MOVIE CHRONICLE: THE WESTERNER 435 is leisure is likely to be spent in debauchery so compu MOVIE CHRONICLE: gressive as to seem only another aspect of THE WESTERNER sraceful, moving like » dancer among the crowded dangers of the city Like other tycoons, the gangster is crudk but by no means inarticulate; on the co: 1e wants: to take over the to be Number One, But new and by 2 rigid is understood that as soon as he vrishes to rest on gains, he is on the way to destruction, The gangster i ind melancholy, and can give the impres- sion of a profound worldly wisdom. He appeals most to adolescents with their ng of being to that side of all of us whi the gangster Is the stamped so big over our official culture and ye with the way we really feel about our lives But the gangsters lone. liness and melancholy are not “authentic” like everything else th belongs to him, they are not honesty come by: he is lonely and we thing they most do show, melancholy nat because life ultimately demands such feelings but he thing hey because he has put himself in a position where everybody wants to pay are the kill him and eventually somebody will. He is wide open and ce. ve, cold, and t0 fom fenseless, incomplete because unable id nature's riches from expenses terms with his own nature, fearful thelr faces, career is a nightmare i port Can be seen an ing: "The World Is Yours, ‘ 3 are the anes Laements thi an he an thirg we eae Seria rmost successful creations of American movies are ies dead in the street. Ia the end itis the gangsters weakness as The to he cessl guns, Guns 3 ysical much as his power and freedom that appeals to us; the world is not gangster an st their use, form ours, but it Is not his either, and in his death he “pays” for our aoe Binal conte of bath types of films. | suppose th fantasies, releasing us momentarily both from the concept of suc a i ergs im ae fantasy life of America cess, which he detes by eareaturng and rom the weed oe see he importance ol han it appears to be. ceed, which he shows to be dangerot rues owe, which ne Tonger exists in ] “TheWestern hero by contrast is igure of aoe ory of enterprise and success ending in precioias the gongs bein ely and success is conceived 2 a ere a fon of ¢ hough the | melancholy comes from the “si They tn et den ao ho noving others, are thems He resembles ridably serion FE an reeraliarty ofthe gangster is his unceasing, imately and t “ty. The exact nature of his enterprises may remai completeness. The gangster must reject others is commitment to enterprise is always clear, and al then violently to Ries because he operates outside the he Westerner is not thus compelied to seek the more clearical way how love can be an i women. The gangster, too, associates the important things about a pi having tho pros The Westerner wears the badge pears to be unemployed. We see him poker—a game which expresses perfectly relaxed in the midst of tension—or perha ordinary eerand ‘we are not actual bar, or playing talent for remaining camping out on the backgro 1g except his horse, his guns, and the one worn suit of clothing which is likely to remain unchanged all through the movie. It comes se to see him take money from his pocket or an extra rom his saddlebags. As a rule we do not even know where he sleeps at night and don't think of asking. Yet it never occurs 10 us Js a poor man; there is no poverty in Western movies, ard. he objects of contention but only sion. Possessions too are irrelevant Employment of some kind-—usually unproductive— he land and the Horses freedom they represent West— corresponding in be seen, F e pages 434, 438)438 FILM GENRES ‘open to the Westerner, but when he accepts needs to make a living, much less from any Where could he want to "get ahead’ to? By the time we see him, he is already “there” he can ride 2 horse faultlessly, Keep his counte- nance inthe face of death, and draw je faster and shoot ita litle steatghter than anyone he is likely © meet, These are sharply defined acquirements, giving to the figure of the Westerner fan apparent moral clarity which corresponds physical image against his bare landscape, initially, at any rate, the Western movie presents itself as being without mystery, its whole verse comprehended in what we see on the screen. | Much of this apparent simplicity arises directly from those “cinematic” elements which have long been understood to give the ‘Western theme its special appropriateness for the movies: the wide expanses of land, the free movement of men on horses. As guns le moral center of the Western movie, suggest= yy of violence, so land and horses rep resent the movie's material basis. its sphere of action. Bi \d the horses have also a moral sig e physical they cepresent belongs to the moral “openness” of the West—cor- re fact that guns are carried where they can be set (And, as we shall see, the character of land and horses changes as the Western film becomes more comple) “The gangster's world is less open, and his artsnot so eas fiable at the Westerner's, Perhaps he too can keep his countenance, ‘but the mask he wears is really no mask: ifs purpose is precisely to ‘ke evident the fact that he desperately wants to "get ahead” and stop at nothing. Where the Westerner imposes himself by the Jopearance of unshakable contro}, the gangsters pre-eminence les ‘i he may at any moment lose control; is inbeing able o shoo! ase or sraghtr than others but ia being more will 10 it first” says Scarface eX- pounding his mode of operation, “and keep on doing itt” With the Westerner, itis a crucial point of honor rot to "do it First" his gun remains in| the moment of combat 1 “There is no suggestion, however, that he draws the gun reluc- tantly. The Westerner could not fulfill himself if the moment did not finally come when he can shoot his enemy down. But because 2 moment isso thoroughly the expression of his elng its be kept pure, He will not violate the accepted forms of combat though by deing so he could save a city. And he can wait, “When you call me that—smile!"— the villain smiles weakly, soon he is Inughing with horrible joviality, and the crisis is past. wed to pass because it must come again: sooner or | ‘make his play." and the Virginian will be ready for constitute the vi img continually responding to MOVIE CHRONICLE: THE WESTERNER 439 What does the Westerner fight for? We know he is on the side of justice and order, and of course it can be said he fights for these things. But such broad aims never correspond exacily to his real motives; they only offer him his opportunity. The Westerner him- when an explanation is asked of him (usually by a woman), ely to say that he does what he “has to do.” If justice and order we come upon him often in just that situation, as the reign of law seliles over the West and he is forced to see that bnis day is overs those are the pictures which end at bottom, isthe purity af his own image—in fact invulnerable. When the gangster is whole life is shown to have been a mistake. but the image the West- erner seeks to maintain can be presented as clearly in defeat as in victory: he fights not for advantage ard not for the right, but to state what he is, and he must live in 2 world which permits that statement. The Westerner is the last gentleman, and the movies which over and over again tell his story are probably the last art form in which che concept of honor retains its strength. OF course 1 do not mean to say that ideas of virtue and justice ‘and courage have gone out of culture. Honor is more than these things: it is a style, concerned with harmonious appearances as much as with desirable consequences, and tending therefore toward he denial of life in favor of art we that died Wednesday." On the whole, a leans to Falstaffs view is a more civilized and even, finally, a more graceful tworld, Tei the march of civilization that forces the Westemer to move on if we actually had to confront the ques! woman who refuses to understand hi as often as she is, wrong, 8xt we do not confront the question. Where the Wester lives itis always about 1870-not the veal 1870, either, or the real West—and he is killed or goes away when his position becomes problematical. The fact chat he continues to hold our attention is evidence enough that, in his proper frame, he presents an image of personal nobility real for us. and doubtless such figures as Gene Autry or Roy Rogers are no ough I confess Ihave seen none af their movies, Some film thee early, unsophisticated Westerns a ty" that has since been lost; this idea is as valid, and ead is the only play in English that stays within the limitations of art. The truth is that the Westerner comes into the field of serious art only440 FILM GENRES when his moral code, without céasing,to be compelling, is seen also ive imperfect, The Westerner at his best exhibits a moral ambi his image and saves him from absurdity: this the fact thot, whatever fications, he in The Virginian, which is an archetypal Western movie as ‘Soarface or Litle Caesar are archetypal gangster movies, there is @ Ipnching in which the hero (Gary Cooper}, 2s leader Trust supervise the hanging of his best friend for the growth of American "social consciousness’ eto present a lynching in the movies unless the point is the ity and injustice of the lynching ite; The Ox-Bow Incident, ie 1943, explicitly puts forward the newer point of view and serded as a kind of “anti-Western.” But in 1929, when areas made, the present inhibition about lynching was at yet infarc the justice, and therefore the necessity, of the hang ing tonever questioned-—except by the schoolteacher from the East sees efosal to understand serves $ usual to set forth more Shurply the deeper seriousness of the West. The Vieginian i thes in a im dilemma where one moral absolute conflicts with another See choice of either must leave a moral stain. If he had chosen eee eis friend, he would have violated the image of himself that he had made essential to his existence, and the movie wo have’ had 10 end with his death, for only by his death could the mage have been restored. Having chosen instead to sacrifice Nis Foc to the higher demands of the "code" —the only choice worthy tf him, as even the friend understands—he is none the less stained by ihe illing but what is needed now to set accounts straight it pis death but the death of the villain Trampas, the leader of ihe cattle thieves, who had escaped the posse and abandoned the Virginian’s friend to his fate. Again the woman intervenes: Why sere there be more killing? ( the hero really loved her, he would leave town, refusing Trampas’s ch: it be if Trampas should kill him? Bat the Virginian do fe "howto de,” and in avenging his friend's death wipes out the cin on his own honor. Yet bis victory cannot be complete: no Saath can be paid for and no stain truly wiped out; the movie is ‘a tragedy, for though the hero escapes with forced to confront the ultimate limits of his moral ideas, "Ehis mature sense of limitation and unavoidable guilt is what gives the Westemer a “right” to his melancholy, It is true that the augster’s story is elso a tragedy in certain formal ways more areauly a tragedy than the Westerner's— but tis a romantic tragedy, based on a hero whose defeat springs with almost mechanical in- 1 of his demands: the sterner 38 8 evitability from the outrageous Prest gangster is Bound to go on until he is killed. The We MOVIE CHRONICLE: THE WESTERNER 441 more classical figure, self-contained and limited to begin with, seek~ ing not to extend his dominion but only to assert bis personal » slue, and his tragedy lies in the fact that even this Gzcumscribed demand cannot be fully realized. Since the Westerner is not a murderer but {ros fthe time] aman of wire; and nce es luays prepared jor defeat, he retains his inner invulnerability and his stor erability and his story need not end with his death (and usually does not); but what we finally re- spond 10 ot hs ictory ul i defen p to-a point, itis piain that the deeper seriousness of the g00: Werte fins comes from the introduction bath give icaf and psychological, that was missing with Tom Mix and Tiam 5. Hart. As fines of age have come into Gary Cooper's face since The ‘so the outlines of the Western movie in general ackground moze drab. The sua still Etat upon the town, but the comera is ikely now to take advane tage of n to seek out mare closely the shabbiness of buildings and furniture, the loose, wom hang of clothing, the ‘wrinkles and dirt of the faces. Once it has been discovered that the true theme of the Western movie is not the freedom and expan- siveness of frontier life, but its limitations, its material bareness, the pressures of obl then even the landscape itself ceases to be set thane off movement ont as bo ace tad 2 great empty Waste, cutting down more often than it exaggerates ihe sature ofthe hovseman who rides aroes Weare ore likely now to see the Westerner struggling against the obstaces of the physical world {as in the wonderful scenes or. the desert and among the rocks in The Last Posse) than carelessly surmounting, them no longer the “friends” of man or the inspired chargers of knight-errantry, have lost much of the moral signif cance that once seemed to belong to them in their careering across the eee, seems fo me the ores gry trad and stumble more often than they did, and that we see them less frequently at ote . less frequently at the In The Gu a remarkable film of a couple of years ago, sappeared. Most of rhe action takes place indoors, in a cheerless saloon where a tired "bad man” (Gres- ory Peck) contemplates the waste of his life, to be sensclessly killed at the end by a vicious youngster setting off on the same futile path. The movie is done in cold, quiet tones of gray, and every object in faces, he hero's heavy mustache—is given an air of uncompromising authentici graphs of the nineieenth-century West in which Wy: turns out to be a blank untidy figure posin Earp, say, awkwardly before to be sure, is onl: my eyes at any rate, is how stonily they refuse to yield up the truth.I EEE EO —————————— 42 FILM GENRES Wg some hint ine and decor, us to feel that we are looking at a mare “rea 1e movies have accustomed us to—harder, di ‘and yet with rcing us outside the boundaries which give the Western movie ity in which he fas mes, ap} has been lion of a chance fo give some good én, point is that he ex side the field of social value. Indeed, if twe were once allowed to soe him in the days of his “success.” he career has been ag- val problem he faces is & zangster's problem ways be somebody trying to him. Yet it is obviously absurd to speak of him ai not only’ because we do not see him acting as a cr fundament course it ha 2ation is always just at the point of driving out the old there are women and children to represent the poss settled life; and there is the marshal, 2 bad man turned good, deter mined to keep at least his area of jurisdiction at peace. But these elements are n “realism,” even though they come out of the real history of the West; they belong to the conventions of the form, to that accepted framework which makes the film possible in the first place, and they exist not to provide a standard by which the gunfighter can be judged, but only to set him off ion’ of the Western movie is always embodied fan individual, good ar bad is more 2 matter of personal beating than of social consequences, and tt t of good and bad is a duel between two men. Deeply troubled and obviously doomed, the gunfighter is the Western hero st cause his value must express itself entin presence, the way he holds our eyes—and in contradiction to the facis, No matter what he has done, he looks right, 2 invulnerable because, without acknowledging anyone else's judge him, he has judged his own failure and has already a3si lated it, understandings no one else understands except the Bround more di Upholder of o older, stooped SHOW,444 -FILM GENRES J—that he can do nothing but play out in and again until the time comes ae eae be he who gets killed. What “redeems” him is that he wevlgneer believes in this drama ard nevertheless will continue to play his role perfectly: the pattern is all -Fivoroperfunetion of eealism in the Westen movie can oly be todeeen the lines ofthat pattern, Its an aft form for connoisssurs, to dcePine spectator derives his pleasure from the appreciation, of einer Vanitions within the working out af a pre-established order Benerees not want too much novelty: it comes as a shock, for oe oe then the hero is made fo operate without 2 gun, as has dearene in several pictures (e-g., Destry Rides Again), and cur peer sees is allayed only when he is finally compelled to pat is ecinm” aide i the hero can be shown to be troubled, come: Eitkle even eccentric, or the villain given some psychological taint aeerticr, some evocative physical mannerisi, to shade the colors oF pi villainy, that is all (0 the good. Indeed, that kind of variation oiMesslutely, necessary £0 keep the type from becoming ster Feet ant to see the same movie over and aver again only vase form But when the impulse toward realism is extended into a aUlererpretation” of the West as 2 developed society, draving or cpesaway from the hero fonly to the extent of showing him athe G2 Femina figure in 2 complex social order, ¢hen the pattern creole and the West itself begins to be uninteresting. Tf the "shat praiiems of te Frontier areto be the movie's chief concern cose no jonger any point in reexamining these peablems twenty tances year they have been solved, and the people for whom they tie a dereal are dead. Moreover, the hero himself stil the film’ Central figure, now tends to become its Since he is the most “un Si ScBow Incident, by denying the convention of the Iynch- resents us with a modern “social drama” and evokes a F- Tee ErGing response, butt in doing so it almost makes the Wester een relevant, amere backdrop of beawtfal scenery (I is signif The OeeBow ineldent has no hero; @ hero would have to ching or be killed in trying to stop it, and then the se ten” of lynching would no longer be central) Even in The Pinfighter the women and children are 2 ttle too much in ev See freatening constantly to become a real foous af concern dence: OF simply part of the given framework; and the yousg tough anealils the hero has too much the air of juvenile erieénality Spero himself could never have been like that, and she ‘dea of = Mule being repeated therefore loses its sharpness, But the most SPSking example of the confusion created by a too conscientious social” realism is in the celebrated High Noor. sophigh Noon we find Gary Cooper still the upholder of order that he was in The Virginian, but twenty-four years older, soopeds ‘marshal and the barroom the drama of the gun fight MOVIE CHRONICLE: THE WESTERNER 445 st vara, his & lower moving, awkward, his face lined, the flesh sagging, a Tess beautiful and weaker figure, but with the ‘agate creer depth that belongs almost automatically to age. Like the hero of The Gunfighter, he ne longer has fo asert his character ard is n longer interested in the drama of combat; iti hard to imagine Soh icone ye pel ime that smile!” In fact, when we come upon bim he is hanging op his guns and his marshal’s badge in order to begin a new, peaceful life with his bride, who ia Quakes But then the news comes that @ sman he had sent f0 prison has been pardoned and will get to town nthe noon train three friends ofthis man have comet walt for him at the station, and when the freed convict arrives the four of then wel some ol he areal He's hus rapped the ride object, the hero himself will waver much moze than he would hav Gone ftenty-four years ago, but in the end he will play out the drama because itis what he "has to do,” All this belongs to the es- iglsed form (hee jeven he fen woman whe understands 'e marshal’s position as his wife does not). Leaving aside th cracty of building up suspense by means of the clock the actual ‘Western drama of High Noon is well handled and forms a good companion pee o he Vigan showing in bath conception and techni ays in which the Western movie has naturally de- But there is a second drama along with th sets out fo find deputies to help firm deal wi wwe are taken through the vatious soc 16pm tar ffs is assistance out of cowardice, malice it for venality. With this we are in the field of “soci aver low onder ieidetallysogerhersnconwinany and displaying a vulgay anti-populism that has marred some other movies of Staniey Kramer's, But the falsity of the "social drama” is less important than the fact that it does not belong in the movi to begin with: The technical provlem was fo make i ecessary for he marshal to face his ene the other st, As the marshal the four gunmen, strata of the town, each Western movie, where the hero ‘naturally" alone and it is only necessary to contrive the pl a sco tho em wh alley my ontivasee needed at ; In addition, ugh the hero of High Noon proves himself a better man than all around him, the seat effect be he contrast is to essen his stature: be becomes only a rejected man of virtue. In our final glimpse of him, as he rides awa} own where he has spent most of his life without really imposing ims on t,he isa pathetic rather than a tragic figure. And his de- yarture has another meaning as wel re “social as 10 sean Sing 3 ll the Socal denna hes ro But there is also a different way of violating the Western form.445 FILM GENRES This is to 1a entirely to its static quality 28 legend and to the ‘cinemat scape, the horses, the quiet men John Ford's fzmous Stagecoach {1938} had much of this unhappy preoccupation with style, and the same director's My Darling Clementine (1946}, a soft and beautiful tt Earp, goes further along the same path, offering indeed 9 superficial accuracy of historical reconstruction, but so loving in exec to destroy the outlines of the Western Tegend, assimila nore sentimental legend of rural America and making the hero a more dangerous Mr. Deeds. (Powder “routine” Western shamelessly copied from My D. lacking the benefit of a ser George Stevens’ $ sgend of the West reduced to its esse fairly tale. There never was so broad and bare and lovely a land: seape as Stevens puts before us, oF s0 unimaginably comfortless a 5 the little group of bui the settlers must come for their supplies and to buy a drink. The mere physical progress of the film, following the style of A Place in the Sum, is so deliberately graceful that everything seems to be happen: ing at the bottom of a clear je emerges mysteriously from the pl breathing 3 lancholy which is no longer si the Westerner’s natural response to experience but has taken on ity: and when he has accomplished his mission, meeting and destroying in the black figure of Jack Palance a Spirit of Evil just as metaphysical as his own embodiment of virtue, he fades away again into the mare distant West, a man whose "day is over leaving behind the wondering little boy who might have imagined the whole story. The choice of alan Ladd to play the leading role is alone an indication ofthis film's tendency. Actors or Gregory Peck are in thems seeming to bear in their bodies and the the knowledge of ves, as material objects, “r sy" of a piece of sculpture; quality isin his physical smoothness and serenity, un yet nat innocent, but suggesting that no experie hhimn. Stevens has tried to freeze the Wester myth once and for all in the immobility of Alan Ladd’s countenance. If Skane were “right,” and fully sucessful, it might be possible to say there was ro point in making any more Western movies; once the hero is apotheosized, variation and developmert are closed off MOVIE CHRONICLE: THE WESTERNER a7 Bib m the East eam the lay of the West John Wayne and James stewart in John Ford's The preoccupation with sty” has the tendency “to ines of the Westem legend, assisting I tothe more 10962). “Ford's serous Mr. Deeds ei (WARSHOW, page 446). making the hero a more dan:448 FILM GENRES keep its freshness theough endless repetitions only because of the special character of the film mediurn, where the physical difference between one object and ancther—above all, between one actor and another—is of such enormous importance, serving that is served by the variety of language in the perpetuation of ary types. In this sense, the “vocabulary” of films is much larger lerature and f to pleasing and sig- why the middle levels forms, and perhaps also why the status of the movies as art is con- stantly being called into question.) But the advantage of this al- most automatic pai y belongs to all films alike. Why does the Western movie especially have such a hold on ow Tthink, because it offers a serious orientation to the problem of violence such ai our culture. One of the wel lized opinion is its refusal to acknowledge the value of violence This refusal is a vietue, but like many virtues it involves a certain willful blindness and it encourages hypocrisy. We train ourselves to be shocked or bored by cultural images of violence, and our very concept of heroism tends to be a passive one: we are less drawn to the brave young men who kill large numbers of our enemies than to the heroie prisoners who endure torture without capitulating hough we may still be able to understand and participate in the values of the liad, a modern writer like Ernest Hemingway embarrassing: there is no doubt that he but we cannot help recognizing also that he sm of popular culture, where the educated observer is ng at stake, the presence of images of violence is often assumed to be in itself a sufficient ‘These attitudes, however, have not reduced the element of vio- lence in our culture but, if anything, have helped to free it fra! moral control by letting it take on the aura of "emancipal The celebration of acts of violence is left more and more to the iecesponsible: on the higher cultural levels to writers like Céline, and fower down ine or Horace McCoy, or to the the face of all our tudes. [t is amore “modern” genre than the West ven more profound, because it confronts indu y on its own ground ~ the ci advanced art, it gains its effects by a gross >a ee MOVIE CHRONICLE: THE WESTERNER 449 the job done and stay alive (this too, of course, a kind of heroic posture, but a new-~and “prac ) At its best, the war us that he ld of violence, f violence must come in its ovn time ws, or else itis valueless, There is little fy UF eves are the deportment which isthe “point” of age of man, 2 style, whic expresses ih mes lars mwalnce Watch's “had a ke toy guns and you will ee: what most interests him is not (as we so tmuch fear the fantasy of hurting others, but to work out how man might Fook when hesheotsor shot. Aero is one who looks Whatever the limitations of such an id an idea in experience, it has always ben valid nat andhava speci vlcuy erar ee es appearances are everything, The Western he1o is necesvarily sn archaic figure; we do not really believe in him and would not hav is rigidly conventionalized background. But his mn does noi takeaway for his power, on the conte it by keeping him just a little beyond the reach both of com. not focused on the s of the hero, the West a certain "Tani ot concemed here soph | suspect they could not have been pe Some of the compromises in sergges none ey be if anshing more dango ots othe gangster ten commonly casted lus goes sindefeated, allowing us {if we wish) te find in “Confirmation” of our fontascsnen eee 450 FILM GENRES mon sense and of absolutized emotion, the two usual impulses of our art, And he has, afterall, his own kind of relevance. He is there to remind us of the possibility of style in an age which has put on itself the burden of pretending that style has no meaning, and, in the midst of our anxieties over the problem of violence, to suggest that even in killing or being killed we are not freed from the neces- sity of establishing satisfactory modes of behavior. Above all, the movies in which the Westerner plays out his role preserve for us the pleasures of a complete and self-contained drama—and one which still effortlessly crosses the boundaries which divide our culture—in a time when other, more consciously serious art forms are increasingly complex, uncertain, and ill-defined. asd