Along Came Jones

Hi Aki,

Today I watched Along Came Jones a Gary Cooper western.

The story shows us a hold-up of the stage of the Express Company at night. The robber is masked, but he kills one of the drivers and escapes with the money bag. The other driver shoots the robber, who loses his prize rifle engraved with his name, but he rides away. Wanted posters are put up all over the territory, for Monte Jarrad, dead or alive, who robbed the stage and is often seen with his half-witted ‘Uncle Roscoe.’

Melody Jones (Cooper) and cranky old sidekick George (William Demarest) happen to be riding through, by mistake (four or five hundred miles back, Melody took the wrong turn). Melody is a light-hearted ‘bronc stomper’ and they’ve just finished a cattle drive and are headed for jobs somewhere else. When they get into town, the locals in Payneville (‘What town is this here?’ asks George. ‘It’s Payneville,’ says the local. ‘Well, what’s painful about it?’) catch sight of the ‘MJ’ on Melody’s saddle and see that he’s tall and thin just like the posters say Jarrad is. So naturally the whole town thinks he’s the killer. And they treat him with great respect, even fear. Some though aim at him through windows to shoot him.

A pretty girl, Cherry de Longpre (Loretta Young) helps Melody get out of town, explains the whole matter to him, and sends him on his way. But the truth is, she’s helping the wounded Jarrad, and wants to send the posse after Melody so Jarrad can go the other direction and get away. Melody figures this out and returns to the de Longpre ranch, in part because he’s falling in love with the girl.

Comedic complications (and a few killings) follow before Melody, who’s a total klutz with a gun, faces off with Jarrad. But Cherry has to shoot Jarrad to save Melody’s hide, and all ends happily.

This is a charming picture. It follows in the vein of the 1939 Destry Rides Again although Destry does turn serious for its final act, and Tom Destry turns out to be good with his dad’s guns; Jones is light-hearted throughout.

Cooper produced in part of the new trend of stars and star directors making pictures independently with an eye towards profits after the income tax had risen so high that the old system of salaries looked less advantageous, and when the ‘Consent Decree’ gave independently-distributed pictures a better shot at bookings. For this Cooper put together a fine cast and brought in Nunnally Johnson to write the script, adapted from a story or novel. Johnson in fact was given his name above the title: Nunnally Johnson’s Along Came Jones which is extremely rare, especially back then. I’ve seen it happen that the best-selling brand-name author of the source material can get his name above the title: Graham Greene’s blah-blah or Noel Coward’s blah-blah but for the mere screenwriter?

The picture gives us a glimpse of what the golden age was all about, even apart from the studios. Everybody knows just what they were doing, everybody agreed on making an entertaining picture which nobody took very seriously, just a piece of rollickin’ good-natured fun. (About the only people who might have taken this seriously would have been the young boys watching on a Saturday matinee – but even they must have been disillusioned when Melody never does come up to the mark with a gun – he can throw a good punch, at least.) Cooper even sings to meet the ‘singing cowboy’ label, though this too is given us as tongue-in-cheek. Stuart Eisler is listed as director, a name I don’t know. Direction is solid, though, including most notably the way Melody hauls back and kisses Cherry in the two scenes that cement their love and close the picture.

(25 April 2009)

3:10 to Yuma (2007)

Hi Aki,

Last night we watched 3:10 to Yuma the 2007 remake of the 1957 picture in a pan-and-scan version.

Story (briefly, this time) has poor rancher Dan Evans (Christian Bale) crossing paths with Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) when Wade robs the railroad payroll stage. Wade and his gang go on to town, have a drink, and depart for Nogales Mexico, but Wade himself stays behind to sleep with the pretty barmaid who is not at all unwilling.

Evans sends his sons back home but goes on to town himself to try to convince his banker to give him a break on what he owes on the ranch land, there’s a drought in Arizona and the banker seems to be doing everything he can to drive Evans off – including burning down Evans’s barn. The banker won’t listen to Evans’s plea because the railroad is coming through their town, and that land will be worth a lot more when the railroad is there.

In the bar, Wade sketches (his hobby) the nude barmaid in bed and when he goes downstairs, there’s Evans. Evans complains that Wade in using his cattle to rob the coach has cost him dead steers and time; Wade pays Evans for his cattle, his time, his son’s time. Evans asks for even more while the lawmen come in behind Wade and take him captive.

Evans then joins the deputies to take Wade to Contention, the railhead, so’s they can put him on the 3:10 to Yuma prison to be hanged. For this Evans is promised $200 if they put Wade on that train. $200 happens to be what Evans owes on the ranch land; it’s also what the Government paid him for losing his leg in the Civil War.

But it won’t be easy: Wade’s gang has got wind of his capture and are gathering to come rescue him.

The posse takes Wade to Evans’s ranch for the first night. There Wade romances Evans’s own wife (Gretchen Mol) and she seems a bit too interested in him, which angers Evans. More, Evans’s 14-year-old son William is impressed by the outlaw’s style and speed with a gun, and dismissive of his wimp dad.

This triangle, Evans and Wade sparring over the boy’s affection and admiration, is the main b-story here. Evans will stick to the deal to put Wade on the train even after he’s the last one, in part for the money, in part to prove to his boy that he’s not a wimp; in doing so Evans improbably earns the outlaw’s respect.

The second night the posse bed down in Apache territory – a shortcut they chose to beat Wade’s gang to Contention. But the Apaches fire on them, Wade manages to save them and kill the Apaches (winning Williams’ further admiration) and leaves with all the horses.

But the next day Wade finds himself forced through the tunnels the railroad is digging through the hills, and is taken by the railroad crew, and tortured. Evans and the posse catch up, but the railroad crew won’t hand Wade over alive, so there’s a shootout and the posse and Wade have to fight for their lives to escape. All that’s left of the posse now is the chief Pinkerton detective, Evans, and William.

(The chief implausibility of the movie is that nobody just kills Wade, even when he has a gun on them or is shooting at them. For some reason they do all they can to deliver him alive to the train so he can be killed at Yuma.)

In Contention, the gang catches up with the posse (holed up in the bridal suite of the hotel) and offer money to any citizen who’ll help them. Since the railroad seems unpopular with most of these folks, the whole town is now against them. The local marshall bows out, and the Pinkerton detective, reckoning the odds, also gives up. Only Evans is left. He makes a deal with the Pinkerton: if Evans will get Wade on the train, the Pinkerton will pay his wife $1000, and take William home. Deal.

Now Evans must fight his way through town to reach the rail station, and push Wade along before him. Halfway through their journey, Wade jumps Evans and has him at his mercy, but Evans explains that he wasn’t a hero in the war, and his son holds him in contempt, and implies he’s really doing all this to win his boy’s respect. At this Wade changes his tune, lets Evans up, and agrees to offer no more resistance but run with Evans to the station.

(This is the key moment in the story, and our acceptance of the end depends entirely on whether we accept this change in the outlaw. It did not convince me.)

Wade and Evans run, shoot, fight their way to the station. The train pulls in. Now they just have to get from the station to the rail car where there’s no cover – and the last members of the gang, including the Mexican sharpshooters, are waiting. But William has not left, and he looses the cattle from a nearby pen and drives them in between. Evans and Wade make it to the prison car, and Wade goes meekly into the cell on board.

But even as he has succeeded, Evans falls – shot in the back by Wade’s chief lieutenant, Charlie Prince. Wade comes out of the rail car and looks down on the dying man. William runs up and holds his father in his arms and congratulates him for having done it. It’s clear now that William respects his father and always will; he is now cleansed of outlaw-love and will lead his life, we presume, as a hard-working rancher supporting his mother and younger brother, and grow up to be a man like his father.

Meanwhile Charlie Prince gives Wade his special gun, the one with the black handle and golden crucifix. In a moment of stupefying non-suspension-of-disbelief, rather than ride off to Mexico with his gang, Wade shoots down Charlie Prince and the sharpshooters, the last members of the Wade gang, then goes back into the prison car. (He has already told Evans that he has escaped Yuma prison twice, and seems confident he can escape a third time.)

As the train pulls away, Wade settles in the cell on the prison car, but he does whistle. His well trained horse obediently gallops alongside the train, and we are left to imagine Wade will bust out of the rail car as soon as the train gets out of town.

This is based on an Elmore Leonard story back when he was still doing mostly Western tales; the original movie from 1957 sounds like a cross between Shane (the rancher is played by Van Heflin in both) and High Noon (Frankie Laine sings the title song for both as a recurring motif and both share the clock ticking down to when the train comes in to town).

I must give special credit to the DP here. All the lighting is beautiful (though night interiors are too yellow for my taste). They shot on location in winter when the sun would always be low in the sky and the local colors would be at their peak. It’s the best thing in the movie and I wish I’d seen it widescreen on a film print in all its glory.

There are two big implausible elements to the story the filmmakers have to convince us to overlook:

1. Poor rancher (and one-legged man!) risks his life – and succeeds – in bringing an outlaw to the train
2. Charismatic psychotic outlaw feels so much respect for the one-legged rancher that he will not only help in his own incarceration but murder his own men to avenge the rancher.

The film succeeds in convincing me of neither of these.

More, the theme of the movie lies in persuading us as well as William, that the honest, hard-working life is a better one to choose than the outlaw’s life of danger excitement sex and riches. And although William ends convinced, the final moments of laughter as we see how Wade will easily escape the train to steal and kiss another day, leave us in the audience admiring him more. After all, Evans may have saved his ranch, but he has lost his life; Wade has his life and soon will regain his freedom.

On the recurring notion of the ‘badass’ in today’s movies, I have to mention especially Ben Foster’s portrayal as Charlie Prince. The way he moves and is garbed, the way he wears his pistols backwards in the holster, the way his hat is too big for his head, all contribute to one of the finest portrayals of a young punk in my memory. At the same time the film shows Charlie Prince as deadly quick and accurate with his guns, and a cruel punk who is actually hiding behind his guns, and has no real strength of character or guts. His desperate efforts to rescue Wade seem to be another implausibility of the story, until we see that Charlie without Wade is nothing, and Charlie knows it. Russell Crowe plays Ben Wade on the other hand more as Mephistopheles than badass, though in truth he is a more dangerous man than Charlie. But Wade is charming with the ladies, and this carries over to a seductive appeal to young William as well, it seems, to Dan Evans himself. Wade is here the Tempter trying to win Evans away from the hard-working honest life. But Evans (again improbably) resists all temptation and sticks to his principles.

(20 April 2009)

Dead Man

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched Dead Man a Jim Jarmusch movie. A western. A poetic satire on westerns. A journey. A contemplation. With some damn good lines of dialogue.

Story has William Blake (Johnny Depp) on the westbound train out of Cleveland. He’s an accountant with a job offer from Dickinson Metal Works in Machine Arizona. His journey on the train is the prologue, marked by the changes in the people who share the coach with him – they get rougher the farther he goes.

In Machine he finds the job is already taken. He is penniless but taken in by a whore. But her old boyfriend shows up and makes to shoot Blake. The whore puts herself in the way, and takes the bullet, but the bullet passes clean through her and buries itself deep in Blake’s chest. He shoots the boyfriend, steals his horse and escapes town.

Only, the boyfriend was Dickinson’s son, and the horse was Dickinson’s pride. Dickinson hires three vicious killers to hunt and bring back Blake’s body.

Out in the scrub, Blake is found by Nobody, a well-educated Indian. Nobody tries to cut out the bullet, but it’s too deep. Blake is now a dead man, his time running out.

When Nobody learns Blake’s name, he is impressed: he has lived in England and loves the poetry of William Blake. But Nobody knows Blake is dead, and so he takes it upon himself to shepherd Blake to the place where the water mirrors the sky and Blake can return to the Other Land where the spirits dwell.

Now Nobody leads Blake on a cross country journey (this one marked by the changes in the trees they ride under) to Oregon, where Nobody will find the water. Along the way many try to kill Blake, lured by the reward, but with skill and luck he dispatches them all. Only Cole Wilson, the evilest of the three vicious killers, who has murdered the other two killers, remains on the trail.

Nobody and Blake finally reach the place of the waters. By now Blake is very close to exhaustion and death. Nobody prepares the canoe and places Blake in it. Blake lies back in the canoe, watching the sky rain down on him as the waters draw him out far out from land. His last sight of land is of Cole Wilson shooting at him with a buffalo rifle. But Nobody draws aim on Wilson with a Winchester, and the two men shoot down each other. And the canoe floats out with the tide.

The music is by Neil Young, mostly electric guitar solos and duos with lots of feedback that at first annoyed me as anachronistic, but later won me over and added a lot to the trippiness of the finale.

Jarmusch got a pretty big budget for this one. He shot in black and white, another odd, uncommercial choice, but got Robby Müller for his DP and the result is excellent, though not up to the classic Hollywood cinematography – today’s film stocks just can’t do what the old, rich, fine-grained, slow stocks could manage, and Müller hasn’t enough experience with black and white (compared to those old guys who shot it every day of their working lives for decades on end).

The cast is full of interesting, even odd, choices. Cameos from great stars like Robert Mitchum as Dickinson, and rock stars like Iggy Pop as a trapper, Gabriel Byrne as the boyfriend who kills Blake, Alfred Molina as a bigoted preacher, Billy Bob Thornton as a foul-mouthed, funny trapper … the list goes on. They come and go from the movie, all watchable, entertaining, and so good you want to see more of them. Depp of course is always watchable, always good. I’ve not seen him hit a wrong note yet (though of course I did avoid the second two Pirates movies).

This is the sort of movie I never expect to like as much as I do, and always like a lot more when I see it. I wish I’d seen it back in the theaters when it first came out.

(7 April 2009)

For Aki’s translation of this post into Japanese, click here.