American Sniper

Bradley Cooper (left) portrays Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (right) in the adaptation of Kyle’s 2012 autobiography American Sniper

Navy SEAL Chris Kyle

AMERICAN SNIPER             C              
USA  (132 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Clint Eastwood                    Official site

This is a perfect example of utterly conventional Hollywood filmmaking, as it takes a simplistic, one-dimensional approach to war, patriotism, and serving one’s country, becoming a jingoistic portrayal of an American warrior who thinks he knows what his country stands for by asking no questions, where no reservations are expressed, instead it typifies the gung-ho spirit of the armed forces in much the same way as pro football player Pat Tillman was made the military poster child for enlisting in the Army in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.  His idea was to kick some terrorist ass in Afghanistan and Iraq, filled with an ideological certainty that borders on brainwashing, much like the nation’s bullheaded approach for invading Iraq in the first place, where it was inconceivable in Tillman’s eyes that America wouldn’t prevail.  Unfortunately, as the Amir Bar-Lev documentary The Tillman Story (2010) points out, it’s much more complicated than that.  This glorification of heroism is a throwback to Howard Hawks’ SERGEANT YORK (1941), released just months before America’s entrance into World War II, the story of a World War I sharpshooter that became a war hero, one of the most decorated American soldiers in World War I even as he was a devout pacifist, which won Gary Cooper an Academy Award for Best Actor.  Even Gary Cooper, however, was reluctant to play a “too good to be true” character, but reconsidered after meeting Alvin York, the real person the film was based upon.  Interestingly, according to Eastwood himself, that was the first movie he ever saw, so it obviously left an impression on him, just as the images from movies and historical photographs leave impressions on other young soldiers about how to behave during wartime, where they often emulate what they see.  Similarly, a bulked up and more bland, ideologically toned down Bradley Cooper is excellent in the real-life role of Chris Kyle, a down-home Texas cowboy who rode the rodeo circuit early in his twenties, but when he witnesses the 9/11 attacks, he reconsiders his future, enlisting in the Navy SEAL special operations force at age thirty (age 24 in real life, initially rejected by the Navy SEALS due to rodeo injuries) where he also excels as a sharpshooter and is sent to the front lines in Iraq.  As a military sniper, his job is to protect the Marines on the ground by providing an overview vantage point they don’t have, picking off anyone suspected of initiating attacks against the Marine operations.  Adapted from Kyle’s 2012 book written three years after his military discharge, American Sniper:  The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History, even the title leaves little doubt as to what the focus will be, though his modest, single-minded claim is always that he was simply doing his job by protecting the lives of others. 

While the film takes the viewer into the heart of ongoing military operations, almost exclusively seen through a guy’s perspective, it also has a stateside component where Sienna Miller as Kyle’s wife Taya offers a near-cringeworthy performance, though her character is horribly written and is equally one-dimensional, where she seems to have little sympathy or understanding for the unique adjustments soldiers must make upon returning home, as unfortunately they bring a bit of the war back with them.  Instead she nags at him continuously to be the person she married, telling him “I need you to be human again,” expecting him to adjust to her concept of a normal family life, while picking at him when he’s less than forthcoming about describing the horrors that he experienced.  Keeping much of his emotions locked in, it is only a matter of time before he is called back, as he is needed on the battlefield, eventually serving four tours of duty.  Easily the most overwrought and hysterical scenes are the ones when Kyle is in his sniper position in a moment of calm, casually talking to his wife back home, when suddenly a firefight will break out, cutting off normal communications, while she’s left whimpering on the other end of the line wondering what’s happened to her husband.  This guy is in special ops, for Christ’s sake, assigned the most dangerous missions, specially trained to be battle hardened, calm in the face of a storm, yet she doesn’t get it, remaining scared out of her wits and clueless about what this guy does for a living.  These scenes drain much of the energy from the picture, and there are several of them, where she becomes too much of a distraction, as it’s inconceivable to the public back home that wives would want to be on the phone with their husbands “during” military operations.  That’s exactly what could get them killed as it takes away from their primary focus at that moment.  The relationships with fellow soldiers may not get the same amount of screen time, but they are much more acutely drawn, as these guys understand each other, where they are trained to have each other’s backs, instilled with the same warrior mentality, yet they can also laugh in quieter moments, as they’ve each been through hell and back.

Certainly one aspect of war this film attempts to convey is the sense of urgency, where Kyle reflects the military mentality when he tells his wife that his family has time to wait, while the frontline soldiers don’t, which is what continually compels him to return.  Embellishing the mythic picture of an American hero, only Hollywood would come up with the storyline about a fellow sniper on the other side, a Syrian soldier fighting for al Qaeda named Mustafa (Sammy Sheik) who is actually an Olympic medalist in shooting.  Each is the best in their field, where the storyline continually pits one rival against the other, where much of it breaks down into a mind game, maintaining the psychological advantage, where these men become mythical legends within their own ranks.  Kyle is actually called “The Legend” by his fellow soldiers, where stories of his prowess spread throughout the military branches, where there’s a price on his head, dubbed the “Devil of Ramadi (Shaitan Ar-Ramadi),” placing a bounty on his head that eventually climbs to $80,000, which distinguishes him even in the eyes of the enemy.  This elevates his importance, as it reveals how essential it is militarily for each side to knock out the other’s best sniper.  Both are capable of inflicting huge casualties and altering the success or failure of significant missions.  Much of this is oversimplified, playing out like a western in the American West, inevitably leading to an ultimate shoot out, the winner being the anointed hero.  In Eastwood’s film, however, it nearly brings his unit down, as it exposes their position, subject to an unprecedented attack.  Taking place in a sandstorm, it has a dreamlike quality about it, turning into a battlefield of the dead, as men around them keep dropping like flies, but more continue to storm ahead, taking the place of those fallen beside them.  It offers a feeling for the senselessness of war, yet it’s also combined with the solemn tributes paid to those making the ultimate sacrifice, as Eastwood’s depiction of a military funeral is easily the best thing in the film, perhaps the only scene that touches the right grace note, (2014) soundtrack - Ennio Morricone -The Funeral - YouTube (2:05).  Kyle’s successive returns back home become more detached, told with little fanfare, yet the war continues to intrude into his life, where one of the Eastwood touches is Kyle continually hears the sounds of war taking place even when sitting comfortably on his couch back home, thoughts and sounds he wants to tune out and forget, where he can barely make eye contact or even acknowledge a soldier who graciously thanks him for saving his life.  The brief glimpse in hospitals of wounded veterans in recovery feels essential, even though it’s barely touched upon, preferring instead to dwell on the more dramatic war footage, where only at the end does the Hollywood depiction take a turn into vintage archival material, showing the actual funeral of a fallen hero, leaving the audience in the solemnity of a hushed silence, where the closing credits play with no accompanying music.

While the film attempts to honor and eulogize fallen soldiers, but in idolizing this figure, what the film overlooks are the actual hate-filled views expressed by Kyle in his book, as his zealous American fervor is spewed with xenophobic and racist venom, where killing Iraqis is the answer to his own effusive bitterness and contempt, as he is unwavering in his belief that everyone he shot was a “bad guy.”  “I hate the damn savages.  I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Iraqis…The enemy are savages and despicably evil.  My only regret is that I didn’t kill more.”  Chris Kyle is actually a younger version of the grizzled old Korean war veteran Walt Kowalski portrayed by Eastwood himself in GRAN TORINO (2008), where his prejudiced views separate him from the changing and more complicated world around him that he can’t begin to understand, as in his mind he’s narrowed it down to overly simplistic, black and white perceptions of good or evil.  In other words, we are right, and they are wrong.  Intentionally or not, much like John Wayne in a John Ford western, most particularly THE SEARCHERS (1956), this film makes a hero out of Kyle, a special ops patriot that took pleasure in killing and dehumanizing the enemy, recalling the frontier spirit of Ford’s westerns where “the only good injun is a dead injun,” which has now evolved into “the only good Iraqi is a dead Iraqi,” where there are a lot of Chris Kyles in the world who believe in God and country and the American flag, while anyone questioning this view is looked upon with traitorous suspicion and contempt bordering on hatred, equivalent to aiding and abetting the enemy, reminiscent of the derisive and often violent sentiments expressed in the pro-war slogan “America, love it or leave it” during the Vietnam era of the 60’s.  In the unquestioning eyes of the true believers, Kyle’s unambiguous belligerence represents not only the embodiment of America’s cowboy mentality (The Cowboy Myth, George W. Bush, and the War with Iraq), but may also explain his considerable success on the battlefield, as there is no soldier remorse, no guilt or crisis of moral conscience about the act of killing when he regrets none of his actions, where in this case his complete lack of subtlety or imagination is what makes him particularly emblematic of today’s American military hero.  When faced with the choice between depicting the truth or the myth, however, Eastwood decided to go with the myth, which should come as no surprise to anyone, as peddling myths is the very foundation of what Hollywood does for a living, which is also what makes the film so predictably conventional.     

City Streets (1931)

CITY STREETS              B+       
USA  (83 mi)  1931  d:  Rouben Mamoulian

This second Rouben Mamoulian film, after the box office failure but critical praise for APPLAUSE (1929), is significant in several respects, as Paramount studios forced the young director to wait a year before offering him another picture, an adaptation of a Dashiell Hammett screenplay with Gary Cooper and Clara Bow as the leads, a romantic couple that gets mixed up with bootlegger racketeers.  Clara Bow suffered a much publicized nervous breakdown and had to withdraw from the movie, much of it based on a lawsuit that Bow initiated against a former secretary named Daisy DeVoe, claiming she stole thousands of dollars worth of clothing and personal items.  While Bow won the lawsuit, the scandalous publicity cost her much more, as the secretary’s trial testimony exposed Bow’s reputation as a woman with a wild and uncontrollable love life, not to mention supposed drug use, unwanted publicity that sent her on an emotional tailspin that all but ended her career.  Since the success of It (1927), Bow was the mistress of Paramount associate producer B.P. Schulberg, where she was his vested financial interest as well, but by 1931 due to major personal problems she left Paramount, her career finished, and within another year Schulberg was squeezed out of the studio as well.  For this film, however, in an era when sex and romance determined stardom, Bow was replaced by Sylvia Sidney in only her second feature, though she was a well known star on Broadway at the time and had been directed by Mamoulian on the New York stage, where she was not only given the lead role but also became the new mistress of Schulberg as well—That’s Hollywood, folks.  During the Depression era of the 30’s, Sidney worked with many of the major lead actors, but her terrific work on this film may have cemented her reputation with gangster movies.  The commercial and critical success of von Sternberg’s Silent film Underworld (1927) is often thought of as the inspiration behind a trend of Prohibition-era Hollywood gangster films that followed, like LITTLE CAESAR (1930), PUBLIC ENEMY (1931), and SCARFACE (1932), while often overlooked is this gangster melodrama that features less onscreen violence, with supposedly ten murders, but not one of them takes place onscreen, released a month before Fritz Lang’s M (1931), containing many of the characteristics that would anticipate film noir. 

Working with cinematographer Lee Garmes, who became associated with shooting the films of von Sternberg, nominated for an Academy Award for MOROCCO (1931), winning the award for SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1933), his expressionistic influence on this film is a major factor on why it’s still important today, as it deals with noirish themes of gangland turf and criminal amorality, where the fate of the individual is challenged by a corrupt world around them, where in the laws of the jungle only the strongest survive.  Mamoulian’s direction shows a greater appreciation for the visual stylization, including elegant tracking shots, where it is arguably the most artistically advanced of the 30’s gangster films, showing momentary brilliance and occasional poetic flourish.  It’s also interesting for Gary Cooper’s portrayal of an underworld criminal, the only known example on film, while it’s also one of the earliest talking efforts, where the sound editing is often clumsy, as the camera rolls before anyone speaks, creating a time gap between characters having a dialogue that slows the pace of the film.  This is the first use of voiceover in an American film, used earlier by Hitchcock in the sound version of Blackmail (1929), as Sidney is alone onscreen with recurring thoughts in her head spoken out loud, where the audience hears the echoing voice of Gary Cooper as she recalls what he said to her earlier, where Paramount executives believed this would confuse audiences and tried to cut the scene, but the director fought for it, also the additional use of off-camera sound, which was also considered innovative at the time.  While Cooper went on to greater fame, it’s Sidney’s performance as Nan that dominates the film, literally stealing every scene she’s in, often pushed to the breaking point, becoming the face of the 30’s aptly called “Depression’s Child.” The audience is immediately intrigued by her love affair with The Kid (Cooper), a rugged guy off the ranch with a talent for shooting, appropriately enough working at a carnival shooting gallery, where their conversation is often drowned out by the massive crowd.  But when they have a romantic moment where they’re quietly alone at the beach, she tells him sees nothing wrong with working with racketeers, as at least they’re guys that make money, including her own stepfather Pop (Guy Kibbee) who works for the biggest bootlegger in town, The Big Guy (Paul Lukas).  The Kid has other ideas and wants no part of a life in crime, including his girl.  But she was born into the business, where in one of the cleverly written early scenes with Pop, he scolds her for coming in late and asks who she was with?  When she refuses to answer, despite being goaded, he bursts out laughing and rewards her with money for learning to keep her mouth shut.    

While Al Capone supposedly loved this film as an accurate portrayal of the underworld of gangsters, where they are continually undermining one another to get ahead, where hits are ordered with subtlety, where the boss’s henchmen have to read between the lines to figure out what he means, and when they knock somebody off, this makes life easier within the organization.  The Big Guy makes this clear right away, asking if Pop is interested in taking over somebody else’s territory, inferring he would like for this to happen, and then walks away while Pop gets involved in a gangland slaying, quickly giving the gun to Nan to dispose of, but she gets caught with the murder weapon and takes the prison rap.  Meanwhile Pop manipulates The Kid into joining the organization by telling him the cops planted the gun on Nan, and they’ll need his help to try to get her out of jail.  Despite promises that the mob will get her out, Nan languishes in jail for two long years, becoming embittered by her experience, where her tough girl persona is convincing, becoming cynical about the whole racketeering operation from behind bars.  This prison sequence shows Sidney at her best, given a hard edge, as she’s wise to the ways of the world and can stand up to anybody.  When she gets out, she’s literally dumfounded to find The Kid working with these same bootleggers, blinded to their real intentions, where The Big Guy throws her a party in her honor, where he uses the occasion to make Nan his girl.  When The Kid stands up to him, “Nobody steals my girl, not even you,” which seems to click a switch in his head where all bets are off and anything can happen, leading to a spectacular fight to the finish, culminating with an exhilarating chase scene up a narrow mountain road that is as thrilling today as when it was made.  Paul Lukas is an interesting contrast to the humble Western manner of Gary Cooper, as he plays the suave and sophisticated Charles Boyer-style villain, well dressed and heavily Hungarian-accented, where it’s easy for the audience to root against such a villainous guy.  Many of these little quirks make this an offbeat gangster film, where Mamoulian uses a staggering array of innovative camera shots and narrative techniques for this film, including an infamous sequence shot from the top of the stairs where The Kid is steadfast in going after The Big Guy and refuses to listen to Nan, despite being draped all over him, where she’s left alone in tears muttering “You fool” over and over again, yet the camera holds the scene in utter silence as she composes herself and paces the floor until an idea comes to her, and she slowly walks across the floor to make a telephone call, where Sidney offers her own praise for the director, “Look, he carried me through that picture.  He was a great teacher and a great director, and I will always be indebted to him for his genius and for his confidence in me.”  In one of her earliest screen appearances, Paulette Goddard can be seen as a nightclub patron, but in perhaps the most bewildering twist of all, once the outcome has been determined, the rising trumpets and blaring horns from Prelude to Act I of Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger Herbert v. Karajan "Prelude to Act I " Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg YouTube (9:49) resound triumphantly over the end credits in one of the more astonishing audience send-offs on record—an enduring classic that will likely leave the audience smiling.   

It

IT                     A-            
USA  (72 mi)  1927  d:  Clarence Badger      co-director:  Josef von Sternberg (uncredited)

Sweet Santa, give me him.                 —Betty Lou Spence (Clara Bow) 

This is exactly the kind of Cinderella story that makes movie romance a myth, where a working class girl can grab a millionaire if she’s lucky enough, a prince in shining armor, just like in all the fairy tales.  This could easily be the Hollywood prototype for this kind of picture, and it’s one of the best of the genre featuring what is arguably the best female performance of the Silent era, none other than Clara Bow, where the film turned her into the biggest female movie star of the late 20’s.  And deservedly so, as she carries the entire picture on her shoulders, where her feminine guile and wit and sparkling personality with a multitude of sexual charm makes her one of the most appealing figures on film, where she is so continually mischievous and delightful that she renews the passion and inspiration for going to the movies.  Clara Bow grew up in a childhood of poverty, violence, and mental illness, living in a Brooklyn tenement with a schizophrenic mother and an alcoholic and sexually abusive father.  She became an actress at age 16, after winning Motion Picture Magazine’s “Fame and Fortune” contest in 1921.  Though delivered on a cheap, Coney Island tin-type, her image was enough to convince the magazine’s judges that she was special, so as the grand prize winner they awarded her a bit part in a small film BEYOND THE RAINBOW (1922), where her part was eventually cut.  Clara Bow loved the movies and loved acting, though she interestingly never had a chance to practice the craft except in front of her mirror.  Her mother compared actresses to whores and threatened to kill Clara in her sleep once she found out about the contest.  This meant the 16-year-old, singled out immediately for her innate talent, artistic maturity and range, never had a career on stage. And without substantial stage training, she brought none of the trappings of stage acting to the silver screen.  The results were stunning, Clara Bow - She's Got It YouTube (2:45). 

Bow eventually signed with B.P. Schulberg’s Preferred Pictures in 1923 churning out low-budget films, where the following year she was one of 13 women chosen as a Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers (WAMPAS) Baby Star, chosen for their talent and promise as a potential motion picture star, which gained the attention of Schulberg's former partner Adolph Zukor, head of Paramount Pictures.  Largely due to Clara Bow pictures, Schulberg and Zukor merged to form one of the largest studios in Hollywood, but it was the smash hit movie IT (1927) that made her Paramount's number one star and the most famous name in Hollywood.  Described by critic David Thomson as “the first mass-market sex symbol,” it’s also important to point out that this is one of the most deliciously entertaining films of the Silent era, yet there’s no Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton or any of the other great Silent comics, instead it’s a romantic comedy that still flourishes nearly ninety years later on the magnificence of its star performer, whose charismatic personality exudes a kind of contemporary allure that is nothing less than refreshing, as she’s completely in step with modern times.  What’s perhaps more ironic is the cheesy premise upon which this story rests, as the title comes from one of the characters thumbing through a 1927 Cosmopolitan magazine and coming across an article written by Elinor Glyn (who makes a cameo appearance) describing “It” as a kind of alluring sex appeal, described as “that quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force,” or described earlier by Rudyard Kipling in his 1904 story Mrs. Bathurst, who may have introduced “It” by describing the sensation, “Some women will stay in a man’s memory if they once walk down the street.”  Unbelievably, this picture was considered lost for many years, but a nitrate copy was found in Prague in the 1960’s, and by 2001 it was selected into the Library of Congress National Film Registry.  

The director Clarence Badger was famous for making over a dozen films with Will Rogers from 1919 to 1922, but nothing that reached the success of this picture, becoming ill during filming where Josef von Sternberg directed some scenes during his absence.  Though expressed through title cards, much of the witty dialogue in the picture predates what would eventually lead to the screwball comedy of the 30’s, where it’s the irrepressible spirit of the women that tends to catch the more reserved upper class gents off guard, where Bow as Betty Lou is not so much a sex kitten as an adorably sweet working class girl with spunk, the kind of woman audiences can identify with as she’s just one of the girls, but her cutie-pie beauty and down to earth manner are a remarkable combination, where her aggressively flirtatious style “is” part of what’s so funny, seen early on as she’s working behind the counter at Waltham’s department store and sees the dashing young store owner’s son, Cyrus Waltham Jr. (Antonio Moreno) and exclaims humorously “Sweet Santa, give me him.”  From that moment on she devises a plan to make that man her husband, just to prove a point to the other working girls that it can be done.  While the odds are against her, she gets a lucky break when Monty (William Austin), a kind of frat brother best friend of Cyrus (where they often meet “at the club”), is the one thumbing through Cosmopolitan magazine and starts searching the store for “It” girls, believing he’s finally found her with Betty Lou, offering her a ride home in his car.  She graciously accepts, but not in his car, preferring her own, and hops onto a heavily packed commuter bus, eventually agreeing to a dinner date, but only if it’s at the elegant Ritz, as she overhears that’s where Cyrus and his pampered socialite girlfiend Adela (Jacqueline Gadsden) are dining.  While the film is a choreography of misdirection and funny sight gags, it’s all led by Betty Lou’s tenacious drive to capture her boss’s interest, failing miserably at first, but not to be deterred, by continually placing herself in his path, she eventually catches his eye. 

Starting with the right dress to wear, with the help of her cash-strapped girlfriend Molly (Priscilla Bonner) who’s out of work and raising a baby alone, they literally cut into her work dress a plunging neckline while she’s still wearing it, Clara Bow Dresses for Dinner YouTube (6:07), converting it into an elegant look by evening, though by the time they reach the Ritz, the head waiter notices her work shoes, showing the various class layers she has to overcome just to be presentable.  And while she’s obviously using Monty to get to Cyrus, the portrayal of Monty is interesting, as while he’s charmingly polite, he’s more than likely gay, calling himself “Old fruit” in the mirror at one point, where his sexual neutrality allows the audience to accept this little opportunist game Betty is playing.  Monty is a good sport, often used to comic effect, and eventually aids Betty in her romantic ambitions.  By the time she finally gets her boss’s attention, Cyrus doesn’t seem to mind when he finds out she works for him, as what she offers is pure, unadulterated fun, an obvious class contrast and a poke at the idyll pleasures of the rich as being boring and pretentious.  When they finally go out on a date, she wants to go to Coney Island, filling up on hot dogs, laughing at the rides and funny mirrors, and literally having a ball at the good times to be had in an amusement park.  Happiness takes Cyrus by storm, clearly an unexpected pleasure, but when he tries to kiss her good night, she gives him a slap to protect her moral virtue and hurries out of the car, but is seen looking at him longingly out the window of her room afterwards.  While there’s an interesting diversion when the morally self-righteous welfare women, taking a zealously high-minded approach, come to take Molly’s baby away, creating quite a scene on the street below, where they send in a reporter to get the story, who is none other than Gary Cooper in one of his earliest (and last uncredited) roles.  Betty is able to make them go away only by claiming the baby as her own, which creates headlines, but also causes the morally principled Cyrus to have second thoughts, as he can’t be seen with a “fallen woman.”  This all sets up the free-wheeling finale on Cyrus’s yacht, where Monty helps stow Betty aboard as his supposed date, where after becoming the life of the party by playing her ukulele and clearing up a string of misunderstandings, the two literally take the plunge, lovers at last.  While Bow was only 21 when this movie was filmed, the advent of talking pictures all but ended her career, and while she made a few unsuccessful talking pictures, her stardom came to an abrupt end at the tender age of 25.     

Man of the West

MAN OF THE WEST         A            

USA  (100 mi)  1958  ‘Scope  d:  Anthony Mann

I have seen nothing so completely new since—why not—Griffith. Just as the director of Birth of a Nation gave one the impression that he was inventing the cinema with every shot, each shot of Man of the West gives one the impression that Anthony Mann is reinventing the Western, exactly as Matisse's portraits reinvent the features of Piero della Francesca. It is, moreover, more than an impression. He does reinvent. I repeat, reinvent; in other words, he both shows and demonstrates, innovates and copies, criticizes and creates. Man of the West. in short, is both course and discourse, or both beautiful landscapes and the explanation of this beauty, both art and the theory of art of the Western, the most cinematographic genre in the cinema.

—Jean Luc Godard, listing the film #6 of the year Jean-Luc Godard's Top Ten Lists 1956-1965 from Cahiers du Cinéma (1958)

There's a point where you either grow up and become a human being or you rot, like that bunch.     —Link Jones (Gary Cooper)

Another critical and commercial failure upon its release, the controversy surrounding this film happened well before the movie was ever made, as James Stewart was initially targeted for the lead role until he had a falling out with the director who instead chose another all-too-familiar western figure, Gary Cooper, in something of a thematic reprise of his role in HIGH NOON (1952), though critics condemned his performance in 1958, calling him “too old.”  But Cooper is a calmer presence than Stewart and lends a quiet nobility to the role of Link Jones, exactly what’s needed as a counterpart to the other players, all of whom are marked by the bitter cynicism of the era, set in a time when settlers had grown weary of cutthroats, gunslingers, and card sharks and a prevailing sense of civilization was beginning to crop up throughout the West, eradicating the previous influence of Indians, outlaws, and thieves.  Link Jones is not a whisky drinking man, or even a man who carries a gun, though he has one tucked away in his bag as he leaves from desolate parts unknown on a train journey to Fort Worth in search of a schoolteacher for his barely formed community.  Part of the interest is the way Mann leaves out pertinent details about Link’s past, adding an allure of mystery to the quiet dignity of Cooper, who has always been notoriously polite.  Even more scintillating are the gorgeous landscape compositions from Ernest Haller in one of the most exquisitely photographed of all westerns, bearing a resemblance to Sam Peckinpah’s RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962) filmed four years later, even down to the use of familiar faces onscreen who represent iconic images already associated with many heralded westerns, where that chiseled and cultivated maturity lends credence to the truth and authenticity of the picture itself.  Stewart may have been the first choice, but Cooper is ultimately the better choice, where his reputation with the audience precedes him, where his stern countenance reflects the gravity of his every move, a precursor to later films like Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968), Peckinpah’s THE WILD BUNCH (1969), and especially Eastwood’s own gravelly portrait of an aging, ex-gunfighter in UNFORGIVEN (1992). 

After a comical beginning, seeing the obviously uncomfortably Cooper awkwardly attempt to fit his long legs behind a train seat, the tone quickly changes when the train is ambushed at a water stop out in the middle of nowhere, leaving three passengers stranded behind who were knocked off the train in the shooting melee, including Jones, but also Julie London as Billie, a heady but also attractive saloon singer who’s been forced to acquiesce to the slimy nature of man, and Arthur O’Connell as Sam, an overly friendly confidence man known for dealing off the bottom of the deck.  Having no choice except to walk, as the next train doesn’t come by again for another week, Jones leads them to what resembles an isolated, uninhabited shack where they are quickly commandeered by ghosts of his past.  Unfortunately, they have walked right into a den of thieves headed by Dock Tobin, Lee J. Cobb as a demented old geezer who happens to be Jones’s deranged outlaw uncle who raised him as a kid.  Despite this bittersweet family reunion, the homecoming resembles a kidnapping at gunpoint, a psychologically crippling moment of terror where at one point the drunken men revel at forcing Billie to perform a striptease with a knife at the throat of Jones, her supposed “husband,” a lie he fabricates for her own protection.  This humiliation is the moral centerpiece of the film, as it shows how women remain vulnerable and are degraded in the wilderness of the Western frontier, a far cry from the supposed civilization depicted in the opening where she exerts the independence to make her own living, but it also challenges the unarmed Cooper to find a way against insurmountable odds to overcome this disastrous turn of events, where his honor in protecting the woman he calls his own is at stake.  Entrapped by thugs that used to be his family, he has to rely upon his wits to reflect a defining heroic masculinity instead of a gun, where his calm, self-assured nature is quite a contrast to the twitching anxiety of his kidnappers, who always seem to be distressed, continually flying off the handle, always at war with themselves.  

This is a film about choices, where characters are challenged throughout to make difficult choices, but here their lives depend upon them, which add a threatening intensity to every moment, where one wrong move could cost someone their life, and eventually does.  Civilization is given a mythical status here of dueling parallel options, where one is the undefined, almost imaginary town where Jones comes from that is depicted as hard working but true, a place where nothing comes easy, but it’s here that Jones built himself a better life, lifting himself out of the muck of his uncle’s thieving and murderous ways into a place of respectability.  The other is every outlaw’s dream, the imaginary oasis of fortune, the unprotected, two-bit town with a lone bank secretly holding untold gold reserves, where all they have to do is make one final score before they can make a clean break to Mexico.  Like THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE (1948), these men are both motivated and doomed by their respective obsessions, where Jones is driven to overcome his haunted past, while Tobin and his men are destined to mercilessly re-live their failures over and over again, where just the sight of seeing Jones again is like pointing a mirror reflection into their own failed pasts, reminding each one how little they’ve grown or accomplished.  Part of the brilliance of this film is balancing the haunting beauty of the exterior landscapes with the psychologically probing interior states of mind, which seem challenged at every turn of the road.  Adapted by Reginald Rose, who a year earlier wrote 12 ANGRY MEN, from a Will C. Brown novel called Border Jumpers, the film centers around familiar Anthony Mann themes, a vast untapped territorial beauty undermined by the devious nature of man, a film noir sensibility featuring flawed and damaged characters in the lead roles, where there’s an element of cruel inhumanity inside every man, not just the outlaws, but more importantly films that feature men who seek justice without resorting to violence, who are in fact forced into action, often against their will, to defend their inherent beliefs about the kind of world they want to live in.  What distinguishes Mann westerns from others is this rough edged vision, where they’re not just defending a person or a family, but the “idea” of a place where a man can live in peace.  Mann exposes the raw elements of nature and man, using fierce landscapes and cunning outlaws, not standard types, where overcoming these overwhelming obstacles is more than a thrilling adventure usually fraught with violence, but a legacy to our own perseverance and capabilities as a populace, as by now the untamed West has been tamed, but at what price, as certainly elements of our darkest nature survive intact as well and are also part of our historic legacy.     

Rio Bravo

RIO BRAVO                 A                     

USA  (141 mi)  1959  d:  Howard Hawks

While this is generally considered the model for John Carpenter’s ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976), that’s putting it loosely, as much more of the action in this movie takes place outside the jailhouse where a sheriff, a cripple, and a drunk are keeping a prisoner locked up, despite the best efforts of his brother and his “extended” family of hired guns who have blocked off the town from the rest of the world and are lining the streets just waiting for their opportunity to set him free.  Hawks was angry with Gary Cooper’s performance in HIGH NOON (1952), thinking he did not represent the bravery of the actual sheriffs in the West, especially considering he spent much of the time asking people from the town for help rather than make do with whatever he had.  In the language of the West, brave men never asked for help, but only accepted it when it was offered.  John Wayne is just such a sheriff in this film, one of his more likeable roles as a hardened, crusty, rifle toting man who demands respect from anybody who tries to go up against him, so few people try.  Yet in the opening sequence, which is played out slow and tense, gauging a humiliating and disturbingly sadistic moment in a saloon, somebody whacks him over the head, which kept him from preventing what happened next, as a man at the bar (Claude Akins) shoots another man in cold blood.  Wayne catches up with him in the next bar, introducing himself by whacking him with the barrel of his rifle, knocking him out cold, hauling him off to the jail where the sheriff and his two deputies remain considerably outnumbered. 

The film is surprisingly easy on the eyes, as it has a terrific cast shot during the prime of their careers, all delivering among their career best performances. Wayne is solid as the no nonsense Sheriff John T. Chance, as his decisions are sensible, carefully reasoned, where he continually looks after the interests of others over his own personal welfare, perfectly expressed to the Wagon Train master Ward Bond early in the film.  Bond offers to help, and gets himself killed in the process.  Dean Martin is barely recognizable as the Dude (yes, before Jeff Bridges!), a nervous, sweaty, rather shifty kind of deputy who can startle you with his shooting accuracy, where almost Columbo-like, he takes people by surprise, as for the past 2 years (after losing a girl) he’s been on a drunk, but since this murder he remains sober, though going through the shakes through most of this film.  The Dude’s best moment is entering a bar filled with a dozen or so of the prisoner’s friends and having to pick out the man who shot Ward Bond, no easy feat, especially when they continue to ridicule him for being a drunk, but he impressively sizes up the situation perfectly.  The other deputy is Walter Brennan, a grizzled old man who walks with a limp and has one of the most recognizable voices in show business, often imitated by impersonators, but he gives a stellar performance here.  Add to this cast two stragglers who came in on the stage, Ricky Nelson as Colorado, a hired gun working for the Wagon master, and Angie Dickenson as Feathers, a notorious card shark listed as a known associate of a man on a Wanted poster who was caught cheating at cards, identifiable by her preference for wearing feathers.  Both are outstanding, especially Dickenson, where in every scene with Wayne she literally knocks his socks off, a smart headed woman, a whirlwind of sexual energy who steals every scene she’s in.  She’s a dynamo.

What makes these characters so useful is the way each one is used, as they carry the action when the camera is turned on them, as there’s an underlying story of a jailhouse that is surrounded and outnumbered, a sheriff who hasn’t a clue how to hold his prisoner as they wait for a federal marshal to arrive in six days.  How do they hold them off?  Rather than focus on the tension, which is established early, the director clearly delights in the infectiously appealing nature of pairing off different personalities, letting them each have brilliantly extended scenes together, where the bravado performances only color the already heightened tension.  Hawks is really in no hurry to deliver the inevitable showdown scene, which he delivers in spades, but the film is actually everything leading up to that moment, where the people become the story, where they have to stand their ground and take stock of one another, where they may occasionally wobble a bit in their belief in themselves, but they’re surprisingly supportive in the way they relate to one another.  It’s impressive how Hawks works a few songs into the works while sitting around the jailhouse, where Dean Martin sings “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me” accompanied by a guitar-playing Nelson, with Brennan on the harmonica, and all three chime in to Nelson’s “Cindy.”  The entire film is superbly written and directed, brilliantly acted, perfectly paced, with some terrific naturalistic sounding dialogue.  The bad guys and the owners of the hotel may be stock characters prone to stereotypes, but they don’t infect the psychological intrigue that is established early, as the film is surprisingly intricate, establishing a protective and harmonious community before our eyes through the complex interplay of such appealing characters.