Reeling Backward: "How the West Was Won" (1962)

By 1962 Hollywood knew the jig was up.

Audiences, with expanding options of quality programming on television, would no longer automatically show up to the cinemas for whatever fare they had thrown together. Actors and directors were tired of being workhorses for the studios, told to go here and do that, and wanted the power to pick their own projects. Certain quintessentially American genres, notably the musical and the Western, were increasingly seen as creaky and worn out.

The Golden Age, for good and naught, was waning -- and everyone knew it.

The reaction from Tinseltown, at least for awhile, was to deliver things TV couldn't: color pictures, big action spectacles, widescreen formats, stereo sound, 3-D imagery and so on. One of the big ideas was Cinerama, which stretched an extremely wide image across a huge curved screen, so the audience literally felt like the movie was wrapping around their field of vision.

To get some perspective, the aspect ratio of most films today is 1.85 to 1, width to height. Modern flatscreen TVs are 1.78, so when movies are played on them you only get a little bit of black bar at the top and bottom. (Rarer) widescreen movies are usually 2.35, so the bars are much bigger. Cinerama was 2.59, so when I watched the film on my set the film only occupied the middle third or so of the screen.

Only two major feature films were made using this process, which involved shooting with three separate 35mm cameras and then using a trio of projectors in the theater.  "How the West Was Won" was a big success, the second highest-grossing film of that year, but it was too expensive to outfit more than a handful of theaters with the setup.

When shown as a single image on a flat screen, the three pieces tended to not match up well, with noticeable lines during bright scenes. Since most theaters didn't undertake the upgrade, this is how most audiences saw it. Despite its early success, Cinerama died a quick death.

MGM undertook a restoration of the movie in 2000, and new Blu-ray editions include a version that simulates the curved Cinerama look. I've included two stills of the same scene above so you can see the marked difference in presentation.

Filmmakers didn't like the logistics of shooting in Cinerama, either, since it required them to position the actors and backgrounds in such a way that the performers might not even be looking at the person they were talking to in the scene. John Ford, who directed one of the film's five sequences, complained that you couldn't shoot closer than the waist up, which limited the ability to give audiences an emotional connection with the characters.

Much like the green screen technology of today, the final result could be fabulous, but required a talented and attentive cast and director to preserve the performance aspect.

The visual look of the restored "How the West Was Won" is often breathtaking, with glorious vistas of the American fields, rivers and mountains. Narratively the story spreads over 50 years, from 1839 to 1889, covering the settlement of Ohio, the gold rush, the Civil War, the building of a transcontinental railroad line and the height of the outlaw era. It's all told through the eyes of a single family, as subsequent generations grow up and move on further West.

The final movie was a languid 164 minutes, but includes lengthy musical overtures (by Alfred Newman) at the beginning, middle and end that probably consume at least 20 minutes on their own. Everything about the film telegraphs that it wants to be seen as an old-school epic, but really it's several small, barely interrelated stories strung together.

In a gimmicky move, different directors were hired for the five sections, though Henry Hathaway helmed most: the first, second and fifth. Ford directed the third and shortest section on the Civil War, which is really more of a vignette than a true standalone story. George Marshall oversaw the fourth and probably best sequence on the often merciless drive to connect the railroads from east to west.

It was nominated for a bunch of Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won three for Sound, Editing and James R. Webb's screenplay -- thought it did not get a nod, notably, for directing.

The film also has the prerequisite "All Star Cast," though most of them have very fleeting parts. John Wayne is in it for about two minutes, along with Henry Morgan, playing great Union generals Sherman and Grant during the Civil War section. Jimmy Stewart has a bigger part as a frontier trapper who falls for one of the daughters (Carroll Baker) of cantankerous pioneer Zebulon Prescott (Karl Malden) in the first sequence. Stewart gets stabbed by some river pirates (led by the great Walter Brennan) but survives to win the girl.

Henry Fonda and Richard Widmark turn up in the railroad section as, respectively, a fiercely independent scout and the hardcase overseer of the building operation, who's willing to break the treaty with the Arapaho Indians and start a war if it'll mean shaving a few days off his schedule.

Gregory Peck plays a gambler who courts, then deserts, then nabs again one of the Prescott daughters, played by Debbie Reynolds, who wants to marry a rich husband and move back East but ends up as a saloon showgirl instead. Robert Preston plays the wagon train master who pitches his own woo at her, telling her about the matching suitability of his huge ranch and her ample child-bearing hips, but she's looking for a little more romance. Thelma Ritter plays an over-the-hill female pioneer who desperately wants to get married; I kept thinking she would hook up with the Preston character.

Eli Wallach turns up in the last sequence as Charlie Gant, a particularly nasty outlaw who avoided jail years ago and is back to torment the lawman who killed his brother. They each put lead into the other they still carry, so there's no love lost. It seems like a clear precursor to Wallach's Spaghetti Western roles later on.

Really the biggest star in the picture in terms of screen time is George Peppard playing Zeb Rawlings, the son of the Jimmy Stewart and Carroll Baker characters. He's the main character in the last three sequences. In the Civil War he's a scrappy young recruit who becomes disillusioned by the senseless killing. In the railroad section he's a U.S. Cavalry officer charged with keeping the peace, who continually butts heads with the Widmark villain. Finally he's the marshal, now with a wife and kids of his own, who faces off with Charlie Gant, as Debbie Reynolds returns as an aged doyenne of San Francisco who wants to spend her last years on a ranch.

Spencer Tracy narrates the tale with openings to each sequence, plus a flowery speech at the end about how the suffering and triumphs of those Western pioneers allowed us to have all the great stuff we have today. It's a little disconcerting as the airborne camera swoops over the vistas, which gradually become more and more occupied with the mark of humanity, including highways and smoke-belching factories. I suppose in 1962 those things were seen as hallmarks of progress rather than urban sprawl.

I guess I like the idea of "How the West Was Won" more than the totality of the movie itself. It's generally quite entertaining, and even grand at times. But it feels more like a lot of haphazard pieces washing down the current of history than a coherent film.

Reeling Backward: "The Misfits" (1961)

"The Misfits" is a film about endings -- both thematically and in the real lives of the cast and crew.

It was the final film for both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, and many observers have deemed their respective performances the finest of their careers. I'd have to agree about Monroe, certainly with regards to her non-comedic work, though I haven't seen a large enough portion of Gable's movies to make such a dispositive statement.

He would suffer a heart attack just two days after production wrapped -- some contend because the 59-year-old insisted on doing the strenuous stunts contained in the movie himself, including wrestling a bucking mustang stallion and being dragged on the ground up to 30 miles per hour. Gable died a few days later, an icon for three decades during his life and many more after.

Monroe lingered on for another 19 months, descending further into her spiral of drugs and self-torment. Co-star Montgomery Clift, his own career derailed by substance abuse and a car wreck that required reconstructive facial surgery, would make only three more films before perishing at age 45, the denouement of what's been called "the longest suicide" in showbiz.

And the marriage between Monroe and Arthur Miller dissolved during the course of filming, as he continually rewrote the screenplay while he and director John Huston wrestled over their conceptions for the movie. One of Hollywood's oddest marital pairings ended in divorce shortly before "The Misfits" premiered. Monroe was often late to the set or a complete no-show, and at one point production ground to a halt during her two-week hospital stay.

And yet the old Hollywood proverb -- that pleasant productions result in disappointing final results, while tumultous shoots produce some of the medium's best works -- holds true with "The Misfits." It is a glorious, brave, imperfect portrait of flawed people yearning for freedom and respect, but pulled by the primal urges of love, lust and pride to trap themselves in cages of their own crafting.

The movie's story, and its method of storytelling, also stand on the doorstep of changeover from the dependable "old way" to a risky, grittier new. The tale centers on modern day (for 1961) Nevada, emblematic of a frontier life that is not disappearing, but disappeared. Aging, antediluvian cowboys stubbornly try to eke out an existence based on a fierce sense of individuality they know only from adolescent wanderings and John Wayne movies.

Huston and Miller embraced a mode of filmmaking that was less about laying down a spotlighted runway carpet of plot than creating indelible characters, throwing them into a pot together and seeing what comes out of their simmering emulsions. It's no surprise "The Misfits" is the sort of movie Method actors were drawn to, where the performances drive the story rather than the other way round. Clift, Monroe and co-star Eli Wallach all studied with the Strasbergs.

Monroe was often dismissed as a sex object, but in "The Misfits" she literally is one. Roslyn Tabor, recently divorced and emotionally fragile, is like a butterfly in a meadow full of predators. All the men she meets desire her physically, and all three of the male main characters fall in love with her. She is aware of her sexual power, has used it in the past to her benefit, but now it's become a burden she'd rather cast off.

It reminds me of what Hannibel Lecter said about another killer in the book and movie "The Silence of the Lambs." What is his first principle, i.e. what is the essence of his being? He covets. Roslyn is the flip side of that equation: her existence is defined by being coveted.

"Celebrating" her divorce with her older, jaded companion Isabelle (Thelma Ritter), Roslyn bumps into Gay Langland (Gable) and Guido, a pair of itinerant cowboys who believe God's country is their bequest, and freedom their daily manna. On a whim, she hooks up with them and moves to Guido's cabin in the plains, where Gay becomes her lover, almost by default.

Guido is 40-ish, a WWII bomber pilot who was studying to be a doctor until his wife died on him. She was loyal and "uncomplaining as a tree," he says, and he clearly thinks Roslyn should be the second iteration of her. Guido is the smartest and most sensitive of the bunch, but something in him is like biting on tinfoil. "You could blow up the whole world and end up feeling sorry for yourself," Roslyn observes, hitting the mark square on.

Gay is much older, probably about Gable's actual age, but he's still virile and hard as creased leather. (Gable reportedly lost nearly 40 pounds for the role, which could have contributed to his health issues.) Freedom is his lifeblood and his mantra. To him, women are deceitful creatures always trying to trip him up and tie him down. The most dire insult a man can commit is to offer him a paying job.

"It's better than wages," Gay and his companions are often heard to say, with the clear implication that nothing much is worse.

And yet, Gay is willing to sacrifice his freedom, or at least a piece of it, in order to make Roslyn remain with him. He helps her plant a garden and fixes up Guido's half-finished house. What's more, he stays in once place for weeks and months, shrugging off the wanderlust that is his sword and shield.

The last addition to the group, almost like a lost puppy taken in from the storm, is Perce Howland (Clift), a young rodeo tough. His father died not long ago and his mother remarried a man he can't stand, so Perce (rhymes with "purse") is essentially a grown-up runaway. The family ranch was meant to be his, and when his stepfather offered him wages (!) to work on his own land, it was more than he could bear.

Perce is a living variation of the parable of the prodigal son, but instead of squandering his inheritance he worries about being cheated out of it. The life of a rancher is all Perce has ever aspired to, and he'd rather bust himself to pieces riding broncs and bulls than accept anything less than his full birthright.

Perce is touched when he is injured in a rodeo and Roslyn weeps for him. Empathy is a novel concept in his travels. Straightforward and simple-minded -- and possibly addled from so many blows to the head -- Perce is in many ways as much a symbol of purity as Roslyn. In truth she would be better living and loving him than either Gay or Guido, but Perce is too decent to even think of horning in on another man's gal. And she, despite her new-found independence, still wants a man to chase her.

Gay convinces the others to "go mustanging" -- chase down and corral a passel of the few remaining wild horses in Nevada and sell them off to a dealer. They used to roam the range by the thousands, but all they can gather up is one stallion, four mares and a colt -- barely enough to pay for their gas and a few dollars apiece. It takes more than crumbs to make a meal out of the glory days.

Further soiling the spirit of the Old West they embrace, Gay & Co. don't do their herding from horseback, but scatter the mustangs using Guido's dilapidated biplane and roping them from the back of a flat-bed truck, using old tires as anchors to wear them out.

For Roslyn, the final blow comes upon learning the mustangs will not be sold as riding animals -- Gay repeatedly praises the speed and  hardiness of the small horses -- but as meat for dog food. At this she flips out, cursing her "three sweet damned men" and swearing to have nothing to do with them ever again. "You're only happy when you can see something die!" she shrieks.

Eventually the horses are released -- after a showdown between the men where Gay nearly kills himself to prove that no one can make up his mind for him. He's been living in a cloud of self-delusion, wearing his mantle as a the carefree cowboy like armor. Gay resolves to give up the wild life and settle down with Roslyn.

With the passing of Gay and his ilk, the film suggests, America is forced to pull the shroud over the ideal of a land of limitless opportunity, where men and women can forge their own idea of what it means to be happy and free.

And in the end, that's what "The Misfits" is about: The death of the cowboy.

4 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966)

Is "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" really a sequel to "A Fistful of Dollars" and "For a Few Dollars More?" After having experienced the entire "Man with No Name" trilogy in short order, I think "The Good" is more a continuation of an ethos and a filmmaking style than a literal expansion of the same character's travels.

As I noted in last week's classic film column, "A Few Dollars" seems to be a pretty straightforward extension of the "Joe" character from "Fistful," now referring to himself as "Manco." (The Man with No Name actually has a name in every movie, it just changes from one to the other.) He still bore the wounds of his severe beating in the first film, most notably a leather brace on his shooting hand after having it crushed.

In the last film Blondie -- the moniker Clint Eastwood bears in "The Good," despite having dark brown hair -- has no issues with his right hand. It's also interesting that he favors a long duster coat instead of the Mexican blanket poncho he had worn so memorably in the first two films. (The rest of his get-up -- sheepskin vest, jeans, hat, gun belt -- remain pretty consistent throughout.) He does eventually don one for the final showdown, the three-way "Mexican standoff" that remains one of the most iconic film scenes of all time.

My other hesitation in calling the final pairing of Eastwood and Italian director Sergio Leone a literal sequel is the timeline. The first two films appeared to take place in the hallowed Old West days of the 1870s to the 1890s. But "The Good" is quite consciously set during the Civil War, which would seem to be going backward in time.

The weaponry certainly doesn't seem to fit. Blondie and his fellow gunslingers all use revolvers with fully jacketed metallic cartridges -- not the ball-and-cap varieties employed during the War, which were much more difficult to reload. I'm not sure cartridge revolvers were even available until after the war. I own a pair of .36 caliber Navy Colts handed down from a relative who was in the war, and I can tell you they're a completely different animal.

The mythology of "The Good" is a bit uncertain, though, so one could read it as Blondie & Co. picked up and dropped into the middle of the nation's bloodiest conflict. Perhaps it was Leone's way of retorting to those who criticized his Spaghetti Westerns for being too violent -- placed against the backdrop of wholesale slaughter, the few dead men who litter his films seem like a meager trickle.

"I've never seen so many men wasted so badly," Blondie comments upon witnessing a battle between North and South over a meaningless bridge.

The first two films featured effective villains, but "The Good" really ratcheted things up with the presence of Angel Eyes, a remorseless assassin played by Lee Van Cleef, and Tuco "The Rat" Ramirez, a slithery scoundrel that Eli Wallach made into one of his finest roles. Van Cleef, of course, played Eastwood's erstwhile partner in the last movie, but Leone was known to re-use favored actors again and again.

I would make a bold argument that Tuco is actually the hero, or at least the protagonist, of "The Good." He's the only one gifted with any kind of backstory or emotional motivation, and if you count up screen time and lines of dialogue, Wallach probably comes out ahead of Eastwood.

Tuco is a thief and a liar, more than happy to double-cross or sacrifice his partners in crime, but operating by an internal -- though deeply hidden -- sense of honor. He and Blondie start out the movie employing a neat scam: Blondie rides into town with Tuco as his prisoner, collects the reward money, then saves his life by shooting out the hangman's noose when the local lawmen go to execute him.

But then Blondie decides the partnership has gone its course and leaves Tuco in the desert, riding off with both halves of the loot. Tuco is incensed -- not so much that a double-cross has occurred, but that Blondie beat him to the punch. He spends much of the rest of the movie looking for his revenge, even as he pretends to be friendly again.

I found myself wondering why Blondie and Tuco know who Angel Eyes is, despite the fact that their paths never cross until midway through the movie. Purely by reputation, perhaps.

All three have gotten a line on $200,000 in stolen gold buried in a cemetery, and through a chain of happenstance Tuco knows only the name of the place and Blondie only knows the name on the grave. They've temporarily re-formed their partnership to find the loot, but are captured by Union soldiers and taken to a camp where Angel Eyes is hiding out as a sergeant. He tortures prisoners for their valuables and any information about the buried gold.

This brings us to another one of the film's most iconic scenes, where captured Confederates are made to play a song to cover up the sounds of their comrades getting beaten to a pulp. It's one of several instances where composer Ennio Morricone's score not only comments on the action but actually drives it.

Morricone's abilities had reached their height by the last of the "Man with No Name" trilogy, and few serious observers of movie music fail to count the score of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" as one of the greatest ever composed. Most remember the hyena-ish caterwaul theme repeated with both voices and instruments -- quite possibly the most effective use of two musical notes this side of John William's score for "Jaws."

But I would argue that Morricone's other themes from this film are just as terrific. There's that sad torture song, whose melody is used several more times during the more melancholy points of the story. And the martial march, punctuated by a harsh steel guitar, is the driving force of many scenes. My favorite is when Tuco and Blondie team up again to take on Angel Eyes' gang. Tuco looks over to his left, sees Blondie there to back him up, and it's game on. This same theme, slowed down and layered with a screeching trumpet solo on top, also plays during the final standoff.

At the end of my column on "Fistful," I stated that I like the idea of the "Man with No Name" more when he's a me-first mercenary, rather than a do-gooder wearing the proverbial black hat. I think that's also why I admire "The Good" the most, because despite the title affixed to Blondie he's a pretty heartless character in his final go-round.

Blondie was quite content to abandon Tuco to a suffering death in the desert and make off with all their ill-gotten gains. And it's worth pointing out that while "Manco" was a quasi-agent of the law in the second film, here Blondie is an out-and-out bandit twisting the Western code of justice for his own profit.

The reason the finale of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is so effective is because we -- and Tuco -- really believe Blondie is capable of leaving him hanging for his life, literally.

On a final note, the version I watched as part of the "Man with No Name" trilogy on Blu-ray is the restored film that's just a hair under three hours long. I have to say the new additions add nothing to the movie -- they're essentially connective scenes that show how, for example, Tuco finds his three henchmen and where Angel Eyes' gang comes into the story. One useless bit shows Tuco, having just rescued Blondie from a horrible death in the desert, stopping to get directions to his brother's monastery.

These new scenes don't advance the plot or add anything to the characterizations, and are just dead weight on a great film.

4 stars out of four