Introduction
Railroads crossed the country connecting it like never before. Small villages blew up into cities as people headed west to seek their fortunes. New technologies were making life easier. The west was no longer a wild frontier. It was being tamed - made docile even.
The western film went through a similar transition, as directors like John Ford got older. Whereas the “old west” was characterized by romantic plots and action, the “transitional” or “troubled west” was darker and explored the themes of passing time and a lost age. The heroes and the villains were no longer so easily identified. The cowboys and outlaws were old and ready to retire or just die and be forgotten.
The Searchers (1956) Rent it on iTunes.
The Searchers opens with the camera exiting the Edwards’ homestead. We see Ethan (played by the Duke) coming home after a three year absence. The family is happy to see him, especially young Debbie. There is, however, tension between Ethan and his adopted nephew, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), because the latter is part Cherokee. And thus the audience is introduced to the main theme of The Searchers - Ethan’s racism.
The following morning, Captain Samuel Johnston Clayton (Ward Bond) visits the family to inform them their neighbor had some cattle stolen. He deputizes Ethan and Pawley. Together with a posse of Texas rangers they seek the stolen cattle. However, it is discovered the theft was a Comanche ploy to lure the men from their homes. When Ethan and Pawley return to the Edwards’ homestead, they find it in flames. Everyone is dead except the daughters Debbie and Lucy. They have been abducted.
The rest of the movie chronicles the five-year search for the missing girls. Lucy (Pippa Scott) is found dead in the desert. Debbie (Natalie Wood) is married to chief Scar (Henry Brandon). The rangers raid the Comanche tribe, rescuing Debbie in the process.
Throughout the search, Ethan exhibits his hatred for the natives. In one scene, Ethan puts out the eyes of a dead Comanche to curse his spirit to roam the earth. Clayton asks, what good did that do? Ethan gives his answer, but the truth is, no good. It was an act of pure spite. In another, he kills buffalo to diminish the Comanche’s winter food supply. Again, we may ask what good that did. And we will answer, no good.
When Ethan finds Scar’s body (killed earlier by Pawley), he scalps it. This is telling because in an earlier scene Scar shows off his scalp collection. Scar is a savage in Ethan’s estimation, but Ethan is also savage - maybe the most savage person on the screen.
His hate culminates with Ethan’s attempt to murder Debbie. The little girl he once intended to save has been corrupted. “Living with the Comanche’s ain’t being alive,” he remarks. Elsewhere, he states Debbie isn’t his blood kin anymore. The tension between Ethan and Pawley comes to a head. Pawley blocks Ethan’s shot at Debbie with his own body. And later Pawely yells through gritted teeth, “I hope you die!”
The cowboy hero has turned villain. Not only must Pawley save his adopted sister from the Comanche, he must also save her from Ethan.
Inexplicably, Ethan changes his mind in the last minutes of the film. His murderous rage evaporates - completely! He accepts Debbie. It is unbelievable, but an explanation is suggested. The scene in which Ethan catches Debbie mirrors another scene at the beginning of the film in which Ethan is holding Debbie lovingly. It is possible that once again holding his beloved niece in his arms brought him back to his senses. Even so, it’s a stretch and the only, but major disappointment with the film.
The movie’s final scene mirrors the opening scene. This time the camera is backing into the Jorgensen’s homestead. Each member of the family enters, happy to be together again. But Ethan remains outside, and the door shuts.
It is believed (and with good reason) that Ethan was in love with his sister-in-law, and that may partially explain his long absence from the family. But Ethan also refuses to join the Jorgensen family even as they take in both Pawley and Debbie. Why? We have seen his hatred for the Comanche. He also fought in the American civil war on the side of the Confederacy. I think his racism - his hate, anger and jealousy as well - are so deep rooted that it prevents him from ever having any kind of relationship, Debbie excepted. Perhaps that is why his passions to save her, then kill her then save her again burned so bright and so strong.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) Rent it on iTunes.
Senator Ransom Stoddard and his wife, Hallie (James Stewart and Vera Miles respectively), return to the town of Shinbone after 25 years. They are to attend the funeral of a friend. The local newspaper editor asks for an interview. The senator leaves his wife with the former marshal Link Appleyard (Andy Devine). She and the marshal sit atop a wagon. Hallie remarks, “The place has sure changed.” And the marshal replies, “The railroad done that. Desert’s still the same.”
The theme of a bygone era is repeated when Stoddard reflects that his first trip to Shinbone was by stagecoach, not train. The movie flashes back to that fateful trip.
The sociopathic gang leader Liberty Valance (Marvin Lee) intercepts the coach, robs and beats Stoddard nearly to death. He is found by Tom Doniphon (the Duke) and nursed back to health by Hallie.
Valance terrorizes the town. The marshal is useless. Only Doniphon stands up to him, stating that violence is the only thing a man like that understands. Stoddard is not so convinced. The young man fresh out of law school is determined to bring order to Shinbone.
In an excellent scene, Stoddard is waiting tables at “Peter’s Place” when Valance trips him. The platter of food he carried scatters across the floor. Doniphon intervenes, declaring that was his food. He demands Valance pick it up. A tense standoff ensues, only broken when Stoddard angrily picks up the mess. “Is everybody in this country kill crazy?” he shouts. “Here! There, There. Now it’s picked up!”
Valance and his gang ride off, shooting out windows as they go. Doniphon says rhetorically he wonders what scared Valance off? Of course, it was the threat of his gun. For all Stoddard’s knowledge and idealism, he was powerless. Civility will not tame the west; that job falls to the gun. Stoddard starts practicing marksmanship.
Valance goes too far when his gang assaults Dutton Peabody (Edmond O’Brien) for publishing an unflattering article about him. Stoddard confronts the outlaw in the street. Stoddard is shot in the arm, but he rallies and kills Valance. However, Doniphon later reveals that he fired the fatal shot, sniping from the shadows with a rifle.
Back in the present day, the editor Maxwell Scott (Carleton Young) rips up the true story. “This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” he says. In a sense, Scott has become the dime novelist that created the “old west” mythology. With this minor character and the clever line just quoted, Ford gives us a peek behind the curtain; the audience understands that these are myths created by writers and not the true article. We will get a more complete view in Unforgiven.
Ultimately Stoddard got what he wanted: law and order did come to Shinbone. But it came at the price of blood. It was only with the violent extermination of Valance that Stoaddrd’s brand of civility could take root.
Tom Doniphon is the friend whose funeral the senator and his wife came to attend. With Doniphon’s death so, too, does the “old west” die. Ford showed us the ugly truth: these were men - violent men too often - and there is nothing romantic about gunfights. He traded the sweeping vistas of The Iron Horse, Stagecoach and The Searchers for the claustrophobic one-road town of Shinbone where progress would obliterate anything recognizable to Hallie, and Doniphon’s death heralds the end of a genre.
The Wild Bunch (1969) Rent it on iTunes.
John Ford sang his swan song, but Sam Peckinpah has his own melody to sing.
In 1913 Texas, Pike Bishop (William Holden) leads a band of aging outlaws dressed as soldiers. They aim to retire after this final heist - a railroad office supposedly holding a cache of silver. But the railroad is expecting them. The silver is swapped with steel washers and a posse of rag-tag bounty hunters ambush them from the rooftops. A bloody shootout ensues killing half the outlaws and numerous bystanders. When the scene settles, the bounty hunters unceremoniously loot the corpses.
Already Peckinpah has obfuscated good and evil, the heroes and the villains. Soldiers turn out to be the bad guys - a point made especially sharp when Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine) graciously helps an old lady minutes before the brutal shootout. The supposed good guys are trigger-happy thugs who loot the corpses of the civilians they killed. This is not the heroic “old west” of Stagecoach or the civilized “new west” we glimpse in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. No, this is a “transitional west” that is deeply troubled.
Bishop’s gang flees to Mexico. They rest in a village that is home to one of their members, Angel (Jaime Sanchez). It’s a village embroiled in battle, as made clear by the breastfeeding mother who wears a bandolier across her bare breast. The tyrannical general Mapache (Emilio Fernandez) terrorizes the village. On a personal note, he took Angel’s girlfriend as his own.
Now in Agua Verde, Angel sees his former lover in the general’s arms. In a jealous rage he kills her. Bishop defuses the situation and offers to work for the general.
Mapache is fighting against Pancho Villa’s revolutionaries. He needs weapons and ammo. He knows of an American military transport train carrying such supplies. He offers $10,000 for the gang to steal it. Bishop agrees.
The train heist sequence is one of the best I have ever seen.
Angel forfeits his share of the $10,000 for a case of weapons. He wants to arm his village against the terror of Mapache. Bishop is fine with this, but when Mapache discovers the treachery, he takes Angel prisoner.
Meanwhile, the bounty hunters close in on Bishop’s group so they return to Agua Verde for shelter. While there they witness Angel being dragged behind the general’s car.
Earlier in the film, Bishop said, “We’re gonna stick together, just like it used to be. When you side with a man, you stay with him. And if you can’t do that, you’re like some animal - you’re finished. We’re finished. All of us!” With the money in hand but Angel being tortured, Bishops’ commitment to his values will be tested.
He first attempts to buy back Angel, but Mapache refuses. After a frolic with drinks and prostitutes - and some time for reflection - the remaining four of the gang march to take Angel back by force. A terrible battle ensues. Very bloody. Virtually everyone dies.
Although Bishop is a killer and thief, he has principles for which he dies. Meanwhile, the leader of the bounty hunters - Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan) - is a former partner of Bishop. He hunts his friend because he gave his word to the railroad company that hired him (“What would you do in his place? He gave his word”). More telling, Thornton laments, “They [Bishop, et al.] know what this is all about. And what do I have? Nothin' but you egg-suckin', chicken-stealing gutter trash, with not even sixty rounds between you. We're after men, and I wish to God I was with them.” Peckinpah is challenging our primitive notions of good and evil. Men like Bishop can be cruel but principled, while the bounty hunters can work for justice but be “gutter trash.”
There is also the passing of an era. Peckinpah works it in creatively, sometimes subtly. Notably, the technology used. We see a car, automatic pistols and a machine gun. There is mention of airplanes. Bishop is old and plans to retire. Ultimately, he dies. And there are a few references to “how it used to be.”
Bishop is a dinosaur - a relic from a former age. His final stand behind a machine gun is the proverbial blaze of glory which burns itself out. And Thornton is left to mourn the passing.
Conclusion for the “Troubled West”
Whether we call it the “troubled west” or “transitional west” it really means the same thing because transitions are troubling. They are difficult, stressful. Just as the wild west was modernized, the western genre transitioned away from the dime novels and early films that once characterized it. The heroes were not so heroic anymore; they were complicated, flawed or down right mean.
The “old west” is gone. It died along with men like Liberty Valance, Tom Doniphon and Pike Bishop. The “new west” of Ransom Stoddard is here. It is a west that is peaceful, tamed but also less romantic. Perhaps that is why The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ends on a solemn note. Even Stoddard, the champion of law, mourns the loss of the legendary heroes and villains that never existed in the first place.