Dir. Anthony Mann 1950 USA
Leave it to a pair of Westerns to get me back in the groove. Oddly enough, both of these films are fairly unconventional as Westerns go, but at least that gives me something to talk about.
Appaloosa is Ed Harris' sophomore directorial effort following 2000's Pollack. Based on a novel by crime writer Robert B. Parker, Appaloosa is the story of Virgil Cole (Harris) and his partner Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen), a pair of gunslingers who roam the West and hire themselves out as law enforcement officers. They arrive at the titular New Mexican town in 1882 to find that the local sheriff has been murdered by a vicious rancher named Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons) and his gang of thugs. Cole and Hitch's attempts to clean-up the town are stymied by the arrival of Allison French (Renee Zellweger), a mysterious widow with uncertain allegiances.
By my standards, all Westerns fall into one of three time periods, Classic (1903 to 1964), Revisionist (1964 to 1992) and Modern (1992 to present). Classic Westerns are your old school John Ford/John Wayne style films. Clear-cut good guys and bad guys, the usual stock characters and plots, basically the foundations of the genre. Revisionist Westerns begin and end with Clint Eastwood (A Fistful Of Dollars and Unforgiven to be specific). They introduce morally grey protagonists, shifting cultural dynamics and graphic, omnipresent violence. Both of these eras are fairly well defined, whereas the Modern Western remains a categorically murky classification that has yet to fully form. After Eastwood's Unforgiven became the final word in Revisionist Westerns, the genre remained stagnant for much of the 90's before a small resurgence in the middle of the last decade, mostly thanks to the success of the HBO series Deadwood. The films that followed in its wake (The Proposition, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford and Seraphim Falls are what I would consider the stand-outs) were marked by fastitious attention to historical detail, sparse, yet measured storytelling and a minimalist (but still brutal) approach to violence.
So what makes Appoloosa such an oddball? The film features the plotting and sensibilities of a Classic Western (well-mannered characters, and a story featuring a hero, a villain and a love interest) combined with the visual aesthetic of a Modern Western. What little gunplay occurs in the film is over in a manner of seconds and the attention to detail is convincing and immersive. Ultimately however, this created a tonal imbalance that ended up bothering me for most of the film. And while I'm not opposed to a light-hearted Western, I found it difficult to take the film seriously as a whole.
Beyond the issues of genre, the movie is a mixed bag overall. Jeremy Irons is does an excellent job with the material he's given, but ended up feeling wasted. Renee Zellweger (who just bugs the crap out of me anyway) didn't seem to have a clear idea of how to play an admittedly difficult character. Allison French is duplicitious and sycophantic, and her relationship with Cole distracts from Cole's far more interesting relationship with Hitch. The character would have probably been a problem no matter what, but casting an actress I dislike in the role didn't help.
The characters of Cole and Hitch are interesting and well-drawn and Harris and Mortensen are extremely convincing in their portrayal of two guys who have been friends for so long that they're able to communicate their intentions and plans to each other in glances and nods. They're emotionally complex while still being consistent and reliable in their words and actions. You can read a lot of homosexual subtext into their relationship, but that actually makes it feel richer. You could also kill yourself with a drinking game based around all the instances of Hitch putting down and picking up his shotgun. I chalk that up to Viggo Mortensen being even cooler when insinuating violence than he is when committing it.
The Furies can really only be called a Western by virtue of it's setting (New Mexico again, but ten years earlier in 1872). It's actually more of a dynastic family drama with unusually impressive scenery. Known for a series of five Westerns he made with Jimmy Stewart in the early and mid-50's (Winchester '73 and The Naked Spur are the best ones, incase you care. Bend In The River is pretty good too.), Anthony Mann noted use of landscape to set the mood of his films is clearly present in The Furies. Unlike the Jimmy Stewart collaborations, which were shot in Technicolor, The Furies shadowy black and white cinematography does a excellent job of conveying the bleakness and dread that pervades the film.
Barbara Stanwyck plays Vance Jeffords, the daughter of ruthless, self-made cattle baron T. C. Jeffords (Walter Huston in his last film role). While scheming to wrest the titular estate from her father, Vance falls in love with an awesomely named, but extremely shady gambler, Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey). Meanwhile, her father intends to marry a shrewd widow (man, you can't trust widows apparently) with her own designs on The Furies.
Although the film is almost two hours long, The Furies feels a bit like an epic that never quite got off the ground. There are a number of plot threads, several of which I left out of the recap above, and while nothing ever feels half-baked or cut-off, there are a number of avenues the film could have explored in order to give the film the scope it seems to be after. For example, Vance has a brother who's introduced at the beginning of the film and who presumably hangs around the entire time, but is never given any kind of character development. You'd think he'd have something to say about who inherits the estate, but nothing ever comes of it.
Despite feeling a bit rushed, The Furies is quite the odd little gem, unsurprisingly brought to DVD by the good folks at Criterion. Barbara Stanwyck is fantastic as Vance, a character that allows her to bring her impressive range as an actress to bear. Ruthless and ambitious, she's nonetheless vulnerable and sympathetic when necessary and generally an all around badass by the standards of a woman in a film made in 1950 and set in 1872. This is somewhat disappointingly undercut by her relationship with Wendell Corey's character, who's chauvinism struck me as a bit much, even given the era. Corey himself is also a bit bland, not quite possessing the charm of Gable or Grant, who could slap a woman around all day and still manage to be pretty damn likable.
Also excellent is Walter Huston as T.C., a hilariously self-possessed man's man who prints money with his own face on it and begins circulating it into the local economy in order to escape his crippling debts. The relationship between Vance and T.C. is, despite seeming vaguely incestual at times, is uniquely entertaining, as they scheme against each other while still maintaining a genuinely respectful and affable rapport.
As I said, the film doesn't really qualify as a Western, despite a fairly large shoot-out toward the end of the second act, but I probably enjoyed it more than Appoloosa, which was a bit of a mixed bag.
Well. It's good to be back. I think I'm just going to blame my month-long lapse on the weather. It's been depressing. I'm feeling good about this though. Thanks for sticking around.
UP NEXT: I'm going to a double feature at the Film Forum tomorrow night. They're winding down a Fritz Lang in Hollywood run and I'll be seeing You Only Live Once with Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sydney and You & Me with George Raft and Sylvia Sydney again. Good thing she's adorable. Also, as part of my Oscar catch-up, I've got Winter's Bone and The Kids Are Alright from Netflix. Exciting times.
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