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Thoughts On Westerns

  

     

      

Once I mused on the racist nature of Westerns and the impact they had on my generation who grew up watching American Indians routinely relegated to abstract obstacles to the settling of the western lands by white Europeans -- demonized, then wiped out either in battles or starved on reservations.  I considered that this must be the reason that when I stopped being a child, I stopped watching westerns.  But, upon reflection, I realized that I never bought into the racist nature of the western films.  I recognized it for what it was, even as a child, because that was the way I was taught to think about things by my family.  No, the real reason I had no use for westerns was that they had no use for me, as a female.  The western was a man’s world, a man’s morality tale, where women, if they inhabited them at all, were props, background characters.  There was nothing that I could identify with – not the one or two female outlaws or some outlaw’s girlfriend, not some tough-talking, dance-hall hostess, and not the gingham-clad schoolmarm.  I saw myself as a hero, too, and I found no females to inspire me in the western.

But sometimes one needs to be more objective in looking at art forms and film is an art form.  Certain westerns are generally considered to be classics and I can acknowledge the artistry whether or not I am inspired by the genre.  Then again, there are some that I actually like.

Recently I had occasion to re-evaluate Shane (1953, Paramount).  I had seen the film many years ago and I was not impressed with what I considered a wooden performance by Alan Ladd.  But when everyone thinks so highly of a work and considers it a true classic, it makes one curious to look at it anew. Seeing it now I recognize the tale of a familiar western conflict is told in such a simple and straightforward manner by director George Stevens intentionally, because it gives the story a classical quality.   Within the monumental circle of the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming, a mythological hero’s tale is told in the American west when a stranger rides into the lives of a community and enters into their conflicts, championing one side against the other, setting up the allegorical showdown between good and evil.    

The hero, Shane, played by Alan Ladd, decked out in a buckskin outfit, complete with fringes, and a pearl-handled revolver, rides up to the homestead of the Starrett family -- Joe, Marian and their son, Joey, played by Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, and Brandon DeWilde, respectively, and decides to work for them, after he sees the family threatened by the cattlemen who are determined to drive homesteaders off the land they need for grazing. Joey immediately senses the heroic aura of Shane, watching his every move and touching the holster that holds the pearl-handled revolver. Shane is seemingly content as he integrates himself into the rhythms of the small community of homesteaders, but inevitably, the conflict with the cattlemen becomes violent and a reluctant Shane is drawn into the fight. 

At one point, one of the Ryker brothers, the cattlemen who want to keep the land open, offers to buy Starrett out, but Joe is not interested.  When Rufus Ryker tries one last time to convince him to leave, he explains that he needs to graze cattle in land without fences and he needs access to water that their land claims block.  In a powerful speech, he also tells him that he came to that land when only Indian tribes lived there, and that he fought to build a life out of what was wilderness in order to live peacefully and raise cattle.  Now this group of farmers has come and put fences on his grazing land and thinks they have a right to stop his cattle and his way of life.  No one seems to notice the irony here.  After wresting the land from the Indian tribes who lived there when he came, now he is protesting because the farmers have come with their fences to take away the open range from him. But, in any case, Starrett is unmoved and the rancher leaves and later is seen  planning a final violent resolution. In the end, Shane faces the cattlemen’s hired gunfighter and kills him, but in doing so, realizes that he has forfeited his chance of remaining in the community of peace-loving families that he has saved. Gunfighters have no place in the west of these new communities.  Theirs is a different world and Shane must move on.  The film ends with Joey plaintively begging Shane to come back as he moves farther and farther away until he disappears from sight.

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       I have heard the opinion that John Ford's film, The Searchers (1956, Warner Bros.) represented Ford's more evolved view of the west. When I first saw the film, I accepted this because the main character, played by John Wayne, decides not to kill his niece who has been living with Comanches for the five years of his life that he has spent searching for her, even while warning everyone that she was now one of 'them'. The scene is suspenseful and one isn't sure what will happen until Wayne puts away his gun and carries his niece away. The moment is very moving. This, however, is one scene of a two-hour film during which, most of the time Wayne's character is obsessed with racial hatred. Even accepting that the end redeems what went before, that still leaves a lot of inflammatory and dehumanizing language lingering in the mind after the film is done. But one can admire the artistry of the panoramic views of the starkly beautiful landscapes, surpassing Ford's previous trademark visuals. And one can certainly see the classicism of the hero's odyssey, which is the real theme and which always ends with the hero alone, no longer needed after the quest is done

     The plot is familiar in The Unforgiven (1960, Hill, Hecht, Lancaster Productions)  -- a child is taken from her people and is raised in the culture of the hated 'other'. Only this time, the child is taken from the Kiowa tribe and raised in the settlers' community. When this secret is revealed by the mother, played by Lillian Gish, it splits the community and the family, for a while. The oldest son, Ben, played by Burt Lancaster, and the youngest, played by Doug McClure, defend their sister, while the middle son, played by Audie Murphy, is repelled by the news. The racist views expressed which justify settlers' rights is also familiar, but look closely and you see a touch of humanity shining through, in particular, the confrontation at the end between Rachel (Audrey Hepburn) and the Kiowa man who makes it into the house. For several seconds he looks intently at her face as if to see whether or not she was one of his tribe. The significance of this is that he is allowed to act -- to identify as a human being, not an abstraction. Rachel clearly sees him as such and hesitates, but when he reaches out to touch her face, she fires her gun and kills him. When her brothers rush in and she walks by them, there are tears in her eyes. We sense that the tears are her reaction to the taking of a life, a human being, but also, perhaps, because she did not feel mortal danger as much as revulsion.

   After he has defended her throughout, there is an 
acknowledgement of romantic attraction at the end between Rachel and her brother, Ben, who is now not really her brother, so it's OK, except that she is really Kiowa, but it's still OK. This interested me 
  when I first saw it because the women are central to the plot. There are some flaws in the plot, but the acting is fine. Perhaps Audrey does not look like she could be Kiowa and she does look a little frail next to Burt, who always seems larger than mere mortals, but he seems to infuse life into all around him.
      So this is an unusual western for 1960 in that it exposes racism in a way that The Searchers could not. When John Wayne carries his niece home, he is reinforcing the tribal nature of of racism -- she is one of his kin, which overrides her life with the enemy tribe. When Burt Lancaster professes his love for his adopted sister, he is saying blood doesn't matter.

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       In my list of five favorite films, Howard Hawks has directed three of them, so it is
difficult to understand why I can't embrace Red River (1948, Montery Productions), which other people seem to hold in high esteem. I admire certain aspects of the look of the film,
but my problem is with the John Wayne character, who seems to have no redeemable qualities that allow me to care about anything he has to say. Believe me, I have wanted to like this film, and have given it a number of viewings. However, there is a lesser-known Howard Hawks western called The Big Sky (1952, RKO Radio Pictures) starring Kirk Douglas, that is really a gem. It has everything that so many westerns lack for me -- a realistic story that has some basis in history, a script that doesn't offend me and one that includes a woman, and actual Native American characters, rather than abstractions.

      It might be hard to find this film if you haven’t seen it. I have only a VHS tape of it and I haven’t seen any DVDs (Region 1) available. But if you find it, you will be entertained by a different kind of western, one that doesn’t involve homesteaders versus ranchers, or settlers versus Indians of the abstract kind, or where verisimilitude is subordinate to the myths of ‘the west’. This film tells the story of voyageurs in the decades after Lewis and Clark explored the uncharted northwest, following the Missouri river to Blackfoot country to buy and trade for furs. There were such individuals and somehow, Hawks manages to show us scenery that looks like what they might have seen as they navigated their keel boats upstream. He adds to the realism by using French-speaking actors. The fur traders have a Blackfoot princess who they are returning to her father in the hopes of being the first Europeans to be allowed to trade for his tribe’s furs. She comes in handy along the route for the special skills and knowledge she offers. The film starts at a leisurely pace, but once they get on the river, the film takes on its own classic look, as the crew views the passing country and experiences the adventures it provides in a kind of odyssey. Others have used this template, Apocalypse Now (1979, Zoetrope Studios) comes to mind, as a way to tell a story through the passage of time on a river.

     In this film, the Natives are not enemies, the Crows attack them because they are allied with a rival, big trading company, but, for the most part, they are trading partners, and many have found it useful to learn their languages and customs. What a difference from the depictions of this relationship in stories that take place after the Civil War.

     For example, two other Ford films, Fort Apache (1948, Argosy Pictures) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949, Argosy Pictures), were about cavalry life, and both starred JohnWayne. Fort Apache, which also starred Henry Fonda, was the more offensive

 of the two. Fonda’s character was a despicable commander who sends John Wayne to negotiate the surrender of Cochise, only to go back on the terms of the agreement. The unrelenting language of hostility, where annihilation was accepted as the appropriate response to a resistant Indian population led to my rejection of westerns, in general, and to consider John Ford as the embodiment of the motion picture’s contribution to the western mythology that condoned genocide. However, in retrospect, it is difficult to imagine that in Fort Apache, the pompous commander who endangers everyone’s life with his incompetence was not intentionally created by the director, the actor (Henry Fonda), the screenwriter, and the reactions of the other actors. So if Ford’s intention was to show us that the character was not admirable in his attitude toward the Apaches, I have to reassess Ford. Nevertheless, the child who first watched it still heard the language of hatred.

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     Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man (Cinema Center Films, Stockbridge- Hiller Productions) in which the Battle of the Little Big Horn is told for the first time from the Native American point of view doesn’t appear until 1970, and Kevin Costner’s totally-sympathetic portrait of the Sioux , Dances With Wolves (Tig Productions, Majestic Films International), not until twenty years later in 1990.

        My generation was already grown before the images of the Native American changed in film. While we were forming, most of the images that we saw in films were brutally negative. The “shadow” of the Indian, rather than real characters, was something to be overcome, which is why I love The Last of the Mohicans (1992, Morgan Creek Productions) even if it is not accurate history. It is not even an accurate rendition of the novel by James Fennimore Cooper. It is an “idea” of the country, a different “idea” than the western. It is a film about human beings with whom we can empathize, where some Native Americans are heroes and some are not, as are the French, the British and the colonists. It is beautifully filmed in a way that captures some of the majesty of the country before forests were cut down and concrete replaced the tall grasses, when the Native People lived free in the land in which they had prospered for thousands of years.

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