The Great Western Pathos

Day of the Outlaw (1959) - de Toth

The self-righteous anger and violence has been a staple pathos for the Western genre. This tough male victimhood is as privileged and outdated as white supremacy movement that is rampant in this country. One can't deny that America is built on violence but no one wants to admit it. All highly regarded Westerns follow pretty much the same pathos - The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Balance, etc. Andre de Toth's Day of the Outlaw is no exception but it makes a hero out of Robert Ryan's gruffy rancher without ever firing a gun. So kudos for that.

Ryan plays Blaise (more like Blasé), a hardened rancher who's had enough of Crane, a farmer and husband of his former lover Helen (Tina Louise), encroaching his territory. Blaise has no qualms about shooting down Crane just on principle alone. But a group of outlaws, headed by former army captain Bruhn (Burl Ives), rolls into town, just in time for Blaise & Crane showdown and start terrorizing its twenty or so citizens of the small town. Bruhn's men are thirsty and lusty. But perhaps because he knows that he is dying, Bruhn promises the townsfolk that his men will not touch the booze and women, until they have secured a safe passage, away from trailing calvary. Blaise, knowing that Bruhn's death will commence raping and pillaging, urges the town's horse doctor to extract the bullet from Bruhn's chest and keep him alive as long as he can.

After a night of dancing and some molestation of women, Blaise decides to deceive the gang and lead them to certain death in the mountain, promising that there is a secret safe passage through the snowy mountains. Greedy and trigger happy, the gang starts to kill each other off.

Day of the Outlaw is a great western. Top notch acting from Ryan and Ives and Louise is a real beaut. Snowcapped vista also accentuates the harshness of the American west.

Minced Meat

The Set-up (1949) - Wise

An aging boxer, Bill 'Stoker' Thompson (Robert Ryan), who is always one punch away from...greatness, feels good today in Paradise City. It don't matter that his fight is not the top billing (it is the last fight of the day actually), that his manager is taking bribes from a gangster named Little Man for him to take a dive, or that his girlfriend is having a second thought about staying with the man who just might easily be turned in to a human hamburger. No, he feels he can take his young opponent, really.

The Set-up reminds me of this quote by Johnny Caspar in Miller's Crossing:

It's gettin' so a businessman can't expect no return from a fixed fight. Now, if you can't trust a fix, what can you trust?

Robert Wise creates a smoke-filled, sleazy, unglamorous, two-bit boxing noir. Citizen Kane-esque cinematography by Milton Krasner is just marvelous to look at. Fight scenes are realistic and crazy intense, amateurish and not stylized at all- no wonder Scorsese is a big fan of this. Fun to see Stoker's mood changing one minute to another, as he witnesses the joy and misery in fellow meatballs battling it out where paying spectators chant "KILL HIM!" from all four corners of the ring. Ryan, looking like a hero from Bellows' painting, slogs through a hellish fight, then being subject to the fury of the gang. Just how much of this can a man take? A great tight noir.

Crimes Don't See Colors

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) - Wise




Robert Ryan is Earle Slater, a bigoted ex-convict and WWII vet who's been living off of his working girlfriend (Shelley Winters). Even though emasculated and aging, he still has the fire in him. Harry Belafonte is Johnny Ingram, a divorced vibraphonist with a massive gambling debt. Enter Dave (Ed Begley), an ex-cop trying to organize a heist in upstate NY. He puts a squeeze on the two so they have no choice but to go along with the "one last shot at the greatness" deal.

With a cool title sequence, rapid cuts, zoom-ins, extreme closeups, jazzy score and old New York scenery (including Central Park merry-go-round), there are a lot to love in Odds Against Tomorrow. It patiently spends 2/3rd of the film on the characters before the heist. It even pauses for Slater and Ingram to hang (albeit separately) in pastoral area looking all contemplative before the heist which, of course, goes horribly wrong.

Belafonte, a darker, edgier side of Sidney Poitier, is mesmerizing as a conflicted anti-hero, so as Ryan in his aging grizzly man persona. Gloria Grahame shows up as saucy next door neighbor of Slater and their scene together is deliciously explosive.

Moral of the story? As the last line of the film indicates, crimes don't see no colors.

Life During Wartime

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) - Sturges

Macreedy (Spencer Tracy), a mysterious one armed man in black, comes to Black Rock, a small desert town in the West and starts asking questions about a Jap farmer named Komoko who is nowhere to be seen. The townsfolk are less than welcoming, even downright hostile. The local honcho Smith (Robert Ryan, On Dangerous Ground, Billy Budd) who seems to be in charge of everything, wants Macreedy disappear.

This tale of racism/blind patriotism in the post-war small town America presented in anamorphic widescreen, features some amazing desert vistas in day time as well as night exterior scenes. Ryan is as menacing as ever, even shooting down a woman in cold blood in order to keep his racist murder case dead and buried in Black Rock. We get to know Macreedy's retired vet story. Tracy keeps the righteous torch burning 'til the end. Sturges mixes elements of Western and noir and the result is spectacular. Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin appear as Smith's goons. I got a great kick out of watching the scene where Tracy karate chops Borgnine. Great stuff.

I'm half horse half alligator scene

Farewell to the Rights of Man!

Billy Budd (1962) - Ustinov

Set in Napoleonic War era, The film tells a story of an incorruptible sailor, Billy Budd (Terence Stamp) and his sadistic superior Claggart (Robert Ryan). Good natured, always smiling Budd gets recruited from the merchant ship(The Rights of Man) by Royal Navy. Soon, Budd's beauty and innocence wins over weary sailors and officers alike, except for the Master-at-Arms, Claggart who is despised both by shipmates for his cruelty without reason and by officers for being an unwelcome headache during wartime. And he is out to destroy something perfect, something beautiful.

The best part of the film is the two's on deck confrontation - no matter how hard Claggart tries to get a rise out of the angelic kid, he only finds himself defeated by Budd's innocence and straightforwardness. "Oh, no. You would charm me too, huh? Get away." He shouts.

Billy Budd, Melville's the other famous seafaring novel, has been loosely adapted to two highly homoerotic films - Beau Travail and Gohatto, both set within military ranks and holding on to the idea of 'sailor' from the Village People a tad bit too seriously.

No doubt, 22 year old Terence Stamp is gorgeous and fits the title role as the innocence and virtue personified with speech impediment. Robert Ryan gives the performance of his career (even though he's the only one on the ship who speaks with an American accent) as evil Claggart who's just as vulnerable and lonely as anybody.

Things escalate and the film turns in to a Path of Glory like courtroom drama. Ustinov directs, produces, writes and even plays a hammy role as Captain Vere who has to make an impassioned decision on the young sailors fate (he can't veer off, get it?). He solemnly declares, "Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!" Even though it's a little heavy on its biblical notion of the sacrificial lamb for the common good, with a heartbreaking and well deserved ending, Billy Budd is well worth the trip.