Throughout, we learn about these men, who come from different backgrounds (a hotheaded young shootist, a fortune seeker, a knife expert, a drifter...it's a motley crew), but come to find some honor in defending the people of the city.  This honor is what Calvera, who keeps assuming they'll give up, can't see beyond, and it is his downfall.  In a shootout that kills four the seven, Calvera dies, and the townspeople are saved, with Chris and one of the other men, the drifter (played by McQueen) going off into the sunset, with Chris ending with the enigmatic line "only the farmers won...we lost...we'll always lose."

The film itself, I'll be honest, is a pretty standard western on its surface.  The cast was in various stages of their careers, with Brynner at the peak of his stardom, while McQueen, Coburn, & Bronson were all years away from the peak of theirs, and it shows in the casting.  Given where they were in their careers I get why some of these supporting parts weren't given stronger credence in the story (Brynner was the headliner in 1960), but Bronson & Coburn are such good actors I kept wanting more from them.  So the cast itself feeds into the standard western line-a basic story, admittedly one stolen from one of the greatest films ever made, with a misused cast should be cause for complaint.

But it's impossible to care too much because even if it's misused, the film itself still comes off successfully.  The scenes we do get of Coburn, Bronson, and especially Wallach are well-done, and the dialogue is solid, and a bit above-the-board for a western in 1960.  It's also aided by a grand slam score from Elmer Bernstein.  This lost to the theme from Exodus, which is a fine piece of music, don't get me wrong, but given that Bernstein was writing one of the defining pieces of music (it is regularly used in everything from Oscar clips to commercials to other movies) at the time, and that the theme from Psycho, another anthem of Hollywood, wasn't even nominated...the Academy missed the train a little bit on this one.

Ride Lonesome (1959)

Film: Ride Lonesome (1959)

Stars: Randolph Scott, Karen Steele, Pernell Roberts, James Best, Lee van Cleef, James Coburn

Director: Budd Boetticher

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Randolph Scott: click here to learn more about Mr. Scott (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Throughout this month, we've watched two films (and a third today) from the storied partnership between our May star Randolph Scott and filmmaker Budd Boetticher, but we haven't actually talked about their partnership, until today.  By the late 1950's, Scott was still a hot commodity, though nowhere near as important as he was in the early 1950's, when he was a Top 10 box office draw.  His partnership with Boetticher happened by accident.  Boetticher, who had once studied to be a matador, had been working in Hollywood for over a decade as a director, most notably in the Robert Stack film Bullfighter and the Lady (for which Boetticher had been nominated for an Oscar), but had not really had much success, and was largely a for-hire director.  John Wayne had originally been offered the lead role in 7 Men from Now, but because he was making The Searchers, he had to turn it down and instead recommended Boetticher try making the film with Randolph Scott.  This set off a creative partnership between the two men that was moderately successful at the box office that spawned seven films (known as the "Ranown Cycle"), and with the possible exception of John Wayne & John Ford's collaborations, is the most-noted in the annals of classical Hollywood westerns.

(Spoilers Ahead) Today we're going to focus on one of the final films in the partnership, Ride Lonesome, which stars Scott as Ben Brigade, a bounty hunter who has captured Billy John (Best), the brother of a famed outlaw named Frank (Van Cleef).  As he's taking him into custody, they come across a way station, being run by Carrie Lane (Steele), a beautiful widow (she doesn't know it yet, but she's about to be a widow), who lives there waiting for her soon-to-be-dead husband.  Also there are two low-time crooks who want in on the Billy John capture, Sam Boone (Roberts) and his (rather stupid) sidekick Whit (Coburn).  As the film goes, we learn that Ben is really more after revenge, as Frank killed his wife by hanging her from a tree, a tree they happen across.  The movie ends with Billy John strung up by said tree, drawing Frank out, and allowing Ben to kill him.  He gives Billy John (and the reward) to Sam, Whit, & Carrie (whom we get the impression will fall for Sam as he's been lusting after her the whole movie, albeit with little reciprocation), telling them to change their ways, and the film ends with him burning the tree to the ground.

The Ranown Cycle is remarkable largely for the sheer, bleak artistry that it brings.  The films are beautifully-shot, almost exclusively outdoors & on location, and feature Scott in roughly the same, stoic character.  They all feature ominous music, characters with mixed moralities (though Scott is always the good guy), and a relatively dour ending, even the happy ones.  This was atypical for westerns at this point.  While The Searchers and Shane had a lot of commentary about the invincibility & heroic natures of the cowboy, by-and-large most films of this era showed uncomplicated lawmen or ranchers who fought the bad guys & got the pretty girl.  It wasn't until the 1960's with movies like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Wild Bunch that the clear violence & ambiguity of this genre would become the norm.  As a result, the Ranown Cycle stands apart as ahead-of-its-time in addition to being well-constructed.

This is true of Ride Lonesome.  In terms of the Boetticher/Scott films we saw this month, it's my least favorite.  It doesn't have enough tension between Roberts & Steele, and Van Cleef's Frank needs more scenes.  But it's still good.  I love the way that Scott's Ben feels so detached the entire movie, as if he gave up on life long ago, and will surely disappear into oblivion at the end of this film.  It's the one movie that I've seen of him this month where it's very obvious he's not ending up in a resolved place after this (likely suicide or riding off into increasingly dangerous situations that will result in him joining his dead wife).  I wish that we were maybe a minute or two later in the Hays Code era so that he could say this out-loud, indicate he's beyond redemption, but alas...it's just implied.

OVP: The Americanization of Emily (1964)

Film: The Americanization of Emily (1964)
Stars: James Garner, Julie Andrews, Melvyn Douglas, James Coburn, Joyce Grenfell
Director: Arthur Hiller
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Cinematography, Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

For years, nestled between her two absolute classics Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, has been the movie that Julie Andrews proclaimed was her absolute favorite of all of her pictures, The Americanization of Emily.  The film, a hit back in its day but which has faded quite a bit from public consciousness compared to Andrews' two other squeaky clean family films, is a shockingly political and progressive film for 1964, with a pacifist viewpoint particularly from Garner's character.  Watching the classic western star play what many at the time (and even today) would have considered a coward is a truly interesting thing to view, and makes Americanization more than just a curiosity.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Julie Andrews as Emily, a widow who is working in the war effort in World War II, and who has taken a dislike toward her employers, the recently arrived Americans, led by Lt. Commander Charlie Madison (Garner).  Emily is tired of war, and of losing men she loves in it (her husband, brother, and father have all died in war), and when it turns out that Charlie is someone who will never see the frontlines and is a man who seems to value personal survival more than bravery, she falls in love with him as he appears to be a safe option.  As this is a Hollywood movie, we of course soon find that Charlie will need to be on the main front, as part of a documentary production crew, as his commanding officer (Douglas) has gone a bit mad and is insistent that the first man killed at Omaha Beach be a sailor so that the Navy can get some solid press over the Air Force and the Army.  This results in Charlie nearly dying at Omaha Beach at the hands of his friend Bus (Coburn) who has gone insane with trying to ensure that a sailor dies, and the world thus thinks Charlie is dead, making him a hero and having Emily believe she lost another man to war.  The film ends in the most traditional of fashions, with Charlie deciding to accept his heroism rather than expose the silliness of his death, and living a long and happy life with Emily.

The film sounds relatively routine from most standpoints, of course.  We have a reluctant soldier driven to the frontlines, romanced by a beautiful woman who initially dislikes him, and in the end doing what is best for his country.  However, the film doesn't really play by those rules and it's actually quite shocking the ways that the picture takes on an anti-war attitude, particularly on the eve of the Vietnam Conflict.  After all, World War II is not one of the wars we typically identify as a war that people disagreed with entering.  In fact, almost every film about the war celebrates heroism and the dire needs to get into the battle for the sake of humanity.  The idea that someone could be against it is appalling, but it's worth noting that such a thing did exist.  People like Rep. Jeanette Rankin (who was threatened and forced into retirement for her vote) stood against the United States entering World War II, and the film is quick to point out that there is unnecessary pageantry and political posturing in even the most life-and-death of situations.  The movie's politics are what makes it particularly interesting (that, and seeing Julie Andrews play a deeply promiscuous woman, which always feels a bit staggering), as the actual picture itself doesn't break a lot of molds and feels pretty tired when it isn't focusing on its refreshing (even if you don't agree with them) political views.

The film won two Academy Award nominations, both gaining from its black-and-white status (at the time Cinematography and Art Direction categories were split between color and B&W).  The film's art direction is impressive, I will give it that.  The sets all feel relatively authentic, and there are scenes like the one at Omaha Beach where there's clearly been some detailing done into creating a relatively authentic-looking battlefield.  Plus, the film is focused very ardently on the many things that you can want in a wartime effort, and the boxes show the excess of Charlie's position quite nicely.  The cinematography isn't bad, but aside from the truly frightening dew that is cast over the Omaha Beach invasion, there's nothing landmark here.  We see a bit of shadow and the lighting for Andrews is good, but this isn't something that needed an Oscar nomination by any stretch of the imagination, and one assumes it was just because we were starting to run out of black-and-white pictures that the movie took the citation.

Those are my thoughts on the surprising Americanization of Emily-how about yours?  Do you also find it strange to see Julie Andrews playing someone saucy?  Are you shocked occasionally by a movie's politics?  And what other black-and-white films got their Oscar counts jacked by them keeping dual categories around too long?  Share your thoughts in the comments!