Reeling Backward: "The Ballad of Cable Hogue" (1970)

After essentially blowing up the Western genre, what do you do next?

In the case of Sam Peckinpah, coming off the divisive glory of "The Wild Bunch," which was excoriated for its brutal violence, you make a silly -- yet slyly consequential -- comedy like 1970's "The Ballad of Cable Hogue."

A casual observer of Peckinpah would be hard-pressed to even recognize the filmmaker's fingerprints on this gentle, life-affirming movie starring Jason Robards as a desert hermit who builds his own oasis in between tumbleweed towns. But they are there, including a general pessimism about the ability of the individual to conform to the strictures of society, and a sober realism about the usefulness, and misuse, of violence to address conflicts.

A big flop at the time, "Cable Hogue" essentially ended Peckinpah's career as an auteur. From there on out, he became a hired gun brought in -- usually reluctantly, due to his well-earned reputation for drunkenness and absenteeism on the set -- to work on prepackaged studio projects. But the movie has come to be reevaluated over the years and found new admirers, including myself.

Cable Hogue is not your typical Western protagonist, and he's certainly no hero -- at least not a cookie-cutter one. He's illiterate, ill-tempered, a skinflint to barter with, and seems to prefer the sun-baked company of lizards and rattlesnakes to that of most people. In the opening minutes he's even revealed to be a bit of a coward, declining to shoot his back-stabbing gold mining partners when he has the drop on them.

Yet Peckinpah and screenwriters John Crawford and Edmund Penney (plus an uncredited Gordon T. Dawson) delve deeper into Hogue's dust-caked, odorous personage and find a well-hidden nobility. Cable may be uncouth but he's not dull-witted; he's stubborn but capable of self-reflection and change; and he's intrinsically invested with enough pride to demand respect from those who would laugh at him -- which is pretty much everyone he meets, at least initially.

The movie is a celebration of a seemingly ordinary man who demands that he be accepted as he is, prodigious faults and all. He will make his own rules and abide by them, as will those who wander into his tiny two-acre domain. And he will never forget himself and dream of becoming something other than what he is.

In short, he is Cable Hogue, he is a man, and he will not be denied.

The story begins with those scheming partners, Taggart and Bowen (Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones, respectively), betraying Cable and leaving him in the desert to die without a drop of water or any possessions beyond the clothes on his back. Near death, he communes with the Lord, giving his feeble life over into His hands, and is rewarded by stumbling across a tiny water hole in the middle of nowhere.

Actually, the hole -- soon expanded into a well -- is right along the stagecoach route to the town of Deaddog. Cagey Cable reasons that having a place to stop and water horses will prove valuable to parched travelers. He refuses the offer of a lift into town and sets up shop, though his first transaction doesn't go so well when the customer refuses to pay the 10 cent fee to drink and Cable is forced to shoot him dead. But the miscreant has enough money in his pockets to secure the deed to the land, and Cable is officially in business.

His second customer is a mite better, the lecherous Reverend Joshua Sloan (David Warner), who sees the descended light of heaven in the curves of the female form, and is always ready to lay his gentle ministrations upon their quivering flesh. He wears a reverend's collar that can be turned around to become a gentleman's tie, depending on need and circumstance. Josh soon becomes Cable's confidante, assistant and needler-in-chief.

The heart of the story lies in Cable's initial visit to Deaddog to secure his claim and grubstake to build something out of nothing.. Laughed at by the town children, thrown out of the stagecoach office when he offers to sell half the deed to his land for $35, Cable runs into a pair of friendly faces that brighten his perpetually sour mood.

The first is Hildy (Stella Stevens), the preternaturally pretty town prostitute who kindly directs Cable to the proper destinations he seeks (since he can't read the signs) and rewards him with a backward glance or two. With her painfully thin waist and incongruously heaving bosom and ample hindquarters -- which Peckinpah's camera lingers over, again and again -- Hildy looks like a caricature of every female character in every Western ever made. She's sweet-natured but ambitious, mercenary but generous of spirit (and flesh). Hildy looks upon Cable with pity, which he interprets as affection, and to her surprise her feelings do eventually evolve in that direction.

The other kind encounter is with Cushing (Peter Whitney), the local banker who, like seemingly every banker in a Western, resembles a cross between a walrus and an owl. Cable barges into his office and starts rambling about how the world has wronged him, and they quibble over the meaning of "collateral," and if Cable has something of value to secure a loan.

Halfway out the door, Cable turns back and gives Cushing this look that is just an ocean of emotion and meaning -- pain, anger, regret, confusion, despair, neediness. Honestly, it's probably my single favorite moment of Jason Robard's career. The words that follow are almost beside the point:

"Well, I'm worth something, ain't I?"

In every other movie you've ever seen, the penitent man walks away rebuffed, and the unctuous official returns to his paperwork. But Cushing is genuinely moved and offers Cable $100 to start his business. He later makes sporadic visits to Jackass Flats, now redubbed Cable Springs, to check on his newest customer. In one sojourn, Cable is moved nearly to tears to receive an American flag designating his outpost as an official stop on the stagecoach line.

Most of the second half of the movie is taken up with romance. Joshua becomes enamored with a town woman whom he thinks has just been widowed, until her huge husband shows up in a huff. Hildy is thrown out of Deaddog by the burgeoning Bible-thumber movement, and opts to shack up with Cable (he has built himself a shack by this time) before lighting out for San Francisco. Her plans are to marry a rich man, preferably old or frail, and become "the ladyiest damn lady you ever saw!"

The love between Cable and Hildy deepens, but she is too set in her plans to remain, and he too focused on his little empire to go. That, and Cable has an ulterior purpose. He figures that if he remains in one key spot long enough,  Taggart and Bowen are bound to stumble across it and he can exact his revenge.

This actually does come to pass, but plays out in a completely different way than you'd expect of a Peckinpah film. It soon becomes clear that though Cable did have a score to settle, it was not with his erstwhile partners but with himself. Having failed to live up to his self-image of manhood, he cannot complete his journey until he proves to himself that he can pull a trigger when he has to. Having done so, his bloodthirst leaks out of him like sweat in the hot sun, and is consumed by the insatiable, uncaring desert.

The ending of "The Ballad of Cable Hogue" is a little too quick and gimmicky for my taste. I often feel that filmmakers kill off their main character because, having completed his or her personal quest, they don't really know what else to do with them. Personally, I would've liked to known if Cable Hogue, the humble but defiantly self-made man, could've stuck it out as Hildy's nicely creased arm candy.

Reeling Backward: "Rocky Mountain" (1950)

By 1950 Errol Flynn had become dissolute, both in his personal life and Hollywood career. Barely 40 years of age, he'd been through two painful divorces, seen his good looks diminish from drink and wanton lifestyle, and watched studio honchos and producers who'd once begged for his services turn the other way.

Having read Flynn's autobiography, "My Wicked, Wicked Ways," I know that he had grown indifferent to the roles he was being offered around this time and considered giving up acting entirely. His performance in "Rocky Mountain" seems to mirror this mindset -- Flynn gives a stern, perfunctory turn as if peeved at having to be there.

(Incidentally, I recently discovered that Guy Pearce played Flynn in an eponymous 1996 movie about Errol's early rapscallion days. And Kevin Kline is set to star in a new biopic about his final years, "The Last of Robin Hood." Look forward to seeing both of them.)

Westerns were not Flynn's preferred cinematic hunting grounds, either. He never looked as comfortable in chaps and holding a six-shooter as he did in a tuxedo or wielding a rapier. But I don't lay the entirety of the blame for the lackluster "Rocky Mountain" at Flynn's feet.

 Ploddingly plotted, indifferently acted and shot in confoundedly a murky palette, "Rocky Mountain" was so certainly no feather in the cap of director William Keighley. He had previously teamed up with Flynn on the phenomenally successful "The Adventures of Robin Hood." The action scenes are clumsily staged, and entire sections of the night sequences are so obscured in inky blackness it's virtually impossible to even tell what's happening.

Screenwriters Alan Le May and Winston Miller, working from Le May's novel "Ghost Mountain," begin the story curiously with a modern (for 1950) car pulling up to a historical marker dedicated to the bravery of a band of Confederate soldiers. Their unlikely mission, undertaken in the dying days of the Civil War, was to raise an army of raiders in California and wreak havoc, forcing the Union to open up a second front.

The transition to 1865 is abrupt and clumsy -- since we already know the mission was a failure, it takes some oomph out of the proceedings. The story is notable, though, for portraying Confederate soldiers in a  heroic light, without making the "bluebellies" the villains. (American Indians get to play that role.)

The plot is simple to the point of spareness, and even at 83 minutes the movie feels stretched out. Captain Lafe Barstow (Flynn) is ordered to meet up with Cole Smith (Howard Petrie), who's supposed to raise an army for the South. But the band of eight soldiers saves a woman, Johanna Carter (Patrice Wymore), from an Indian attack. She's the fiancee of a stalwart Union lieutenant (Scott Forbes) who comes looking for her and gets captured by Barstow's crew. Then the Indians trap them on top of the mountain, a heroic dash is made to divert attention and save the woman, and all the Rebs are killed.

Petrie, who also had a notable career in radio, is an interesting presence as the scurrilous raider, who at first passes himself off as another man so he can assess his new allies. He decides they're much too heroic for his liking. With his icy gaze and condescending demeanor, he's easily the onscreen equal of Flynn's Barstow.

Slim Pickens also shows up as one of the Confederates, a rangy, peevish scout named Plank. As someone whose childhood association with Pickens cemented him in my mind as a clownish, pot-bellied idjit, it's nice to see him as a lean and whip-mean cuss.

Barstow doesn't come across as a particularly crafty or inspiring leader. Once it's clear the Indians have got them cornered, he essentially decides to squat on top of the mountain and hope Cole Smith returns with reinforcements. Not a very good Plan B, or Plan A for that matter. Certainly Flynn's phoning-it-in demeanor doesn't help the audience root for him.

While it isn't a terrible film, "Rocky Mountain" is a prime example of mid-century Hollywood drek, the sort of B-pictures they churned out at an astonishing rate on smaller budgets and even more modest expectations. By 1950, this was the best Errol Flynn could hope for.

2 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "One-Eyed Jacks" (1961)

I didn't think I'd like "One-Eyed Jacks." It was directed by Marlon Brando at the precipice of his acting career, right before he slid off into a decade-long fallow period revived only by "The Godfather" in 1972. He had never directed before, and never stepped behind the camera again. Usually, that sort of thing happens for a good reason.

All in all, it has the ingredients of an overstuffed vanity project, a la Kevin Costner's "The Postman."

Early on, the film's languid pace (2 hours and 20 minutes) and Brando's mush-mouthed delivery of lines seemed to confirm my suspicions. But soon the film won me over with its curious mix of Western mythology, revenge story and romance.

It's perhaps the actor's most distilled expression of his persona as a performer, a moody wash of resentment and pride. His gunslinger Rio is the apotheosis of Brando's young rebel roles, now grown a little older and more cautious. He's not always quite sure what he wants or what the right thing to do is, but whatever path he chooses Rio commits to with all-consuming passion.

In his late 30s, Brando was no longer the smoldering screen presence of the 1950s. His torso had started to thicken, his jawline soften, and if his hairline wasn't yet fleeing back across his head, it was at least looking for the exits.

Set in the dusty foothills of Baja California and then moving to the idyllic seaside town of Monterey, "One-Eyed Jacks" is about a friendship gone bad.

Rio and Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) are longtime roustabouts robbing banks and having a good time. Dad is considerably older, a veteran bandit who picked up Rio when he was a kid and taught him the ropes. Even though he's far surpassed him as a gunman, Rio still looks up to Dad, who's starting to lose a step.

In Brando's close-mouthed, Southern-fried vernacular, "Dad" comes out sounding like "Ndahd." The same can be said for the rest of Rio's speech, which Brando delivers like he's chewing over every syllable and reluctant to spit it out.

A heist goes bad, the lawmen have them pinned on a mountain peak with only one spent horse and a rifle between them, and Rio suggests one of them hightail it down to a little ranch they know about nearby, pick up a pair of fresh horses and save the day. They opt to leave it to chance to see who rides off with the gold while the other waits.

Rio suggests Dad pick which of his hands is holding the bullet, but rigs it by pulling a cartridge from his gun belt so Dad will be the one to ride. Why? Perhaps he figures the older, slower Dad deserves a break. Maybe Rio figures that Dad, lacking a hat or shoes from their hasty getaway, won't last in the broiling heat. Or maybe he just loves Dad and trusts him.

In any case, Dad gets a fresh horse and then flees with the gold, leaving Rio to be captured by the Federales. Before he's taken in, the posse stops by the ranch where Rio learns of Dad's betrayal.

Flash five years later. After busting out of the Sonora prison with a Mexican pal (Larry Duran), Rio begins searching for Dad to exact his revenge. Along the way he throws in with Bob Armory (Ben Johnson), a quietly malevolent sort who wants to knock over the fat bank in Monterey.

Turns out that's where Dad has gone to ground, reforming his ways and even being elected sheriff. He's also married a widow named Maria (Katy Jurado) with a teen daughter, Louisa.

She's played by Mexican actress Pina Pellicer, who had a short but memorable career kicked off by her performance in "One-Eyed Jacks." With her thin, sallow face and languid eyes, Pellicer had a dark, unconventional beauty for her era. She also managed to instill more depth and emotion in the dialogue than screenwriters Calder Willingham and Guy Trosper did. Sadly, she committed suicide three years later.

The genesis of the screenplay is a little fuzzy, with Willingham, Trosper, Stanley Kubrick and Brando himself all contributing drafts at various points. It's a very, very loose adaptation of the novel "The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones" by Charles Neider.

It's at this point that the plot goes kind of sideways, but things get really interesting. Rio, Bob and their crew ride into town, but Rio peels off for a visit at Dad's place. Dad lies to him about the circumstances of his betrayal, and introduces him to his family, with an immediate spark between Rio and Louisa.

Now, this sounds like an exceptionally lousy way to go about robbing a bank. But Rio is less concerned about getting rich than getting even -- or, at the very least, getting satisfaction for being treated so shabbily by his best friend.

After a huge carnival party, which Rio uses as a cover to seduce Louisa and deflower her as a way to get back at Dad, the gunman realizes he doesn't really know what the wants. At various points Rio means to kill Dad, or run off with Louisa, but things don't quite work out.

After Rio kills a drunk in a fair fight, Dad uses the incident as an excuse to take revenge for Louisa. He beats Rio to a pulp, flays his back to shreds with a whip, and pulverizes his gun  hand with the butt of a rifle. Rio spends a couple months at a nearby fishing village healing up, with Bob and his partner growing increasingly frustrated. They signed on for a rich bank scheme, not a Shakespearean revenge drama.

Bob finally robs the bank without Rio, shooting a girl bystander and getting killed himself in the process, but Dad uses it as an excuse to hang Rio and rid himself of his troubles. Malden's steely, internal performance suggests that Dad doesn't really hate Rio, but he despises that his presence reminds Dad of his own failings.

Rio, for his own part, is incensed that Dad has managed to turn his life around as easily as flipping over a poker card. "You're a one-eyed jack around here, Dad. I seen the other side of your face," he accuses.

Also notable is Slim Pickens as Dad's jackal of a deputy, Lon, who has designs on Louisa. Pickens usually played bumbling, cartoonish characters, but he's chilling here.

Like other novice directors, Brando made the wise choice to hire a veteran cinematographer, Charles Lang, to handle the visual look of the picture. The result, nominated for an Oscar, has a scuffed-up kind of a beauty, vivid colors mixed with off-putting close-ups.

The most interesting thing to me about "One-Eyed Jacks" is that it relies more on the power of inference than overt depictions to demonstrate the internal workings of its characters, especially Rio and Dad. Rio is such a deviation from the classic Western protagonist, in that he's a man of action who often isn't sure how to act.

Six-shooter characters, even when they aren't supposed to be heroic, are often defined by their single-minded pursuit of a goal -- think John Wayne in "The Searchers." Rio is more akin to Brando's urban characters of the '50s, torn apart by misdirected passion and existential angst.

3.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Tom Horn" (1980)

There are the bones of a great story inside "Tom Horn," Steve McQueen's disappointing next-to-last film. But it's buried down deep in a desert of cinematic ineptitude, in between a TV hack of a director and a pair of screenwriters who seemed more motivated to deliver a star vehicle for McQueen than tell a gripping story.

McQueen was one of Hollywood's most iconic stars of the 1960s and '70s, but in his latter years he seemed to grow disinterested from movie-making entirely. He retired, sort of, reappeared for the lure of big money for a cameo in "The Towering Inferno," made a couple of flicks nobody saw, and was being offered ungodly sums for various big-budget projects, turning them all down. Then he quickly made his last two films, "Tom Horn" and "The Hunter," before dying in 1980 at age 50.

Having worked with some of Hollywood's greatest filmmakers, I can only guess why McQueen chose to have "Tom Horn" directed by William Wiard, a television veteran with zero film credits before (or after) this movie. Script men Thomas McGuane and Bud Shrake similarly fail to acquit themselves with anymore more than ham-handed Western tropes and one of the most astonishingly unconvincing romances in cinematic history.

The film chronicles the last days of Tom Horn, a tracker, interpreter, ersatz lawman and assassin, with plenty of historical facts on its side.

Tom Horn was called the man who captured Geronimo, but the truth is a number of men helped bring in the legendary Indian chief, who ultimately surrendered himself after several fits and starts. Tom got involved in various scrapes between parties establishing the order of the dying Old West, as cattlemen who favored the free ranges butted up against the increasingly settled townships and farmlands.

As the movie opens, Tom is wandering without purpose. He gets into town, and while drinking a whiskey at the saloon manages to insult boxer "Gentleman" Jim Corbett, getting his tail handed to him in the ensuing melee. Tom actually runs from the encounter, cementing his position as a man who never initiates violence, even if he has spent his life putting an end to it, usually as the last one standing.

He's approached by John Coble, a member of the wealthy cattlemen's association played by the great character actor Richard Farnsworth. The association is tired of having their stock rustled and sold off, and want Tom to put an end to it. The hire him as a "cattle detective" to hunt down and deal with any rustlers -- arrest if possible, but killing is preferred.

At first things go well, as Tom's hard-won prowess is too much for the rustlers. But the townsfolk quickly become horrified by his brutal but effective killing. After being attacked in town, Tom wounds his would-be assassin, then casually walks up to him lying on the ground and finishes him off with a rifle shot to the head. The association realize this can only hurt their station and prospects.

This is where things go narratively askew. If the association wanted Horn gone, why didn't they simply pay him off and order him to move along? Given Tom's innate amiableness -- despite his ruthlessness with a gun -- its seems likely Coble could've convinced him to vamoose.

Instead, a local boy is shot under mysterious circumstances with a .45-60, the rare type of rifle used by Tom. Based upon only this happenstance and a conversation between Tom and the politically ambitious marshal, Joe Belle (Billy Green Bush), overheard by a local reporter, Tom is convicted and hanged.

The film is passable during the first hour or so, as a ham-handedly but often effective contemplation on the dying of the frontier days. Tom says he does not fear death, but he is afraid of losing the ability to come and go as he pleases, and live in the rough hills that are a home to him.

Once the trial starts, though, the film loses its way. Tom pays little attention to the proceedings, having daydreams about a romance with local teacher Gwendolene Kimmel (Linda Evans). I'm not exactly sure when this supposed relationship took place, since we never learn about it until after the time period when it was supposed to have occurred has passed. It's possible that Tom's musing remembrances are merely a fantasy about the life he could have had.

In any case, the pairing is fleeting and bewildering. Gwendolene practically throws herself into the cowboy's arms, that abruptly rejects him for his nomadic lifestyle.

Also less than completely realizes is the character of Sam Creedmore, the salty old sheriff played by Slim Pickens recruited to capture and imprison Tom during his trial. They talk to each other as if they've been friends or at least colleagues all their lives, but nothing is indicated that they even met before. Maybe Tom should've been having flashbacks about his jailer instead of the school teacher.

McQueen's performance is perhaps the film's only saving grace. With his ambling walk, unembellished skill at killing and quick-patterned speech, McQueen draws a portrait of a man who refused to walk away from his fate, even if he did not exactly embrace it. He was a certified minimalist as a performer, preferring to let actions and long glances take the place of big-scale emoting and loquacious dialogue.

I sometimes think McQueen would've been happier making movies in the silent era, when talking was considered overrated. Look at "Le Mans," the racing movie in which I don't think McQueen utters a single word for the first 45 minutes.

1.5 stars out of four