Afternoon TV

[JB40]

One of the pleasures of doing f**k all for a couple of weeks is the channel 4 afternoon movie. They are clever at choosing little known classics. Last weeks 'Party Girl' by Nicholas Ray [rebel without a cause] was a forgotten pleasure but today was the best yet. By a fluke I happened to be standing next to the TV when Sam Pekinpah's 'Ride the High Country' started. High Definition was my excuse for dropping everything and watching it again. It's definitely up there in my top 5 Westerns, along with 'The Searchers' and 'The Unforgiven'.
It's good to be reminded how quietly influential this movie is. It changed Westerns forever. It was one of the first elegiac Westerns. It's main theme is the loss of the old west. The automobile in the first scene is shorthand for the approach of the industrialized 20th Century. It's main characters are mythic heroes of the old west who are getting old and feeling out of place in the modern world. Famous lawmen who are reduced to working as guns for hire, bodyguards or sharp shooting at a circus. This approach would be adopted by most westerns as the genre struggled to find relevence to modern audiences. It's an approach that would culminate in Clint eastwoods superb revisionist western 'The Unforgiven'.
But there is another way in which 'Ride. . . ' would have an even more obvious effect on the genre. With it's punchy editing and it's close framing it would be a major influence on Sergio leone and the later 'spaghetti' westerns. Pekinpah's film is populated with grotesques. They are ugly and unshaven and stink of whisky. The mining brothers are in-breeds and psychotic killers. All things that would be used to point of parody in later Italian westerns.
Ironically, the only director that offered an alternative vision to Pekinpah's bleak hymns to the loss of the old west was Howard hawks [Eldorado]. Hawks rejected Pekinpah's bleak vision and flavored his film with a sense of loyalty, humor, and a light touch. It was hawks [the much older director] who represented the old ways. Pekinpah was the new blood challenging the old master to one last duel before Hawks has to make way for the young pretenders. It's Pekinpah himself that was the arrival of the modern western.

[GefferyMorgan]

Wish I could comment on this one...but shamefully, the only Westerns I ever really watched much were Bonanza, Gunsmoke and The Lone Ranger. Which is a real shame, because my dad (God rest his soul) loved westerns and even named me after Sheriff Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke (played by James Arness).

[rhondda rudie]

I'd love to see the comedy western They Call Me Trinity again starring Terence Hill and Bud Spencer.I was in my mid teens when I last saw it and I found it hilarious.Mind you,I used to love the 6 Million Dollar Man then but I saw an episode a couple of years ago and thought "did I used to like this crap" so maybe it's best to keep Trinity as a memory.

[littlecrow]

Sunday afternoon tele in our house as a kid was always a " cowboy" film
Loved them .. gibby hayes, john wayne, slim pickens,roy rogers,randolph scott so many great memorys

[Waltjo]

Originally Posted by littlecrow

Sunday afternoon tele in our house as a kid was always a " cowboy" film
Loved them .. gibby hayes, john wayne, slim pickens,roy rogers,randolph scott so many great memorys

Ooooh Kim so many memories there lol I used to like Laramie, I thought Robert, can't remember his surname was lovely

[rhondda rudie]

Originally Posted by Waltjo

Ooooh Kim so many memories there lol I used to like Laramie, I thought Robert, can't remember his surname was lovely

If we're talking western tv series I'd have to go for High Chaperal and Alias Smith and Jones.

[JB40]

I loved the High Chaparral too Tom. Not so keen on Alias Smith and Jones. That was based on the movie 'Butch Cassiday and the Sundance Kid'. Which although a well made movie, was more of an homoerotic buddy movie with western trimmings.
My dad used to love westerns. And of course, as a teenager and a young man I rejected them as something for old people. Maybe the western themes he loved so much are only meaningful as you get older. The films are very much ABOUT getting older. The sherrif who is ready to settle down. The punk kid coming to challenge the ageing gunfighter. These are all classic western themes, particularly in later years.
Another pleasure of classic westerns is landscape. Directors like Pekinpah and Anthony Mann used landscapes that contrasted with John Ford's low horizons and spaceous skys. Pekinpah would surround his characters with dark forests and rugged mountains. They would be 'penned in' by the surroundings only occassionally glimpsing the open sky. Man against the elements is another important western theme.

[~Shaz~ (aka DubGal)]

my favourite western was Cactus Jack
with Kirk Douglas as Cactus and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the handsome stranger
man that was funnnnnnnny!

[JB40]

Originally Posted by DubGal

my favourite western was Cactus Jack
with Kirk Douglas as Cactus and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the handsome stranger
man that was funnnnnnnny!

That wasn't a western. It was a live action Road Runner cartoon. It was funny though.

[~Shaz~ (aka DubGal)]

yeah it reminded me of road runner when they painted the tunnel on the wall...and then went through it